#violent man

One of the joys of the internet is that, if you have the time and inclination, you can understand almost anything and, in the journey you can find other cool things along the way - or *freewheel* as I like to call it.  The all time master of Freewheeling was my friend Simon - who would go so far as to hit the Random Article on wikipedia to start his journey.  Anyway.

This morning I was introduced to the term “Right Man Syndrome” - directed at me, inferring I suppose that I always want to be right and am, in fact, a man.  Given it started over this picture, perhaps it could be references to the actual people in the picture.  Left Man, Middle Man and Right Man?  If so I am definitely not Right Man... :-)

David prayed, “Deliver me, O LORD, from evil men; Preserve me from violent men” (Psalm 140:1 NKJV). Solomon gave a reason for that, “A violent man entices his neighbor, And leads him in a way that is not good” (Proverbs 16:29 NKJV). Destructive violence in a land of laws is not the way of “Justice.” “The violence of the wicked will destroy them, Because they refuse to do justice” (Proverbs 21:7…

He called the first phone number and it went to voice message. "Hello, I'm sitting out here at the fucking guard gate with these 3 very overweight, incompetent security guards and they won't fucking let me in to get my fucking papers, call me back immediately" and left his phone number. He looked at Wayne and said "why would you give me a phone number to someone who ISN'T FUCKING HERE?!" Wayne said he had no way of knowing that she was not going to be at her desk. The guy called the second phone number and she didn't answer either. He left a very similar message on her phone and hung up. He looked at Wayne, Victor and I and said "You better give me my God damn papers! I really don't want to have to this brand new hummer and ram it through your pretty little gate". Victor, who has a bit of a temper anyway, laughed at the guy. The man the turned off his car and opened the door. All of us, fearing that this may become violent, instinctively grabbed our phones and radios and backed away from him. He slowly walked around his car and opened the passenger side door. By the time the man got the the door, Victor and I had our phones out and 911 ready. He was sorting through some papers, grabbed a piece of paper and walked back around to the driver side and sat back down. He seemed calmer and cooperative. He asked Wayne if he could have permission to go inside and talk to someone. Wayne told him that the building was not open to the public and there was no way he could let him in. He started getting really angry again.

Luckily, one of the women that we gave him the phone number of pulled into the property at that moment. Victor immediately went to her and asked for help, explaining that this man was becoming very hostile and we believe he could be dangerous. She and Victor ran into the building to get any copies of the LA Times they could find, even taking them off employee desks. They came back with 10 copies and gave them to the man. He asked if he was going to be able to come back Sunday to get 20 copies of the Sunday Daily Pilot. Wayne told him that they do not actually deliver the Sunday edition to us until Monday. He said "I don't care when they deliver it, I'll be here Sunday and it better be here." Then, the man calmly and politely thanked us "for ruining his whole day" and left. Not without backing into our gate and running over 2 of our traffic/safety barrels.

After he left, we all talked about how scary this was and how we all thought he was going to pull out a gun at any second. The whole ordeal lasted 50 minutes and I'm still shaking over it. I work on Sunday and I'm terrified that he is going to show up and the papers aren't going to be here and he is going to bring a gun.