Local business man

2009 March 23

The city where I work at has a handful of homeless people that hang around a particular area.
That area is very close to the building where I work in. They are harmless and mostly everyone knows them at least by sight.
There are two in particular that are not shy as the others and hang around the area at all times. There is for example “Laundroman” who hangs around a strip mall where there is a guess what? a laundromat. For obvious reasons he is always wearing clean clothes… figure that, and is always shaved and clean. Then there is “Mr. Shoes” who is very dirty wears dickies and underneath them you can see his pajama pants which are longer but for some reason he is always wearing different pairs of shoes, not clean, just different. Like I wrote before they are harmless, they are just without a home. Mr. Shoes, though I think has a drinking problem because sometimes well you can tell when you see him walking in the street. Unlike Laundroman, who is not very talkative, Mr. Shoes will talk to you. For example, the other day my hubby and I went to one of those machines to rent a movie for a dollar a night. Right next to the machine was Mr. Shoes and he started talking to my hubby and told him he had seen all the old movies but not the new ones. My hubby told him that there weren’t many new movies coming out and Mr. Shoes agreed, wished us a good day and turned around.

Back to the story… I am working on a project emailing a bunch of people and having a bunch of directors having lunch in the lobby when all of the sudden someone asks me:

Hello there. I am a local business man and would like to speak to the manager about some ideas I have after observing your local landscaping and business traffic.

So I raise my head and there he is Mr. Shoes offering some ideas. That day my supervisor was in the office and I told Mr. Shoes I would get the right person to talk to and went to get him. Mr. Shoes said he would sign-in meanwhile because he likes to follow the rules 8O My supervisor came out and Mr. Shoes offered his hand to shake. They walked out and I did not know more of what happened.

I am sorry Mr. Shoes but immediately after you left I had to clean my whole sign-in area. I feel bad but I don’t know when was the last time you washed your hands and judging from the look of them I think it was a very long time ago. I am sure my supervisor was super nice to you because that is the way he is but I really hope he washed his hands.

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