Sleeping Out

A couple of days ago I was forced to sleep at my work. The reason? The keys to lock up with had been lost. You see, there’s only two sets of keys. One is always with the owner and the other set is passed to the opener in the morning and thrown into the mailbox at night – when everybody’s out. This second set of keys was somehow split and the most important keys lost (they ended up being behind some beer kegs in the owner’s hallway).

So we tried to find the owner and, by extension, the first set of keys. It was, however, a Saturday night – her kids weren’t home and she’s smart enough not to give us her mobile number (then she’d never be left alone!) So the result was that the first set was also not to be found. There was two choices. 1. Close the door, but not lock it and hope for the best. 2. Stay till the cleaners show up.

The problem was, option one, if it would have gone wrong, would have cost the owner a fortune. Imagine the damage that a couple of drunken louts could do to a café that they found open and unwatched? Especially one stocked with a wide variety of liquor bottles and a number of beer kegs? And that’s just assuming the people that found it open were drunken Brits (mind you, I have nothing against the English, but in Amsterdam they do seem to form the vast majority of the drunken tourists).

So I ended up drinking a few at the neighbours (who stay open much later) and then passing out on the couch, till the cleaners woke me up with rather surprised looks on their faces. I assume they thought I was a drunken tourist that had wandered into the open café (We never meet the cleaners, they start after we finish and finish before we start). I mumbled some explanation to them (I doubt they got it, their Dutch wasn’t very good and my explanatory ability at 4:30 in the morning isn’t very good either), got my stuff and left.

But not before writing in till when I had been forced to stay as hours; l though that was only fair. After all, it wasn’t me who had lost the keys and yet it had been me who had suffered the consequences. A couple of extra hours of pay seemed a fair exchange for my discomfort. Besides, I can now say that I was once paid for sleeping. That is most certainly another item off my ‘Bucket List’.

So how do I feel about the experience? Ambivalent, I guess. Which means that no doubt in a few months it will be a very positive experience. It was no fun waking up in the middle of my sleep cycle to bike home (which took longer than necessary because I lost my way), but on the other hand I did meet the neighbours – who seem young but cool (but? Am I getting that old that I need to use the word but there?!) and I did get paid for sleeping.

And, most importantly, it will make a decent story. ‘You know, I once had to sleep at my work’. Okay, maybe I need to work on my opening sentence a bit, but it’s a story and, as all of you know, I do love to tell a good story!