One day at lunch we got talking to the strangest things we’ve come across at work. There was a wide range of experiences. Coworkers dying at their desks, people being arrested, people getting stuck in the elevators etc. I think the most interesting was the day the FBI and ATF raided the accountant’s office where I was working.

I had quit my special events job at the mall when I got a new, crazy boss and decided mental health meant more than money to me. The accountant that did our books offered me employment doing data entry and basic office work. The idea was that I could look for another job while working and helping him out during tax season. It was a win-win for us both.

As I was sitting at my desk waiting on one of our restaurant clients to come bring their books and breakfast for us, in walk 5 men, dressed in dark suits, flashing badges. My reaction was more disappointment that my breakfast wasn’t being delivered than interest in these men. They were quite serious, explaining to me they were there to execute a search warrant and asking was my boss there. He was actually at home waiting on a repairman but we had to call him and ask him to come in.

One of our clients was a pair of brothers who owned two or three adult bookstores in the Richmond area. They were actually quite nice and with the profits, were putting a third brother through med school. Because people who work in these types of stores aren’t always the most reliable, they would have COD deliveries shipped to our office and then they would swing by and get them.

Seems that people who lived near one of the stores had called in a false tip that child pornography was in the stores, hoping to get the stores shut down. This resulted in a simultaneous raid on all the stores and our offices because we received shipments. As we waited for my boss to arrive, one of the agents showed me a list of titles they were looking for and asked if I’d ever seen them. Me, being me, started laughing. The titles were the most ridiculous things and I was frantically trying to burn them into my memory so I could share them later. My favorite was “Little Oral Annie” which I thought of as the play “Annie” made the rounds in our elementary and high school drama productions, local theater and on the big screen not that long ago.

My agent friend did not find anything funny about this whole thing and in all seriousness, given it was child porn, neither did I. But I do appreciate creatively when I see it. It was a very long morning as we had to sit there while they went through our whole office and interview my boss. And breakfast never arrived.

At lunchtime, with no end in sight, I was allowed out to pick up lunch for everyone. This, only after it was explained to the agents that “She knows nothing, really NOTHING.” It was stated like I was a complete idiot but I could have cared less, I could leave the office. This being the 80’s though, there were no cell phones etc to alert the world what was going on which was what I so wanted to do. I got back from the sandwich run but then everyone needed drinks. We had a machine in the hallway and so once again, I was sent out to get the drinks. One agent did not have enough change so I offered to kick in the five cents he was short. This was treated as if I had offered him the biggest bribe ever and flatly refused. Fine with me, no drink for you.

In the end, they found nothing. Not at our offices and not in any stores. While I don’t know if this is still true, these stores would order lots of movies, not specific titles, so some companies would throw in the illegal movies. The raids made the news that evening and the papers the next day, but with no contraband found, the whole thing quickly faded. Faded from the headlines, but not for me, who to this day, laughs about Little Oral Annie.