Sometimes, it’s the Principal of the Matter

I don’t always have to be right. However, if I am personally wronged, I will get to the bottom of it in a manner that allows me to move forward.

Over the summer, I updated a few appliances in my kitchen. The appliances that I replaced were old but worked fine. I made arrangements with a couple of the offices I work with to see if they wanted any additional kitchen appliances. Typically, the medical office kitchen will be supplied with others’ leftovers. I found homes for all three appliances.

I work with many lovely people. The one I am referring to is a hypocrite. God love her, but I finally had to put an end to the madness. She professes to be a very ecumenical person. Good for her. I am religious too; I just don’t advertise every divine act of kindness.

This incident involves a microwave that was to be transported to one of our satellite offices. The receiving office had a microwave that was so old, I am pretty sure it was leaking radiation with each use. Ms. Ecumenical volunteered to transport the microwave to the other office. Great! My act of kindness is complete or so I thought.

The following week, Ms. Ecumenical announced that she decided that my microwave would be better served at her little church rather than the medical office. It was not a big deal, I wanted someone who needed it to have it and then I’d take the write off for tax purposes. I told Ms. Ecumenical that was fine and to please bring me a receipt for the microwave.

Fast forward to today. For the past 6 months, once a month, I have been reminding Ms. Ecumenical to bring me a receipt for the donation of the microwave. Each time she comes up with some story about how her church is small and they don’t have official receipts, blah, blah, blah. I asked her to scribble it on their letter head and that would suffice. She said that would be a good idea and still no receipt.

Yesterday after hearing about the lovely time she spent at her church and all the activities surrounding Christmas, I asked her again for the receipt or I asked her to bring the microwave back so I could donate it to someone who would furnish me with a receipt. She told me she had the receipt and that she would bring it the next day. I reminded her to make sure the receipt had the Church’s name and address on it.

Today, I received the microwave back.

I knew all along that the microwave never made it to her church and that she was using it herself. Now the fact that she wanted the microwave for her own purposes was not an issue to me. It was the smoke and mirrors and the lying of where the microwave ended up.

Ms. Ecumenical will now be referred to as Pinocchio. Also, anyone need a microwave?