It Wasn't Me. Craig Sawicki

It Wasn’t Me. By Craig Sawicki

Since I was very young I always had a love for practical jokes. I had two older sisters. Identical twins that were 12 years older than me. My parents had me when they were 41 years old. If you can consider surprising someone a practical joke then I’m guessing that I was a practical joke on my parents.

I would love to hide and jump out to scare my sisters. Sometimes waiting in a closet for what seemed like hours for one of them to open the door so I could make her them scream. When I was little I remember emptying one of their dresser drawers that I got into and pulled shut. I laid in that drawer for quite a while till one of them opened the drawer. As I got older my tricks would become more elaborate and included booby traps. For decades at family gatherings and holidays my sisters would tell stories on how I terrorized them when I was a kid.

In my long career the absolute best times were when I was a salesperson. There were three outside sales people in the Chicago office of W. Braun Company. Me, Larry T. and Jeff M.. We all had accounts in the Chicago area but also had regional travel territories. My travel territories included Tennessee, Missouri and parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. Larry had parts of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Jeff had Wisconsin and most of Illinois south of Chicago. On the rare occasion that we were all in Chicago the jokes and fun was endless. I had a reputation for escalating any retaliation for a practical joke, ten-fold so Jeff rarely retaliated. Larry and I both played jokes on poor Jeff. Larry did retaliate and sometimes initiated the battle so he was much more fun as an advisory. I remember coming into the office on a Monday morning to find my office filled with shredded paper some 4 feet high. I waited. Then on a particularly brutally cold day, some twenty degrees below zero, Larry had an appointment at his largest account, Helene Curtis. I waited for him to walk out to his company car to leave for his appointment and I followed him with a 5 gallon bucket of warm water.

After he closed the car door and even before he could start the engine I threw the 5 gallons of water across the windshield and driver’s side door. It froze instantly with probably a half inch thick of ice. Larry spent the next hour trying to get out of the car and chipping the ice off the windshield and car door. As it’s said, revenge is best served ice cold! Another time I stopped at a pet store on my way to the office.

I bought six small chameleons (lizards). Right before Larry was leaving for an appointment and he was out of his office, I put the live lizards in his briefcase and closed it. Although I wasn’t there to see the carnage, I was told that he was sitting in the office of his customer, opened the briefcase and the lizards came running out. He screamed jumped up send all the files and papers flying across the office. I wished I could have been there to see that!

In those days we all carried a briefcase and were expected to look sharp in suits, ties and shined shoes. Not like these days that semi-clean tennis shoes and a polo shirt qualify for the term business attire. After 3 or 4 years of being a salesman I was promoted to Sales Manager and then later VP. My former colleagues, Larry and Jeff and a number of other offices and personnel reported to me. I would frequently travel with the salespeople to their accounts for presentations and sales calls. One of Jeff’s accounts was a company named Lehn and Fink in Lincoln Illinois, some 150 miles southwest of Chicago.

The Lehn and Fink company was the original inventor and marketer of Lysol going back to the early 1900’s (maybe earlier). Although they started in NY, they eventually acquired Stirling Drug and Ogalvie Home Permanent brands and moved their headquarters to their filling plant in scenic Lincoln Illinois. I think that purchasing agents, especially those in rural areas, loved to force salesman to make appointments early on Monday mornings forcing them to leave the city at three or four in the morning! This was one of those times. Our appointment was with the Lehn and Fink purchasing manager Lowell Hamilton at 9AM on a Monday morning. I met Jeff at the office in downtown Chicago and we left together in my car at 5AM.

We arrived in Lincoln Illinois a bit early. To this day I still say “If I’m not early, I’m late”. So we stopped to get gas for the trip back before our appointment. It was a brand spanking new gas station. It looked like it had just opened. Before that I had never seen a BP gas station. While I was pumping the gas Jeff left to use the bathroom. The bathroom entrances were on the side of the building. I was done filling the tank and waited impatiently for Jeff to return. Eventually he exited the restroom and I was in disbelief of what I saw. He was walking back to the car in his best suit looking like he had just gone swimming, the whole time yelling and cussing at me. When he got close enough for me to understand his rant and while I was starring at him like a chicken looks at a card trick, I heard him yell “Real F’ing funny! What are we going to do now? Were supposed to be at Lehn and Fink in a half hour! Look at me! You owe me a new suit!”. I was still just starring at him, completely confused. To this day I’m unsure if Jeff believes that I had nothing to do with it but we went into the station to confront the cashier. He told us the restrooms were self-cleaning. Periodically the doors would lock, sprinklers opened from the ceiling spraying the entire room with a disinfecting solution that went down the floor drain and the doors would unlock when dry. It happened to occur while Jeff was in there sitting on the toilet. Obviously, a small manufacturers defect.

We called to delay our appointment and went to look for a store that was open at 9AM on a Monday morning to get Jeff a replacement wardrobe. The only option was K Mart. So we showed up a bit late with Jeff in a rather ill fitting and unprofessional garb with an almost unbelievable story to tell. Most importantly I still looked good and with a memory that still makes me laugh today.