14942 INSPECTED BY HL KELLER
Friday, February 5, 2010
Lo and behold
14942 INSPECTED BY HL KELLER
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14942 INSPECTED BY HL KELLER
14942 INSPECTED BY HL KELLER
1 comment:
This reminds me of the time that I successfully broke into the Lanyon Phillips' safe.
Lanyon Phillips was a small, Vancouver ad agency. I met Rowan there when we both worked in the design studio.
Later I became the Director of Operations. It was a controversial posting as I was quite young and there were 90 people to oversee. One of the people I was to work with was an elderly woman in charge of finance who I can best describe as crabby. But very successful in her position as office sabateur.
The office had a safe, and no one had the combination. Except for the sabateur, but she had lost it. Overcoming the obstacle of the locked safe was likely a good metaphor for what I was going through in the job, but I didn't realize it at the time.
Like Rowan, I found the make of the safe and the serial number, and from there, the address of the safe maker. I contacted them, and they advised if I would send a notarized letter on company stationery, I could have the combination. It seemed ridiculously simple but there you are. I wrote the letter, swore it was true, and sent it off in the mail.
In the meantime, I annouced to staff that I intended to open the safe. I gave them this idea that I was reading up on it, and every day, I would go and play with the dials, and they would shake their heads and so on.
The day arrived that I received the combination to the safe. I memorized it, and then tucked away the letter. I waited for the perfect opportunity and in the meantime continued to spin the dial every so often.
On my birthday, they had a cake, and people gathered around. This seemed like the time. I said that as I was now a year older, I could probably crack the safe. I turned the dials and hoped it would work. I felt the click and looked up. I will never forget those looks of amazement when I opened the safe door.
I guess this was probably my best prank ever.
Later the same day, the sabateur came over and told me that she had found the combination. I said that was great, because I really wasn't sure what numbers I'd put in, it was more of a feel that I'd developed through dedicated work. So it would probably be best if she hung on to it, we might need it in the future.
What was in the safe? Nothing really that important, just a few old papers from the 1980s and a nice big stack of self esteem.
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