...NOT the brown wire with the yellow stripe.

We had some excitement at work yesterday. Around 2:30 our receptionist made an announcement along the lines of "If you discarded a black bag in the garbage can out front we REALLY need to talk with you. Please come to the front desk." I didn't think any more of it until I was outside catching a smoke with some building neighbors and the subject came up.

One of said neighbors was an agent of the ATF. They own two floors of our office building. The FBI offices are in the next building.

He was saying that they did have to take things like that seriously because they really did get things sent to them and threats made to them. Constantly. Several times a week in this office alone and the FBI had it worse.

His main concern wasn't damage from such a small bomb as there wouldn't have been a whole lot. His concern was financial. "We don't want to get a bill next month for 500 people seeing their shrinks."

Thanks, Rocco. Your concern is underwhelming.

Anyway, nothing else happened so we all assumed it had been dealt with. Wrong.

I was in the middle of a teleconference with my boss (remote), my other boss (local), their boss (remote), a senior VP whose project we were discussing (remote) and two directors (local). My boss was in the middle of discussing an itinerary for an on-hand strategy meeting that we had determined was necessary when my other voice interrupted him with "We have to end this call now. And I mean right now. Goodbye." He then closed the conference call without further ado.

I then heard one of the ATF guys a couple cubes down telling the resident there "We need you to shut down for the day and leave the building. Use the stairs, not the elevator. Use the back door, not the front door. Do not approach the front lobby under any circumstances." I was already shut down and packed up by the time somebody made it to my cube.

I left the building and walked around to the parking lot. I passed a guy putting on a suit of armor that looked like it could stop an RPG. Which, I guess it might be able to do seeing as it was a bomb suit and all. As I turned the corner on the way to my car another ATF agent came up to me. I've seen this guy before. He works undercover a lot. Unlike the other agents he never has a gun on him. He doesn't need one. He looks like Hulk Hogan from back when he had hair and 27" pythons. Add 150 pounds of rippling fat, skeezer clothes and shit kicker boots and you've got a pretty good picture of the guy who was walking (quickly) over to me.

"You sonofabitch moron! What the hell do you think you're doing!? Are you deaf or just stupid?! Get the hell back around the building you freaking idiot!"

That was the effect of what he said but I must admit that his appearance possibly colored how I interpreted his words. What he actually said was more like "I'm sorry, sir, but we need you to go back to the side of the building. The front of the building and the parking lot are being secured for your protection. We'll get this cleared up as soon as possible so you can get home."

I sat on the grass and fired up the laptop. If we had decent wi-fi (more accurately, if we had ANY wi-fi) I might have done something productive. Instead, I played Freecell. About 45 minutes later the official types took down the police line tape and we were all free to get our vehicles. Turns out somebody had thrown out a lunch cooler with some bad tuna salad in it.

The moral of the story? If you get to work early and consistently take one of the best parking spots you will eventually receive karmic backlash. Get in late and park in the handicapped spots out back.