A bank service call, a spectacularly inconvenient break, and a complete tactical failure of name recall.
Some service calls are forgettable. This one was not.
Years ago, I was working on security equipment at a bank branch in an Edmonton mall. A recorder needed a replacement fuse, so I stepped outside to get what I needed and take a break.
During that break, the branch was robbed at gunpoint.
I missed the robbery itself. When I came back, the scene had changed rather dramatically. Police vehicles were everywhere, and what had started as an ordinary maintenance visit had become a very serious incident.
I had also enjoyed some marijuana during my break, which made my already unfortunate timing considerably more awkward.
There I was, a field technician from the fictionalized Toaster Oven Specialists, standing around trying to be helpful while my brain was decidedly not operating at peak recall.
In my memory, the police response was enormous. There were officers, vehicles, urgent conversations, and a commander whose name I simply could not remember.
I could recognize the man.
I could recognize that he was important.
I just could not retrieve the name.
My brain had apparently filed him under IMPORTANT POLICE GUY.
That is the detail that still makes me laugh: surrounded by a serious, professional response, I was trying desperately to remember one man's name while looking like the least deployable witness in western Canada.
The robbery was no joke, and I'm grateful nobody asked me to run the investigation.
But in the cartoon version of events, the officer asks, “Can you identify the commander?”
“Absolutely,” I reply. “Just not alphabetically.”
Some people provide clarity in a crisis.
I provided vibes.
This is a humorous, fictionalized retelling of a personal recollection. The dialogue is invented for the cartoon, and no actual officer is identified.