My Real Life Dwight

Well, Funderson, since you asked, I suppose enough years have passed since this incident occurred that I can safely tell you as well as all my other faithful readers about my worst Dwight episode at work without fear of a lawsuit or repurcussions from former co-workers...

My Dwight looked nothing like the TV Dwight but mine was just as weird as the TV version. He was a car salesman and not a very good one; I think his customers were creeped out by his demeanor as much as his co-workers were. He called himself a survivalist and apparently in his mind this meant that he would survive the end of civilization while presumably the rest of us poor schmucks would die lingering, horrible deaths due to starvation, radiation poisoning, or zombie attacks.

Dwight had a girlfriend and his girlfried had a young son; most mornings the girlfriend would drop Dwight off at work and then take the little boy to school. On the morning of the "Dwight incident", Dwight got out of the car and was talking to his lady friend before she left the dealership. The woman didn't realize that her son had decided to get out of the car (I'm thinking he probably wanted to switch to the front seat). The kid was halfway out of the car when Mom started to back out of the parking spot. Somehow the boy got caught by the back door swinging shut and it slammed pretty hard on his arm.

So now, the unfortunate child is screaming in pain, Mom is in a panic, and several dealership employees are trying to figure out what happened and what they should do. This is where Dwight steps in. He yelled at the little boy to stop crying, grabbed his injured arm and started to examine it, manipulating it back and forth and asking the boy "does it hurt more now, or when I do this?". Mom is watching, kind of confused, and Dwight turns to her and says "I don't think we need to take him to the hospital. I think It's broken, but I can set a broken bone. He'll be fine". Several employees heard what he said and realized what Dwight intended to do. The service manager told the mother that she needed to take the boy to the emergency department and have a doctor check the boy; I think the mother realized that yes, of course that was what she should do. An employee drove her to the hospital and the day returned to sort of normal. Dwight later told us that setting broken bones was one of the skills he needed to be a good survivalist. I asked him if he had ever set a broken bone before, and he said that while he had never actually done it, he had read lots of books about how it was done and he would have done exactly what a doctor would have done for a lot less money.

So there you have it-my real life Dwight was willing to set a child's broken arm. Dwight was fired shortly after this incident; luckily for the dealership we had a little rule that if you were a car salesman and you didn't sell any cars you couldn't keep you job. I never saw him again and I'm glad for that. And the little boy's arm was not broken as Dwight thought, but it was very badly sprained and bruised. I guess Dwight needed to work on his diagnostic skills.