So I’m minding my business at work, reading up on CD-bootable Linux distros, avian ‘flu, the Bob Mould concert I’m attending this evening, and generally procrastinating, when I get a phone call from a woman with a fetching London accent.
She informed me that someone was handing out our business cards and shouting, “What’s your’s is mine” to passerbys. Odd enough, but even stranger, this fellow was somewhere in the East 50s, near the park, very far from our funeral home up here in the North Bronx in the Riverdale/Kingsbridge area.
I asked her to describe the fellow, and we quickly agreed upon his identity. This guy comes in to the funeral home once every month or so, asking to use the bathroom or, occasionally, for some other random favor. He’s banned from our business due to his lack of, shall we say?, care when using our facilities. I think our Hungarian maintenance man (who’s nicked named this fellow, “Loose Grips”) would visit some rather traditional Middle European punishments on him were he given the chance.
He’d been in yesterday, asking to use the bathroom again, and again I told him they were “under repair.” Despite this, he then walked into the main vestibule. As I opened my drawer for easy access to my baton and stood, asking, “Can I help you?” - meaning of course the opposite - he took a handful of our business cards and walked straight out, disturbing several pedestrians on his way out of my sightline.
So, I assumed during my conversation with this caller that the incident took place last night, but she told me, no, it was Sunday evening. One of our other funeral directors corroborates this, telling me that this guy had been in on Sunday afternoon and had, presumably, grabbed some business cards then (on Monday we were out of business cards in the same container from which I saw him take them Tuesday; further evidence of this guy’s foresight).
It’s curious that this guy would leave the neighborhood to go to the UES (or, perhaps, he lives there and commutes here?). Shouting out, “What’s your’s is mine” while handing out business cards from a funeral home in whose employ he is not is somewhat strange, although not unheard of in Manhattan.
The fact that he walked into the funeral home as I was speaking on the phone to this random person about this random event, now that’s a little odd.
He asked if we had a copy machine. What on earth could he have to copy? More of our business cards?
I asked the caller to stay on the phone and took the two camera phone photos below. I sent her a link to the Flickr page that hosts them, hoping she writes me back to confirm that is was actually old Loose Grips she saw (how could it not be?)
Good thing I’m not a Christian. I’d certainly assume the Jesus was trying to tell me something.
