There’s a lot of great anecdotes on the SDMB, but they’re usually those of the poster. This is an opportunity to share some good stories our friends have told us.
A friend of mine, let’s call him Caleb, is in sales. A few years ago he was approached by a rival company he’d always aspired to, and asked to come in for a chat.
He was sitting in a meeting room chatting to the Sales Manager, and they were getting on like a house on fire. After a few minutes it was clear that they’d already carved out a job with his name on it, for a lot more money, and better working conditions. They got on well, saw eye-to-eye, and talked and talked for an hour and a half. By the end, it was in the bag: all he had to do was wait for the new contract to arrive in his inbox later that day, then resign his old position, and the job was his.
It was when he got up to leave that the trouble started.
He had been so engrossed in the conversation that he had been sitting in the same position - laid-back, comfortable, leaning back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other - for ninety minutes, without moving.
He got to his feet with a huge smile, put his hand out to shake the Sales Manager’s hand, but instead he keeled over sideways.
Now Caleb is not a small man. He likes his meat. He’s pretty tall and fairly heavy, and his entire right leg had gone totally numb and uncontrollable from the hip down, so when he hit the ground unexpectedly it shook the entire floor.
The meeting room was glass-walled so when everyone in the open-plan office looked round to see what had caused the huge crash, they saw Caleb rolling around on the floor at the feet of an aghast Sales Manager, trying to pull himself upright again.
He was so shaken by what had just happened that his brain went into a whirl. Instead of explaining himself, he just squeaked ‘goodbye’, then slowly used the door frame to pull himself up, and clutched the wall as he dragged his dead limb haplessly to the elevator, watched open-mouthed by the entire company.
He never heard from them again.