“…where there are bosses there are crazy bosses.  It’s nothing new.”
Judd Rose

I’ve already mentioned Lt. Figaro’s ability to talk the brains out of new employees.  I failed to explain a couple of his other quirks that makes him beyond compare the most odd person we work with.

First of all, he is never around.  Seriously.  We go whole days without seeing him.  Weeks sometimes.

Second, he has the amazing ability to bend the space-time continuum.  If, on the off chance he is located in his office, you must never take your eyes off of him.  Because the moment he wanders out, he’s lost.  If he but turns a corner, goes into someone’s office, or shuts a door behind him…he is GONE.  You can run after him, you can search everyone’s cubicle, you can call after him, but it will all be in vain.  He has stepped into another dimension and will not reappear for several hours.

Third, he will (either on accident or on purpose, we aren’t sure which) invariably forget his schedule.  Even if he’s the one who arranged it.  It doesn’t matter if he called a meeting himself, there is a very good chance he will manage to forget it or fail to show up to it for at least a half hour.

All of this occasionally congeals into a wonderfully absurd/frightening cocktail, as it did this morning.

At nine o’clock on the dot, a smart young man showed up at my front desk and said politely that he needed to speak with Lt. Figaro and had an appointment with him.  I trotted off to his office only to discover that he was, predictably, absent.  So I tried Susie who said she’d seen him heading towards the back office mere second earlier, but a brisk walk around the whole department proved he wasn’t to be found.

At this point I head back to the front desk to apologize and ask if there is anything I can help this dapper young man with.  He explained that he’s been hired by one of the Sergeants but was instructed to pick up something from Figaro (which makes no sense, as this new hire will be working in a facility a couple miles off campus and will never come into our office again, but Figaro insists on giving out their identity cards).  I try but can’t locate this card.  Hennessy and Wise asked what I was doing and when I explained they rolled their eyes.
“I told him about this twice yesterday and sent him an email,” she sighed.  “Better just wait and see if he shows up.”

At 9:15, I go back to Hennessy’s desk and ask her to just get Figaro on the phone and she obliges while Wise hovers to catch the denouement.  After a couple of rings he picks up and though we can’t hear the other half of the conversation, we watch Hennessy’s face go through a series of convulsions.
“Your nine o’clock has been waiting for you.”
[Eyes widen]
“Oh.”
[Grimace]
“Alright, we’ll let him know.”
[Hurriedly hangs up phone and snatches hand away from the receiver]
“Oh my gosh…he’s in the bathroom!”

What he was doing in there for nearly 20 minutes is a mystery we’d rather not ponder, but that he answered his phone there…gah!  We all had to dance around making faces and saying “Yuck!” for a while to clear the image.