Just another day at the office...

[sparkindarkness]

Sitting there merrily sticking pins in the little dollies of some of my more special clients (mental note: must stop this before Mad Secretary starts trying to steal their hair) when in walks a new client - Ms G.

Ms G has a problem. She needs to get rid of something very important. Curious I ask what.

"Why, this." She replies and reaches into her handbag and puts a handgun on my desk.

A gun. On my desk.

At this point I can be found clinging to the light fixtures. I don't do guns. I am blissfully happy that Britain's gun laws mean that even though I am a defence lawyer in one of Britain's most crime plagues cities I So very very rarely come into contact with firearms.

And now there's a GUN ON MY DESK!!!

"I don't think it's loaded, but I'm not sure.." she said and STARTS FIDDLING WITH IT!

There's a possibly loaded gun on my desk!

AND a clueless moron is POKING this POSSIBLY LOADED GUN! Which is ON MY DESK!



Suddenly all my crazy clients look so much better. At least this don't drop freaking FIREARMS on my desk!





And to add: HEY, senior partners? Do we have NO security here at all?! (Well no, we don't. I suppose people don't regularly bring FIREARMS TO MY OFFICE!!!! but still, maybe we could get some...)

Comments

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Royal Mail would have been THRILLED.

Especially since it may have been loaded and we didn't know whether the safety was on or not :)

Re: the question i have is

[makarov.livejournal.com]

cylinder

Re: the question i have is

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

circle thingy

[dontkickmycane.livejournal.com]

And under the desk lacks dignity

As any self-respecting cat will tell you...

[seryan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's just...and she seems so nonchalant about it, too. Are you sure she didn't do this just to screw with you?

[seryan.livejournal.com]

I'd wondered about that, but couldn't think of a way to ask without making it sound like your client was a member of the Mafia.

Re: the question i have is

[makarov.livejournal.com]

round thing where ya put the bullets

*offers you a glass of Tennessee holy water to calm your nerves*

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

see, this is why you became a lawyer. For the LOlZ :)

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

Wow! I live in gun central and that's never happened to me! (Surprisingly.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Okay, dude? You've just surpassed "fear over guns" firmly into "fear of guns", and that's a bad thing.

In the future: Take the fucking thing AWAY from the client, and either discard the cylinder (revolver) or pull the clip and work the action (non-revolver), or neither if you can't figure out what's going on with the thing[1], before depositing it firmly in a LOCKED DRAWER until the LOVELY FRIENDLY POLICE OFFICERS arrive, who you called because a client dropped a fucking gun on your fucking desk.

[1]: And, if so, LEARN. Fucking handguns are fucking simple. Taking the bullets out, to the point where you're confident that it can't fire, should be simple, especially given that your next reaction is always going to be to lock the thing in a box until the cops come to collect it.

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

And then she decided to fiddle with it ON YOUR DESK while mentioning that IT MIGHT BE LOADED.

Gah.

[cazmanian-minx.livejournal.com]

And, if so, LEARN. Fucking handguns are fucking simple.

Learn where? Handguns are almost completely illegal in the UK, so much so that our Olympic pistol shooting team has to train outside the country! They're having to put a special dispensation through Parliament to hold the event in 2012.

[cazmanian-minx.livejournal.com]

Good grief. My mother did something similar actually (though not in a crazy lady kind of way, obviously...) - after Dad died she found a couple of guns at the bottom of his tennis sweater drawer that she knew definitely weren't his shotguns (which were licensed and locked up correctly). So her brother asked a retired policeman friend of his to go round and take a look and this guy turned up, obviously having been told something along the lines of 'It sounds like she's found an air rifle and freaked out, could you go round and reassure her?'

Mum opened up the drawer and the ex-policeman went white to the roots of his hair - semi-automatic machine guns, probably brought back from his national service stint, fighting in the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya! They got hastily donated to the Royal Gloucesters Museum!

Re: the question i have is

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

American whiskey? Ewwww *is calmed by sheer shock at the idea*

I live in the British Isles. If I drink this stuff I get attacked by a mob of angry Scots. It is known.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

A cat is always dignified. It is known :)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I think the mafia is more professional with the disposal of firearms. They don't use MY DESK!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

She seemed completely unaware of how dangerous it was - I mean, sure, she knew someone could shoot you with it but the idea it may go off without someone pointing it? Was alien to her

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a reason!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Yet. The word here is YET

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Hell no, fear of guns is a very reasonable response. We have an object created for the express purpose of killing people efficiently. It's an object that can cause death or serious injury incredibly easily.

The client put it down. It was simple from that point not to tuuch it or even stand near it and wait until an expert came to pick it up. I have no need to learn how to use a gun than I need to learn how to safely handle a bomb. Thankfully in Britain I am about equally as likely to come into a contact with a bomb as I am a gun.

I'll keep my fear of guns and it's not really something I'm going to spend time learning about - because the time wouldn't be well spent - even if I could find a place that would and could legally teach me the ins and outs of a handgun. I'll just give thanks that I live somewhere where needing to know how to dispose of firearms safely is as widely useful as needing to know how to dispose of a bomb

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye, handgun skills are about as useful to me as learning how to speak Albanian - less so.

And thank gods for that. I'm glad that we live somewhere where guns are the freaky exception not the norm

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I'd have hit the roof! You'd have found me running through the streets having the screaming meemies "machines guns in my house! MACHINES GUNS!!"

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

That's what caught me off guard. She was just happy and normal and Oh, look, a GUN on the desk!

She was just... uterrly blase as to how dangerous it was. like if someone wasn't pointing it it couldn't possibly be dangerous

[seryan.livejournal.com]

That's what they want you to think.

[seryan.livejournal.com]

People can be very blasé about weapons, and I find it so odd. It's a weapon, you know it's a weapon, something specifically designed to harm, why aren't you treating it with more respect?

Of course, my father collected swords and took us to practice archery, so my perspective might be different.