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I don't know, maybe I am the sucky one for having a sense of humour failure.
Here at the Museum of Amazing Stuff, we require people to check their bags when entering the study area. It is one of our very few ironclad policies. You can take everything you need out of your bag and bring it, but the bag itself has to go in one of our lockers. Which lock. And you keep the key. We explain this to each and every patron, and so help me God, you'd think I was asking for their firstborns. But I digress.
Yesterday a guy came in with one of those wheelie-things that is smaller than a suitcase but bigger than a briefcase. He objected, predictably, to our policy regarding bags, but since he wanted to use the study area he grudgingly gave in. The wheelie-thing was too big for one of the lockers, so we stowed it carefully behind the front desk which is always manned. It was my shift on the desk when he finished whatever it was he was doing, and came to get his bag back. I got up and wheeled it around to him.
He took it from me and said unsmilingly "Is it still ticking?"
Ha ha. Indeed we are paranoid crazy people intent upon denying personal freedoms to patrons with large bags.
This is where I may well have been sucky, because I said shortly that it's a good thing he chose the beginning of the week to make that joke, since at the end of this week our fair city will be hosting an international conference of Unjustifiably Influential People With Oversized Motorcades, and we have been told that such comments are to be Taken Seriously. Of course he was just being an asshole, but I did fantasize for a brief moment about calling the security guard and going all fluttery and worried about "perceived threats". But that really would have been sucky.
Anyway, we alone of all cultural institutions will be open this weekend during the Oversized Motorcade conference - we're outside the secured zone but are already in a crazy part of town - and on top of that we're short-staffed. So think good thoughts that I can get through the workday and home safely without being tear-gassed.
Here at the Museum of Amazing Stuff, we require people to check their bags when entering the study area. It is one of our very few ironclad policies. You can take everything you need out of your bag and bring it, but the bag itself has to go in one of our lockers. Which lock. And you keep the key. We explain this to each and every patron, and so help me God, you'd think I was asking for their firstborns. But I digress.
Yesterday a guy came in with one of those wheelie-things that is smaller than a suitcase but bigger than a briefcase. He objected, predictably, to our policy regarding bags, but since he wanted to use the study area he grudgingly gave in. The wheelie-thing was too big for one of the lockers, so we stowed it carefully behind the front desk which is always manned. It was my shift on the desk when he finished whatever it was he was doing, and came to get his bag back. I got up and wheeled it around to him.
He took it from me and said unsmilingly "Is it still ticking?"
Ha ha. Indeed we are paranoid crazy people intent upon denying personal freedoms to patrons with large bags.
This is where I may well have been sucky, because I said shortly that it's a good thing he chose the beginning of the week to make that joke, since at the end of this week our fair city will be hosting an international conference of Unjustifiably Influential People With Oversized Motorcades, and we have been told that such comments are to be Taken Seriously. Of course he was just being an asshole, but I did fantasize for a brief moment about calling the security guard and going all fluttery and worried about "perceived threats". But that really would have been sucky.
Anyway, we alone of all cultural institutions will be open this weekend during the Oversized Motorcade conference - we're outside the secured zone but are already in a crazy part of town - and on top of that we're short-staffed. So think good thoughts that I can get through the workday and home safely without being tear-gassed.
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