Today Has Sucked

You know how you can tell when you're having a bad day?

You wake up at six in the morning to find out that your power has been off for 2 hours - and will still be off for two more (Thanks Progress Energy! You guys couldn't maintain a battery operated flashlight properly - even if it had fresh batteries.)

I get to work and decide that today is the day that I'm going to deal with the Case of the Missing Employee. He left early on Saturday and we haven't seen him, heard from him, or anything else since. I go over to his house, and as I'm knocking on his door, I notice that someone either keyed or nailed a swastika onto his door.

Now this guy has some issues that the neo-Nazi's would just love to pick on. He also has some medical issues that could have possibly been dangerous. So I decided to report him as a missing person. All I really wanted was for someone to find a way to check to see if he was in the house (I tried talking to his landlord, but the guy wouldn't answer his door.)

I've figured out why 9/11 happened and why all the kids on the milk cartons would now be about 30 years old. No cop wants to take a report.

I figured that since our store in the city of Orlando and the guy lives in the city of Winter Park, that the best place to call would be the Orange County Sheriff's Department, as they should have jurisdiction in both cities. The SO wanted nothing to do with it, and advised me to call the Winter Park PD, since that is where he lived.

So I called the WPPD and they sounded very receptive to taking the report, asking many questions and so on. They then told me that they could not send an officer out of his jurisdiction to take the report, so I had to go to Winter Park and then call back. So I drive over to the guy's house and call again. The WPPD then decides that since he was last seen at work, he disappeared in Orlando and therefore I need to drive back to Orlando and report it to the Orlando Police Department.

By now, I'm getting really, really ticked, but back to work I go and I call OPD. They send their officer over and the first question he asks is, "Where does he live?" I say Winter Park and he starts down the "Call the WPPD instead" route when I stopped him and explained the runaround I had already been through. So he called the WPPD and asked them to send someone around to do a "well-being" check.

In the end, it took me well over 3 hours of phone calls and driving around town to get this guy reported as missing - and even now he hasn't officially been reported, pending the outcome of the well-being check.

I now understand why some people don't get found for weeks or months after their death. The process of reporting them as missing is a royal pain in the butt.

I just worry about how I'm going to react if I find out that he dehydrated or bled to death on say Tuesday or Wednesday - and I didn't call until today. The people I work with keep telling me I should feel good about having done something, but is something done too late good?

Too much deep stuff to consider on a day like today.