Long ago in an office that I once entered from time to time, this painful antic occurred. The offices of the asset managers contained solid oak furniture including several four drawer lateral file cabinets. The cabinets were very heavy oak and were able to handle the heavy files that were used on a daily basis.
One of our young asset managers was the guardian of real estate files that I used every day. The first time that I opened the top drawer of one of the cabinets in her office, I noticed that the cabinet rocked forward when the drawer was open. Since the cabinet was supposed to be stable and balanced, I closed the drawer and investigated the problem by opening the bottom drawer. To my dismay, the bottom two drawers were empty. The first thing I did was to inform the asset manager that she needed to rearrange her files. As incredible as it may sound, she informed me that it was easier to get the files out of the upper drawers than the bottom drawers. Apparently, she didn’t want to bend down every time she needed a file. Did I mention that she was a blonde? Also, she had all of her large black binders on top of the cabinet. After her explanation, I returned to my office to continue working.
Not more than a day later, I returned to her office to put some documents on her desk. Before I could turn to leave, the top-heavy cabinet fell forward and pinned me to the front of the desk. As if that wasn’t a bad enough situation, all of the black binders battered my head and shoulders. Being alone in the office and too stunned to shout for help, I was happy to see our mail clerk passing by the office. She sprang into action and went for assistance because she was too petite to lift the cabinet herself. The president of our company was the closest man in our offices so she ran to his door and ordered him to help. He was so stunned to be ordered by the clerk that he just sat at his desk looking at her in disbelief. When he didn’t jump up right away, she ordered him again in a slightly higher voice. Fortunately for me, he left his office and ran after the clerk. By this time our IT manager was walking into our offices and helped the president raise the cabinet off of me and back into place.
Once I was freed from my predicament, I could barely stand so I sat in the nearest chair and cried from the pain and the embarrassment. By that time the entire staff came to the office to find out what the excitement was all about. While they removed all of the files from the cabinet, I tried to compose myself. The funny thing is that my boss, a very nice man indeed, was on the telephone in the adjacent office. He told me that he heard a loud thump, but since he didn’t hear anyone scream he wasn’t concerned.
All in all, I survived this catastrophe; let’s just say that I was badly bruised over eighty-percent of my body. The only good thing that came out of this incident is that all of the cabinets in our offices were inspected for stability.
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