I used to run my own cleaning business, and my policy was that I’d give anyone a chance at honest employment. This included felons, and for a while, it specifically included an ex-cat burglar.
He was damned handy to have around, too. As the name of his old profession implies, he was agile, and easily on par with 11-year-old Chinese gymnasts.
One of the office buildings on our cleaning schedule had left some pretty strict instructions—we had to clean office 311D no matter what; empty and burn the trash. This was in direct contradiction to the standing instructions; “never ever clean 311D, ever, period.” I called to verify that they wanted us to clean it, and the man who hired me very curtly told me that if he said it, he wanted it done.
But they’d locked the office from the inside, and I didn’t have a copy of that particular key. We had the rest of the building clean, and if the ex-cat burglar hadn’t been there, we’d have just left and I would have dealt with the aftermath of the conflicting instructions later. But the ex-cat burglar was there, and he assured us that we didn’t need a key.
He went up into the ceiling panels like a wisp of devil-smoke, over the door, and let us in. We cleaned, and as requested, disposed of the trash in a very permanent way. Actually, the ex-cat burglar did this.
The police collected me the next day; I had been accused of breaking and entering. They didn’t keep me very long; cops are fairly understanding when they know you’re working for a deranged idiot. I didn’t tell them about the cat burglar on my staff, though. I just said the door hadn’t been locked.
The company hired a different cleaning service, thank effing God. And about a month later, the guy who’d hired me went to prison for embezzling.
The ex-cat burglar quit soon after this; he’d gotten a big pile of reward money for whistle-blowing. Apparently, he hadn’t actually burned that trash. Bastard didn’t even share.
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