This is the scene that greeted me Friday morning when I arrived at work.
At first I glanced in through the wrecked door and saw Daniel’s monitor on his desk, so I thought the door broke on its own some how, but upon closer inspection I realized my monitor (which is newer and frankly a lot fancier) was in deed missing.
The funny thing is that on the way to work that morning I was actually thinking to myself – why do I lug my laptop home with me every night? Sometimes I do it so I can write in the morning, but I knew I wasn’t going to be writing on Friday morning, so I felt kind of lame for bringing it home, until I saw this.
After calling 911 and being transferred to dispatch to call for the cops to come, I peered in again and saw that Daniel’s laptop was also missing. Then my hands started to shake a bit. He has been working SO hard on this screenplay, and he is notoriously bad about backing up. I called home and broke the news and was very happy when he asked if his backup drive was still there. I looked closely and reported it was and he exhaled. Turns out that last time his computer crashed and took all his files he started backing up daily.
So that’s the silver lining. My back up drive was also untouched (though it sits on my desk right next to the monitor and could easily fit into a pocket), so all our files are safe.
It took three hours, but the cops finally did show up and take a report. (Fun side note – they had no record of my 911 call at 7am – I had to call three times. Government shutdown in action or just the LAPD at work?) Their finger print guy will be in some time today to see if he can get anything and we are thinking pretty hard about what new security measures we’re going to take. I’m pushing for metal doors, but seeing as we don’t have any windows, that would make the space kind of cave-like. Bars are icky. Maybe one of those metal grate things you pull down over the glass at the end of the night. The landlord seems unconcerned, but I’m thinking, now that the thief knows it’s that easy to break the door and take our shit, why wouldn’t they come back? I worked at a restaurant once that was robbed two nights in a row by the same guys. It happens.
These things happen.
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