My boss loves cars. He has five, luxury vehicles and they are all kept in pristine condition. The problem is he’s only one man, so keeping them all going is an endless job. Honestly, it must be nice to be rich enough to own five, luxury cars, but I’ll take my little VW any day over constantly having to play ‘swap the car’. I reckon you must be a real car enthusiast to change cars two or three times a day. I don’t even change my shoes that often and it’s exhausting just to watch this little dance. But, hey! I’m a girl and a car is merely a car to me. (Sacrilege, I know!)
Of course, having a boss with so many cars, means that there are occasionally incidents involving his cars. The batteries of these cars tend to run flat, at times, and then we have to call a tow truck. There’s also the sporadic reshuffling of vehicles, so staff members can actually get in and out of the premises, and the rare bump into the carport poles. However, these are all fairly mundane, commonplace events.
Then, one ordinary day at work unexpectedly turned into an extraordinary tale.
I was leaving work at the end of the day with three of my female colleagues. We were the last to leave and had just locked the office. On our way to our cars, we happened to walk past the locked garages, when we heard a muffled bang from inside.
Naturally, we all stopped dead in our tracks and listened. A few moments later, we heard the sound again. There was definitely some sort of banging coming intermittently from behind the closed garage door.
Being female, we took a moment to discuss this perturbing noise. Had someone been locked inside? Was it a burglar? If it was a burglar, should we leave him undisturbed? What can I say? Four women standing outside a haunted garage is not a recipe for bravery.
Yet, one of my colleagues ultimately decided to be brave and open the door. She carefully unlocked the door as the rest of us stood ready to beat the unsuspecting robber with our handbags. So, you can imagine our surprise when we discovered that there wasn’t anyone banging about inside the garage. Standing before us was a car – one of my boss’s cars, which had been left running in the garage and was now occasionally backfiring.
How odd! This was quite a conundrum. What should we do? Open the car to look for the keys and potentially set off the alarm, or call the boss and tell him his car was possessed?
We decided on option one. Why disturb the boss if you don’t have to? However, upon opening the car, we discovered that there were no keys in the ignition or anywhere to be found. We did successfully manage to set off the alarm though. Great work! Okay, option two, call the boss.
This phone call was incredibly enlightening. Apparently, the boss was fully aware that his car was still on. In fact, it hadn’t wanted to switch off, so he’d simply removed the key, scolded it (I’m sure) and locked it up in the garage for the night. He reasoned that it would eventually run out of petrol and switch off and then he’d attend to it in the morning.
Well, I never! This is probably one of the most bizarre, unusual things I’ve ever witnessed. To say I was dumbfounded is an understatement – but to each his own. So, we had a little chuckle, locked the poor car up again and went home.
Next time I hear any rumblings in the garage at work, I’ll know better than to think the worst. No doubt, it will probably be just another car, which has been scolded for its bad behaviour and locked away as punishment. Now, who says you can’t show your car who is boss?
Audrey Whyte 
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