The Light Bulb Man

Mary from the 26th floor called me early this morning asking if I had seen Eduardo. "Eduardo who?" I asked. "You know, Eduardo the light bulb man." Riiight. There's this little Mexican guy named Eduardo whose sole responsibility is to replace light bulbs. When an attorney notices an outage in one of his reading lamps or overhead lights he tells his secretary, his secretary tells me, I call Eduardo's supervisor, and a few minutes later up pops the light bulb man, wheeling his stepladder and case of assorted bulbs behind him. No, I hadn't seen Eduardo yet today.

Fifteen minutes later Mary called again asking for the light bulb man. Apparently someone kept calling her saying he had an urgent message for Eduardo about a closing and she couldn't get a hold of his supervisor, so she just kept calling all the receptionists to check if they'd seen him. Still no sign of Eduardo.

An hour later, Mary phoned a third time to call off the search party -- everything had worked out, she said. I found out later from Yvonne on 24 that the urgent caller was not looking for Eduardo the light bulb man at all. He was looking for Eduardo the visiting attorney from Washington. That does make more sense, in retrospect.