Coffee spill.

A customer spilled her 16-ounce coffee on the concierge desk. She was stopping to grab something from the desk, and when she reached for it, she knocked her coffee over. It spilled over the left side of the desk, pooling behind the computer monitor and splashing over the telephone. Luckily, the coffee missed the wiring and the switchboard by inches.

I was in the middle of helping a customer on the switchboard, and in the shock of the situation, I hadn't heard what the woman on the other line had said. When I asked her to repeat it, I could tell she was pissed.

The coffee-spiller apologized over and over again, and rushed to the cafe to grab a stack of napkins. She helped mop up the mess for a few minutes, but when I told her it was OK, that these things happen, and not to worry about it, she took is as permission to leave.

Still with a lake of coffee to take care of, I called the MOD. Stupidly, I called using the coffee-covered telephone: coffee dripped down my sleeve and into my hair. oops. Someone from Supplies offered to help me clean. Everything was wiped down with orange-scented cleaner. Brochures and other handouts that were soaked with coffee were replaced. Some of our cheat sheets taped to the side of the counter were stained, but not too badly. What an ordeal!

The desk still smells like coffee.

-Lima Bean