The Odd Characters in our Lives

People Are Strange (Even When You Aren't a Stranger)

I just read @nonameslefttouse's post about brown nosers, which made me laugh as well as reminisce about some of the bizarre characters that I've met over the years.

In every job that I've ever had, there always seems to be a wide variety of people with such wildly different points of views that it seems odd that they can all even agree on what a chair is. When you think about it, our entire lives and world views are built upon our experiences and the stories that we both live through and continuously repeat in our heads.

I'm sure that there are people out there somewhere who from time to time bring up what a weirdo Rick Nuthman is. And that's ok, because it's true! We're all living in this shared hallucination that we call consensus reality. We are each our own best asset, and our worst enemy.

How do some people even function?

And this begs the question. How do some folks even survive with their extremely twisted logic and completely disorganized thinking? Not only that, but some of these nutty outliers even thrive!

I want to talk about one particular weirdo that I used to know. His name is Mike. I used to work with him in an IT department back in the early 2000s. Mike was a very different kind of person. In fact, I find it difficult to even begin describing him.

He came to work well dressed, but somehow simultaneously looking like a 12 year old and a 60 year old man. He was part of the helpdesk team and was responsible for taking calls, creating work orders and resolving general computer issues.

When Mike spoke, you would swear he was a Star Trek alien. He never used contractions, and his hair grew into a natural Vulcan cut. He also carried massive binders around in which he had meticulously documented very simple processes. For example, there was a 2 page entry on how to restart a computer when it blue screened. All this done on company time, mind you.

There were 4 of us in the department and we were constantly complaining about how we had to pick up the slack because Mike would take 3 hours to write a basic work order that would normally occupy 3 lines of text - but in Mike's case would be a 1000 word essay.

Are You Kidding Me?

Finally, the boss got pissed off and had a private meeting with Mike. It was decided that rather than disciplining him, Mike would be given a task. He would write a several page document hashing out the process of imaging a new computer, and adding it to the network.

Easy, right? Basically, Mike hid away in his office for 3 months without the boss noticing he was gone. Of course, the rest of us techs had no idea what he was up to. We thought he had some huge project to complete. Meanwhile we were struggling to keep up with work orders.

Finally he emerged from his office with a stack of papers as high as the Eiffel Tower. How the hell did he write all that text about such a simple process? When the boss caught wind, he was furious. So he did the only obvious thing.

He gave Mike a promotion.

I kid you not. Mike got a promotion and a raise. Not only that, they created a department of one person just for him. Basically, they didn't want to fire him, but they needed to hire another helpdesk guy who was actually useful. So they had to create a new department because we didn't have any more funding. Because Mike is the only guy in his department, he is the head of it. Department heads were required to have a minimum salary, hence the raise.

From that day forward, Mike sat in his office, day after day, writing useless documents that were too dense to be of actual use to anyone.

Is there a moral to this story?

Annoy everyone and do a shitty job, and you'll get demoted upward? I don't know. But I have seen this happen over and over again at different jobs. One thing that the 'promoted' people all have in common is that they are extremely weird. For whatever reason, people like this very often skate through life. As if being useless has compelled the gods to give them some help.

Oh, I forgot to mention Mike's magical abilities. He invariably wore the same hideous fanny pack to work everyday. When you would look at the pack, it appeared to be almost flat, practically empty. But somehow the magical bag contained whatever random object that he needed at any given time.

One time, my car wouldn't start because one of the battery terminals was loose. He walked up to me and asked, "What are you working on chief?" (He always calls you chief)

After showing him the issue, I kid you not, he unzipped his fanny pack, fumbled around for a minute and pulled out the exact right sized wrench for my battery terminal. You might think that this was a one-off occurrence but you'd be incorrect.

Once again, the gods were always protecting this poor hapless soul!