bg/ag publishing

bg/ish: "Wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck though."

"Or the Credence."

I was getting ready to head out the door and to work yesterday morning when my BlackBerry alerted me to a new email.

To: All Staff

Subject: Break-In Last Night

"There was a break-in last night. Everyone is OK, and nothing seems to be missing, but some things are out of place. It looks like the person went through F---'s office, L----'s desk, and [your boy bg's] desk. He also broke the lock on J----'s door. Please let me know if you think anything is missing. The police came last night, and they may be around again today."

Needless to say, I was less than thrilled.

As I rode to work I started taking inventory in my head of everything that was on my desk. Some things personal. Some things critical to our firm. True, the e-mail said "nothing seems to be missing", but despite my previous cleaning efforts, my desk remains a cluttered mess of technology and the week's coffee cups and soda cans.

Also, I've had a video card stolen from my desk before, and nobody seemed really interested in looking into it or providing me with any retribution. "Reparations!"

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I got to work to find out that while the thief had been at my desk, it was at that moment that he was spotted by the one employee who was still at the office "burning the midnight oil". Literally, he broke into the building just after 12:01 a.m. After being spotted, he fled, fortunately, without doing any harm to the woman who was here.

After some more thorough assessments, we discovered that he did in fact make off with one of the firm's laptops and a DVD player. It's possible he may have made off with other things that we've yet to discover.

As the day went on, we learned from the building management that they had spotted the guy on video. The building manager, a nice woman in her 50's approached me about helping her transfer the video from the security system to disc, and printing any possible stills of the perpetrator. Detective work eh? Surely!

We agreed to start working on it Friday morning. She bought me coffee and a chocolate croissant. I went into a genuine, "Goddamn, Jimmie! This is some serious gourmet shit!" routine, and she informed me that it was the only coffee she drank. She also went on to inform me that she only drank coffee on Fridays...

Manager: "I only drink coffee on Friday."

dw.bg: "Oh?"

Manager: "Yes. So I can be ready for Friday night!"

dw.bg: "Haha. Wow, that's great."

Manager: "My husband calls me during the day and says, 'Did you drink your coffee so we can party tonight?!?'"

dw.bg: "No shit? Haha, that's a good style."

Swanky broad. I was only mildly aroused.

After spending some time figuring out how to export footage from the security system, we transferred footage from all the relevant cameras to a CD. And my 8GB USB stick. Y'know, for "backup".

We saw the creep use a crowbar to bust his way through the front door on Camera 1. He got into one of the elevators. We switched to Camera 2.

He got in the elevator, but what he didn't know is that you need a key to operate them after hours. So, he got out of the elevator and used his crowbar to bust his way into the staircase, and eventually into our office suite. For the most part he stayed in the shadows and kept his head down.

There was one moment though, just before he stepped out of the elevator, at 12:06:03 a.m. where he looked up. Booyah.


Gotcha bitch.