“Old Collins won’t like that.” It was Gary, my colleague at the accounting firm of Collins Barrow, Calgary, Canada. He was staring at the 5,000 piece, all-red jigsaw puzzle spread across the coffee table in my office. “You’ll be accused of wasting precious chargeable hours.”
Mr. John Ewart Collins was the bane of the firm. He was the senior partner of a practice founded by his father. Tall and beefy, he barely spoke yet exuded a whiff of disapproval in his wake whenever he stepped out of his office to chivvy his minions.
A day later, the reckoning came in the form of a knock on my door.
“Is that yours?” Collins pointed to the puzzle.
“Yes,” I answered in a panic.
“Well, it’s a mess.”
“Sorry, sir. I’ll clear it up.” I began to box the pieces.
Collins eyed me thoroughly. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Pardon?”
“To do this properly, you must sort the pieces out into groups, not pile them into heaps. Look…”
One minute he was standing up, his six-foot-six frame blocking the glass front of my office. The next, he was on his knees marshalling the pieces into straight ends and rows of similar-shaped pieces, like a child playing with his favourite box of Lego bricks.
“We do this every Christmas at home. To do it right, you have to be organized and methodical…. like an accountant.
An hour passed. Staff walking by at their usual brisk pace stopped sharply in mid-stride and about turned. Some brought their colleagues to witness the spectacle.
At noon, John Collins asked if I cared to join him for lunch.
Passing the window overlooking railway lines obliterated with snow, the boss remarked “You came from Africa, didn’t you? Did you ever see snow like this?”
“Yes sir… in the movies,” I replied impishly.
