That story I promised

As part of our annual holiday activities where I work, we “adopt” one or two families for Christmas- collecting donations of toys, clothes, home goods, and cash from members of the department and then distributing them to the families in need a few days before Christmas. This year, one of my coworkers (we’ll call her “C”) had a great idea that members of our research team could clean people’s office windows in exchange for a 5 dollar per pane donation to the adopt-a-family fund. The idea caught like wildfire, and it was a nice diversion from normal work. Because the university does not have a contract with housekeeping to clean windows, some of them had not been cleaned since the building was built 16 years ago.

C and I were in one physician’s office- one of the larger ones here, I think, with something like 6 windows all in a row. A long window sill ran the length of the wall and held dozens of pictures, mementos, and doo-dads that had to be cleared away before we could begin cleaning the windows. C and I began taking things off the sill and moving them carefully onto the desk, trying to take note of how things were placed. I went to pick up one of the physician’s awards- a heavy glass marble resting on top of a wooden block with a plaque of some sort. I picked it up by the base, not realizing that the base and the ball were not attached. When I lifted it, the ball fell off and landed on top of another award beside it. This one consisted of an 8” crystal bowl resting on top of a wooden base. I (in slow-motion) watched the ball fall onto the bowl, the bowl break into pieces, the pieces land on the floor, and C’s mouth drop wide open. I looked back up on the table to see where the bowl had come from. It had been resting on top of a wooden base with a plaque that read “Lifetime Achievement Award”… from the state Academy of Medicine. My mouth dropped wide open and I did my little nervous laughter thing. I picked up the biggest piece of the bowl and saw a little sticker on it that said “Waterford Crystal”. I saw my bank account draining. C said “what if he sues us?” and “what if it costs like 200,000 dollars?”

Long story short- C had the brilliant idea of looking on line to try to find a replacement. She found one within about 15 minutes and was on her way to Macy’s to pick it up. The bowl cost 70 dollars which was well below the estimated 200,000 dollars we had feared. C insisted on paying for part of it, even though it was 100% my fault. She placed the bowl back on the base and I went down to the clinic to tell the MD what happened.

“Dr. G.,” I said, “I have some good news and some bad news and some more good news.”

“Ahhh,” he said, “The sandwich approach.”

“Yes. The good news is that someone paid for you to have all the windows in your office washed. The bad news is that while we were clearing things off the sill, I broke one of your awards with another one of your awards.”

“That crystal thing?” he asked, indicating, in my opinion, that the crystal “thing” was the only thing he cared about in the entire office.

“Yes. SO that’s the bad news. But the other good news is that we replaced it and the replacement is already up there.”

After some questions about how we were able to get the replacement, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s OK.”

We listed the original shards on craigslist and an artist is coming to pick them up this afternoon for incorporation into some project. I plan on taking a picture of his project and displaying it right next to my new office plaque which reads, “I don’t do windows.”