Final Chapter of the Great Panty Mystery
This is a true story. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent. And a few things were invented to add to the drama of this account.
Recap: When we last left our intrepid facility management crew, it was raining panties and cats and dogs inside the building. They covered nothing like this in Facilities Management 101.
The dickhead Panty Man was leaving women’s unmentionables twice each week in conference rooms, or elevators, or even draped over our fake trees. Daily I was getting angry, threatening calls on my red hotline phone from the big boss man upstairs. These were dark days in the world of facilities management.
Even our good news hid bad news. Firebombing elevators, conference rooms and fake trees were getting affirmation from the employees that we took disinfection seriously. But what few people knew is that we were running out of elevators, conference rooms, and fake trees. Replacing them ain’t cheap and we’d already committed the preponderance of our budget to upgrading the private Tiki bar we set up on the roof. This dire situation was not sustainable.
I stole my employees’ pay to set up a GoFundMe campaign for any information leading to the capture, conviction, and execution of Panty Man. We put a $10,000 price on his head. And we allowed open carry in the building with permission to shoot Panty Man, including a dispensation from our corporate minister.
Let’s digress from our story for a thought experiment. With no evidence, we decided Panty Man was a man. No one coined the phrase, “The Panty Woman.” Nor did anyone think the perp was nonbinary. Why was that? Think about it.
Back to the story:
The head of our security department's brother sold security systems, including nanny cams, when we constructed our building. For some reason, we installed thousands of nanny cams in our building. Like the recorded and unanswered HELP line calls, the cameras provided us with countless hours of amusement. For example, we discovered an employee who wore Corona Beer boxer shorts underwear. When we posted his picture with his pants down, showing those boxer shorts, it went viral.
Everything was going fine until a couple of troublemakers looked up at the ceilings in the bathrooms and discovered the cameras. Then someone went to the damn ACLU to force us to take them out. We argued they were there for national security. They won on some privacy BS argument, and we had to remove all the cameras. Sort of.
We did not remove some cameras, and only a small group of people knew about it. Our big boss man upstairs demanded some key cameras in the restrooms with the video feed going directly to his office. We had to comply, although we pirated some of the video signal because that’s what facilities managers do. And they forgot one lone lonely camera in one of our elevator lobbies.
One afternoon, Mary Magdalene and me were siting around drinking quality bourbon and smoking our Cuban stogies when we see Jack standing in our doorway again. He’s the guy who is never supposed to interrupt us unless WWIII breaks out.
“What the fuck is it THIS time?” I ask.
Panty Man struck again on the fake trees in the elevator lobby - the elevator lobby that has the forgotten, lonely nanny cam in it.”
Hot Damn! We went down to our security office, woke up the guards, and viewed the videotape. Sure enough, we got a video of Panty Man waiting for an elevator. Everyone got on one elevator, leaving him alone in the lobby. He pulled a pair of panties from his sport coat’s inner pocket and draped it over a fake tree. And quickly left that lobby. We got the MF!!!!
But hold your horses, Nelly! He was standing with his back to the camera, and we couldn’t see his face. But he checked every box in profile the FBI did for us. He was balding, white, looked old, and he was a he. From the back, he could be any of the 5,000 employees here. We need to ID him.
Of all the groups of employees in any large organization such as ours, who knows the most about what is going on? The secretaries and/or admin assistants. They know everyone and everything. We sought them out and provided them popcorn and drinks to come watch the video. Sure enough, an administrative assistant identified Panty Man.
Our security folks immediately went to his desk, took his badge, and perp-walked him out of our building. No more could he darken our doors. Gone forever! Yahoo!
Epilog:
He was upset about being fired. He thought he was being funny and didn’t understand why women who worked in our building could be uncomfortable finding panties around.
His desk contained an extensive collection of panties. He was working through the white cotton ones, but he had packages of more expensive lingerie.
He was married and was the organist at his church.
He was a contractor, not an employee, so he was easy to make gone. And he was made gone.
The big boss man up stairs’ admin assistant discovered him watching videos from the bathrooms. Naturally, they fired her, but uncharacteristically, they punished him when we were directed to cut his video feed from the bathrooms.
There are no musical links to this posting. However in the world of music, we should mention that Christine Havrilla is doing better and performing a lot; that Karen Jonas is working on a new ablum, and that Rick Landers continues to write and perform songs, some of which are posted on his YouTube channel. You can check all that out on their websites.
In non-music art news, Gail Fisher has a book for sale on Amazon. “Loot,” a book by an author who teaches at George Mason University, and who I had the pleasure of meeting, was named by the Washington Post as one of the top ten books of 2023.
This year’s family X-mas letter, authored by your author, will have music links so look out for them.