Meathead

A few nights ago at 1:30 a.m. I got a phone call from one of the tenants behind the bookstore telling me that my burglar alarm (recently installed) was going off like crazy. When I got there my front door was still shut and locked and the plate glass was intact. Once inside, I found everything to be as it should. I called the local alarm company who called the Sheriff’s department who called off the patrol car that was en route from a town twenty miles away.

What I suspect: it was a false alarm.

The next day I called the alarm company again and asked if they could send some guys over to check out the alarm system to see if we needed to make any adjustments to the system. “I’ll put in a work order for you,” the nice lady said.

Today some good ‘ole boys from the company came out and, after taking a look at things, seemed puzzled as to what could have set it off.

“The glass break sensor could have gone off if there was a loud enough noise,” one of them said, and, before I could react, he grabbed a valuable new hardcover near him, raised it high above his head, and then slammed it down hard on the wooden floor. He picked it up and raised it back over his head to do it again.

“That is a very expensive book,” I said pointedly, and way too politely. “Please don’t do that.”

“Well do you have a book that I can throw down on the floor?” he asked.

A few minutes later they were out of there and, after discovering that the book is now damaged, I got on the phone with the alarm company to file a complaint.

What I learned: Not everyone feels the same way about books that I do, and even more so, some people, when you least expect it, can be downright disrespectful, real jackasses, for no apparent reason.