It’s MINE.

Well, my office got robbed again yesterday. For the second time in a year, I felt uneasy about coming in to work this morning because there could be yet ANOTHER creep lurking in the hallway, waiting for me to leave my office so he can pounce on my shit.

My co-workers and I were eating lunch in a conference room adjacent to our offices when I saw a man walk down our hall. In a building this large, our offices are kind of out of the way, but people get lost a lot and wind up down here regardless. So at first when I saw him I thought Another lost dude, he’ll figure it out. But then he took a little longer to find his way out and it occurred to me that I hadn’t locked my office door. Yeah, I know: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I’m a dumbass.

So after the guy walks back down the main corridor, I went in my office to double check that my suspicions were off-base…but my door was open. And my desk was clear. WTF? My laptop was missing. Unhooked, cords dangling, completely gone. Last year it was my wallet, this time it was school property (not to mention the home of my grad school work!).

Like a panicked mother in a grocery store whose child has run off somewhere, I start screaming my head off: “MY LAPTOP’S GONE! HE TOOK MY LAPTOP!” I went running off in the direction I’d last seen this guy and sure enough, I found him in the JobLink Center – this place that, ironically enough, helps people find jobs and get on the straight and narrow. He is STANDING THERE, staring at me dumbly, like “Yeah? Did you need something?” and he’s holding my laptop in his right hand and I didn’t stop to think so I just ran up to him screaming the whole time about how HEY THAT’S MINE and YOU TOOK IT and GIVE IT BACK TO ME NOW ASSHOLE and WHAT’S IN THAT FAT BACKPACK YOU GOT THERE and he’s still staring at me not moving and so I’m all grabbing the laptop out of his hands and accusing him of taking some more stuff except that he says he didn’t take any more of my shit, bitch. And so then he runs off past me and my heart is beating such that I’m pretty sure you could see it from space, pulsing in and out of my chest and I can’t breathe but THANK GOD I GOT THE LAPTOP BACK. But then it occurs to me that maybe I need to catch this son of a bitch, so I go back in the hallway where a crowd has gathered to see what I’m screaming about and they’re all, Hey Elizabeth, why’s your face so red? and I’m all, there he goes down the hall, and the fat old lady security guard huffs and puffs her way to where we’re standing and she’s like, Which way did he go? and my boss is yelling Sir! Sir! STOP RIGHT THERE! and he takes off running and the old lady security guard tries to run after him but she can’t run and so he gets away but then he comes right back in the building and heads upstairs to rob some more people.

After a few more crazy minutes of running around trying to figure out who this fucker is, I wind up back in the conference room where we’d been eating lunch and the adrenaline leaves me or something and then I really can’t breathe. I can’t catch my breath, my heart won’t stop pounding, I’m drowning in cold sweat, and the room is starting to get fuzzy. So my co-worker, the one that’s the mother hen of our group, grabs her purse and me at the same time and herds me out to the car and takes me home. And when we get there, my mom is waiting, someone had called her, and I’m all Hey Mom! I accosted the thief and got my stuff back! and she’s all Holy shit, WHAT FOR? and then my boss calls and it turns out that the dude left campus and tried to steal a medical office van, only the driver got there before he could steal it, so when he runs off, the driver follows him in the van and calls the cops, and when the cops finally get back to school to take my report, they look at a security footage photo of him and they’re all Hey! We just arrested that cat like 15 minutes ago and my boss calls to tell me so I’ll feel better that they have him and that’s when the drinking starts.

And, God bless ’em all, my friends from work came by the house last night to hang out for a while. We I sucked down two pitchers of sangria and half a bottle of wine and slept like a baby. This morning I’m more pissed than afraid, but mostly pissed, because WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME AT MY JOB?