The Bike Incident

This story has been ongoing for a while. Every time I tell it the story is funny. As the story draws out, it almost becomes unbelievable. Well, the ending to the story happened yesterday and now I'm going to share it with you (as well as myself when I go back and read this entry... "Hello Future-Self!").

Since I started here at Genscape, way back in October 2009, there has been a bike sitting up here on the third floor. No one really noticed it at first because we have several guys who bike into work. So it kind of blended in.

Well, we happened to realize that the bike didn't belong to anyone up here on the third floor. We asked around a bit and decided it must have been left by the former tenants (kind of unlikely now that I look back on it). We saw that it was from Scheller's so I did the right thing and called to tell them about it.

They were very nice and appreciated my effort to find the owner but said that their computer system couldn't look up an owner by the serial number. They could look up a customer and see what bikes, by serial number, he or she owned but not the other way around. When asked what I should do next their response was, "Brother, it sounds like you have a free bike."

So, as I have mentioned on several occasions, I am a coordinator for our charity here at work. We are raising $60K to build a water purification system for the small village of Asiento Viejo, Nicaragua. As a coordinator I am charged with coming up with ways to raise money for the project. An idea I have babysat is an auction site where people donate items and we auction them with all proceeds going to our charity.

I put the bike up for auction and it didn't sell. It didn't even receive a bid. WTF?! I put it back up. Afterwards I noticed that there was something terribly wrong with the auction site. I fixed the problem (after Steve Akers bought the bike for $25 [and graciously returned it]) and happily watched the price skyrocket from $25 to an ending price of $250.

The winning bidder was Azim from the Boston office. Hooray! Everybody wins!

Yeah right. What kind of story would that be? BORING!

I was warned that Azim was a dick. And that any transaction with him should be handled quickly if I had any say in the matter. I fired off an email and Azim paid that day. Things were going so smoothly.

A few of us discussed shipping options (should have thought about that before I put up the auction). It was decided that we were going to break down the bike and ship it in a bike box. The bike box guys were called and the box was on its way. A Genscape employee named Mike just happened to walk by right about that moment.

"That's my bike."

I wasn't there for the conversation that happened after he uttered this. But I can imagine how it went and am pretty sure that is how it started. It turns out that Mike had purchased the bike many months ago, ridden it a few times, and "stored" it up on the third floor.

Are.

You.

Serious?

Okay, okay. So it's Mike's bike. Shiiiiiit. I called Azim but he did not answer. I emailed him with a vague message about a "development" about the bike. Well, he called back yesterday. And to say we had a nice little chat would be about the opposite of what happened.

He chewed me a new one. But I knew it was coming and I can't really blame him. I would have been a little upset myself. I just kept my cool and repeated the facts. He eventually calmed down and I promised to send him a check.

So that's the Bike Incident story. Sometimes I just can't make this stuff up :)