Burglary at New Office!

The Internet was up and running, everything looked up, and we had reached office at 8:30 on Tuesday morning, looking forward to an energetic D-COM discussion, which was not to be.

A young man who works in another office in the same building was standing at the gate. Mercury looked at him and thought that he looked especially cheery that morning, and she was about to give him a sweet smile, when his countenance suddenly transformed into grim and serious, and he announced that there had been a theft in the building.

So I stayed in the car, while these two rushed into the building. They stopped short when they saw a white-board and a grass-board standing against the wall – they were theirs! This meant that their office too was burgled. They ran up the stairs – their locks were broken, and they had lost their computers, printers, scanner, and everything else that was either important or expensive – thankfully, the file-folder cabinet wasn’t touched, but even the unused stationery was stolen! The thieves even took the sofa cushions, the bone-china used for conferences, and the beautiful pharmacist’s lamp that Mercury had found after a lot of leg-work. Gone were the artistic pen-stands, the three little ceramic pups, and the glass-jar full of candies (along with the candies!)

Even Mercury’s formal shoes (that she used to keep in her office for emergency formal meetings) were flicked! The thieves also took a pen and ink drawing done by Mercury, and of course, when they used the chairs for removing the pictures and the wall-clocks they left their foot-prints on the chairs!

So Mercury and Cameo did a quick assessment and then decided to take me home before they proceeded with other things such a police report. The office assistant kept watch, while we drove back! En route, they told me the entire story. Naturally, my first response was of anger. My canine senses could’ve helped them find the culprits – but then they probably thought that the police was a better bet! I did tell them that those foot prints were mighty important and they could clue us in about who did it.

After dropping me home, they went back and met the other affected party – they too had lost their computers and other gadgets. Together they called up the police. After a while a single police officer sauntered in, looked around, and declared that we should go to the police station and lodge a complaint. When asked whether we should let everything remain untouched so that the police could pick clues, he said that it didn’t matter and that no other person would be visiting! And…believe it or not…when he was shown the footprints on the seat of the chair (that was placed right under the where the clock was,) he said, “Oh, they could belong to anyone – they could be yours too!” He was in the office for a sum total of 2 minutes, he didn’t even check all the rooms, and walked out!

Though I found this behavior of the police rather callous, Mercury and Cameo were expecting this to happen. In our country, police acts on the basis of connections or the power of moolah! (So two days have passed since the formal complaint was lodged, but we’ve not had any one else from the police visit the office building, nor have we heard of any investigation being carried out.)

We are trying to rebuild what we’ve lost – so far we’ve regained only our motivation. The office looks strangely nude. Whenever Mercury tries to focus on her work, she remembers how nice and cozy it used to be! Then she isn’t able to visualize anything else but those sick jokers plundering the office. Cameo keeps telling her that wewould be getting it back into shape again. After all, work has to be done. Right now, we are once again getting up early to complete most of our communication related work before we leave for office!

That’s all. The big lamp that you see near me in the photos, is now gone, and we don’t hope to replace it. Rest of things would probably be bought and replaced in due course of time.

More on this and other things…later!

PS: The “cheeriness” of the cheery young man from the other office that was burgled could probably be explained by the excitement generation potential of the burglary in his otherwise dull life – naturally, the absence of computers resulted in a work-less day for him. Obviously, the owner of the office wasn’t as cheery about the incident.