Lunch with a view

I work at a global company with a small office here in San Fancisco.  Not the prettiest block, but it’s a good place to work once inside the office.  That is, until you look out the window…

I was eating in the kitchen Thursday, enjoying my tofu and green bean stir fry, when I glanced out the window and saw a man sun bathing on the roof next door – with his pants down to his knees.  Hmm, I stared while I ate, working out this scene in my head.  Pants down, kind of awkward position, maybe he passed out drunk, all while eating.  By the time I waved to a co-worker to come and check this out, I suspected something was not right.  He came in and remarked in less than half the time it took me to process the scene, “yeah, this isn’t good.”  Police were called in and we pointed out the scene so they could find the building.  By the time they left, a crowd of colleagues had gathered and were cracking jokes, taking pictures with cell phones.  Then the police made it to the rooftop, turned to the crowd in the window and waved, took a pulse, then found a blanket to throw over this guy.  That’s right, I was eating lunch while watching a dead body.  But surprisingly, this isn’t the part that bothers me.

I work at a global company that just turned 200 yrs old.  And for most of the people who have been working in the office a while, this isn’t the first dead body they’ve come across in the neighborhood.  This is not a third world country, this is San Francisco, a beautiful city.  Yeah, there’s a homeless problem, but there’s not a dead body problem, except for on this block apparently.  And the company won’t break the lease.  (did I mention someone was shot in the head at the donut shop a lot of people go to just downstairs from our office last weekend?)

For those curious, the cause of death is assumed to be a drunk guy who attempted to pee off of the side of an adjacent roof and fell to his death with his pants down.  And the people who could stand it watched from the kitchen as his body was taken away, obviously fractured from what I heard with a little blood left behind.  I mean c’mon, we’ve seen worse walking down the street – bodily fluids (bodily solids as well), crack pipes, needles.  So you can hardly hold the joke cracking about this guy’s scenario against my colleagues.  We all have to get through the day somehow.