Why no one should work alone, Part I

Yesterday was a hectic day at the office. There are only three full time staff members and me. Making it more complicated the administrative person (who is full time) only works here half a day and works across the hall half the day, so sometimes we are stretched pretty thin.

Well, my supervisor called in sick yesterday and long story short I was in the office pretty much alone from 1:30 until 4. All was going well, I had a couple of phone calls but nothing major and then this older white guy walked in. So I got up and went into the main portion of our office to help him. He said he wanted to know about the graduate diversity program - so I handed him the list of grants we give out each year and said that most of the deadlines had passed, but he could try again next year, once he had been accepted into a MA program. Then he very unclearly asked me about the guidelines for getting these awards and I explained that they were mainly ethnic and socio-economic. At this point he asked me something which I totally didn't understand and I told him I didn't know what he was saying. So he asked me "well, does being a felon recently released from prison affect qualifying for these awards?"

WHAT?!?

That's right. A felon. And not just a felon, but one RECENTLY released. It continued to get worse when I told him that I was unsure how that affected his standing, but he could email or call the woman in charge of the program. He said that he didn't have a computer so email wouldn't be possible. I helpfully suggested he go to the library and use a computer there and he said, "but if she isn't here and i send her an email aren't I going to be sitting there for a long time waiting to hear back from her?" To which I suggested he return the next day or the day after that to check his message. "Oh, it will be saved inside the computer?"

Wow. Clearly this guy was away for quite sometime, making me increasingly less comfortable being alone with him. I know that a felony could be a lot of things, some non-violent. But a felony that keeps you in prison so long that you not only don't have email, but you don't even understand how it works??

After the email discussion he finally left, and unfortunately I have to say that this is only one of my examples of why people shouldn't be left in an office alone...