Reading the frequent posts about people wanting to borrow a knife and then criticizing the person who actually has one reminds me of a similar incident that occured at work about five years ago, before I retired.
I was known to be a gun collector/gun nut. I was in an employee meeting where our manager of corporate security was asked about employees carrying firearms. He replied that if someone chose to carry a handgun, the Company expected them to be legal, to have the proper CCW, and to keep the gun concealed so as not to alarm customers. (Gotta love the guy!) After that, I routinely took a S&W Model 442 to work, although I never revealed this to anyone.
Then the security manager retired and the company changed positions to a prohibition against firearms on the premises. I complied.
One Friday afternoon, a beautiful spring day, many people had bailed out early, leaving a skeleton staff. About three pm, another manager poped into my office asking, "do you have a gun?" This was followed by several other panicky looking managers showing up and asking the same thing. "Of course not", I said. "It's prohibited." Turns out that an employee had reported seeing a man with a shotgun coming into the building from the parking deck.
(Later it was determined that one guy was at his car showing a shotgun for sale to another guy, and the report got greatly embellished.)
The interesting point of this story was that several managers, most of whom would have turned me in if they had earlier found me to be carrying, suddenly and desperately wanted to be my friend because they hoped I was armed.
I was known to be a gun collector/gun nut. I was in an employee meeting where our manager of corporate security was asked about employees carrying firearms. He replied that if someone chose to carry a handgun, the Company expected them to be legal, to have the proper CCW, and to keep the gun concealed so as not to alarm customers. (Gotta love the guy!) After that, I routinely took a S&W Model 442 to work, although I never revealed this to anyone.
Then the security manager retired and the company changed positions to a prohibition against firearms on the premises. I complied.
One Friday afternoon, a beautiful spring day, many people had bailed out early, leaving a skeleton staff. About three pm, another manager poped into my office asking, "do you have a gun?" This was followed by several other panicky looking managers showing up and asking the same thing. "Of course not", I said. "It's prohibited." Turns out that an employee had reported seeing a man with a shotgun coming into the building from the parking deck.
(Later it was determined that one guy was at his car showing a shotgun for sale to another guy, and the report got greatly embellished.)
The interesting point of this story was that several managers, most of whom would have turned me in if they had earlier found me to be carrying, suddenly and desperately wanted to be my friend because they hoped I was armed.
