The Cones Are The Least Of Their Worries

I work as a maintenance person at an office building and a while ago we had an incident involving a lot of flooding. The main road outside our building, our external parking lots, and our basement flooded.

Situated outside our building was a city project which required the redirection of traffic through the use of cones and upright mobile parking bollards similar to what we used in our own parking areas.

Prior to the flood, our building only had ten of these upright parking barriers and maybe twenty cones, but after it, we had more than thirty barriers and forty-five or so cones which had obviously washed in from the main road when our basement had consumed all of the water coming in. Of course, once we made this determination, I called the contractor responsible for the project outside.

Reception: “Hello? [Contract Company], how may I direct your call?”

Me: “Hi. I am looking for the person supervising the project over on [Roadway] and [Cross Street] about some company equipment that was pushed onto our property by the storms a few days ago.”

Reception: “Oh, no! We are so sorry about the inconvenience. Of course, we would like to retrieve anything that may have been sent your way. Let me connect you to [Foreman] so you can arrange that.”

There was a very clear line switch.

Foreman: “Hello?”

Me: “Hi. I am the facilities manager at [Business Center]. I just wanted to let you know that we have your cones and things that are missing.”

Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”

Me: “Sorry, is this the project at [Roadway] and [Cross Street]?”

Foreman: “Yes.”

Me: “Then yes, we have your cones; they have your company name on them.”

Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”

Me: “I… Maybe you haven’t noticed yet—”

Foreman: “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

Me: “Uhh… no?”

Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones, and we aren’t going to take responsibility for your trash.”

Me: “No, these are… these are obviously yours.”

Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”

Me: “But you are, though.”

Foreman: “No, we aren’t.”

Me: “But you are. You’re probably missing a lot of them; we have almos—”

Foreman: “We. Aren’t. Missing. Any. Cones.”

Me: “Yes. You. Are.”

Foreman: “If you want to file a complaint, then file a complaint, but we aren’t going to take the blame for garbage near our sites.”

Me: “What is even happening right now?”

Foreman: “Sounds like you have a problem you are too lazy to solve yourself, so you’re blaming us for your lack of organization.”

Me: “And what assembly of words that I have said during this conversation brought you to that conclusion?”

Foreman: “We aren’t miss—”

I hung up the phone at this point and called the main office back.

Reception: “Hello?”

I filled the receptionist in on the conversation I had had with her foreman, and she was just as confused as I was. She decides to contact their safety guy and send him to the site, and she informed me that he would be at our building within the hour.

A short time later, I was watching the roads from our building and having a cup of coffee when I suddenly saw five or six police cars pulling up to the worksite. They appeared to talk to a number of people on the site and then led a man away from the worksite in handcuffs. Once the police were gone, a man separated himself from the construction site and started walking down our driveway.

I put my coffee down and took the building stairs two at a time on my way down to the lobby where security had already let the individual in.

Safety Man: “Are you [My Name]?”

Me: “Yes.”

Safety Man: “We gotta thank you for your call, man. Some serious s*** could have gone down if they hadn’t sent me over today.”

Me: “I saw the police cars. What happened?”

Safety Man: “He was drunk! Blew three times the legal limit to drive. The guys tell me he drove in sloshed and drank even more on site. We found open containers in the company truck and everything.”

Me: “Oh.”

Safety Man: “He threatened the crew; he told them he would file false reports against them if they called anyone.”

Me: “Oh, there are all kinds of problems here, huh?”

Safety Man: “You’re telling me. Now, what was your original call about?”

Me: “Oh, right, we have all of your missing cones.”

Safety Man: “We aren’t missing any cones.”

I found out that the cones had been replaced under the radar by another employee who thought he would be held responsible for not securing them. He didn’t tell his foreman about it because he was new and didn’t want to get into trouble. He got into considerably more trouble than he would have initially.