Yesterday.
My wife and kids are spending most of the summer back where she’s from. Remote, rural island location, wonderful for the kids, and entirely free of C19.
My wife is a lawyer, runs her own practice. I go by her office and and check the mail, deposit checks, occasionally do some paralegal work.
She had about 40 boxes of papers in her office, documents produced in discovery in a litigation matter. I’d been scanning some of them from time to time, sending them to her for review. She finished the review, so the boxes could be sent to her records storage company.
Great, no problem, I called the company, made arrangements for pickup. Turns out that this company has their own C19 procedures and will only do curbside pickup. That’s one thing for groceries and another for 40 boxes of paper (do you know how much a box stuffed with paper weighs? I do. From 40 to 50 pounds, if it’s full).
But okay, it’s gotta be done, so I scrounge up a dolly and start bringing it down to the sidewalk. Turns out this will take three trips, because I can fit 14 boxes, at most, on the dolly for one trip. No problem.
So it has to go down in the freight elevator. Again, no problem.
But.
The freight elevator operator isn’t wearing a mask. The elevator is not large. I mean, it’s a small enclosed space. The worst kind of space to be in with someone without a mask. And he’s been there all day.
I say, “hey, mind putting a mask on?” He kind of grunts. Won’t even engage in conversation. Basically refuses to talk about it.
Fuck it. I’ve gotta get this done. I’m wearing a KN95 mask, and hopefully that will give me some protection.
But six trips with this asshole (six, because since I’ve got a dolly, I can’t use the passenger elevator to go back up)? Jesus fucking Christ.
I get the job done. I’m pissed off. I leave.
About two blocks away, I turn around. Fuck this. I go back to the building, find the building manager, and tell him the story.
I have a huge natural reluctance to be a rat, a tattletale, a snitch. But what else was I supposed to do? I tried to talk to the operator. He wasn’t interested. Fuck him.
I doubt that he’ll get into too much trouble. It’s a union building, and judging by his age, he’s got plenty of seniority.
But, as much as I hate to see anyone lose a job in these times, he should be fired.