(no subject)
We’ve had some truly awful receptionist / security guards in our building. We went through a long stream of temps and newbies. Each one was truly appalling - it didn’t matter how carefully you wrote things down for them, they’d completely ignore our procedures. Honestly, how simple was it to remember that parcels needed to be signed for by Facilities, rather than by the person they were addressed to? Or that visitors to the building needed to sign in? We had to make some pointed comments to the site security supervisor, and on one occasion we had to ask for a security guard to be removed from the building because he was just not any good - I later heard he’d been fired. We were starting to despair we’d ever find anyone actually competent.
Then along came Richard Hughes. Richard was cheerful, polite, jovial and efficient. He remembered people’s names - I think it was the second day he’d been at work when he started calling me Matt, and it didn’t take him long at all to recognise everybody by face, if not by name. If he didn’t know someone’s name, he’d refer to them as Sir or Madam. He was efficient, and never needed to be told procedures twice. He used his head and actively tried to make things easier for everyone he encountered. He loved to chat, and if you weren’t careful he could pin you down and talk your ear off about his insurance, or what he’d read in the newspaper that morning - pretty much anything that was on his mind. Every morning he wished me a good day, and last night when I left the office to meet James and go into London, he wished me a safe journey home, just like he did every evening - and I never once got even the slightest hint that he didn’t mean it. I thanked him, and said I’d see him tomorrow.
I didn’t get to see him today; he died of a heart attack on his way into work. He was in his mid-forties.
I won’t insult him by calling us friends, because we just weren’t that close, but my world is a much less brighter place without him in it. My mind is boggling at the notion that I saw him just last night, and what seemed like a totally normal routine was actually the last time I’d see him alive. I’m wishing now that I hadn’t been in such a hurry to go, that I’d at the very least made proper eye contact and wished him a good evening.
There are so many people in my life that I just kind of take for granted. I need to remind myself that each and every one of those people is a piece of my world, that they make a small but significant contribution to the tapestry of my life, just as I make a small contribution to theirs. The people around me, those I interact with on a daily basis - they can just be taken away in an instant, without rhyme or reason or even enough warning to say thank you to them for what they do.