Firstly, thank you for the excellent holiday wishes. A bit delayed, but right back at ya. May your lives be prosperous, your employment lucrative, your stock options copious, and your professional lives perpetually Bob-free. I have quite a good reason for my absence. I’ve been working hard to compile all the Bob stories into something coherent and whole (and, most importantly, copy edited), something that a publisher might be willing to put out in primitive paper format. I don’t quite have a book deal to announce yet, but I am hoping to post some more updates very soon. Your questions will be answered, etc, etc, etc. I felt that this is the least that I could do for you, loyal readers, especially after I ignored all the RSS and site browsing problems that you emailed me about.
In information technology, especially in an academic setting, nothing is really impossible if you have vision, ambition, determination, and an inexhaustible supply of cheap intern labor. Student interns are the blood in the cardiovascular system of SITG. It is an unspoken truth that without interns, absolutely no work would get done. Ever.
Furthermore, the interns represent an important social and psychological element of the group. They keep things lively and amusing, providing a fresh opinion and a youthful outlook on the world. And even though they often make even the youngest members of our group feel old, they are special and friendly and fun, and it’s hard to imagine work without them.
Because the interns don’t work full time, and are almost always excused from staff meetings, they didn’t immediately catch on to Bob and his antics. Except for Jason, most of the interns remained blissfully ignorant, and thought of Bob as nothing more than an older, fatter, slightly stranger version of us. But eventually, even the interns, exposed to Bob on only a part time basis, began to realize that he was not a swell person to have around.
At first, Bob was as oblivious of the interns as they were of him. In another stunning example of his managerial prowess, Bob never even bothered to learn the names of the interns, and always avoided all interaction with them. Sometimes I felt like Bob made a special point of not knowing anything about the interns, almost intentionally mispronouncing their names and demonstrating a surprising lack of understanding about their job functions. It’s as if he fancied himself too important to deal with such peons.
In a meeting with the uber-boss, the question of budgetary expenditure was raised, and Bob let it be known that he didn’t know anything about the interns, as a result of which he couldn’t account for, in any coherent fashion, their monthly salaries. The uber-boss, rightfully, I might add, threatened to cut Bob’s intern budget. And Bob understood that a decreased budget meant decreased status, so he promised to get to know the interns and thus justify their existence and salaries.
Formal meetings are the only way that Bob knows how to interact with people. Maybe he has such rotten luck with women because he can’t arrange to have the date in a somber conference room under harsh fluorescent lighting. So, soon after his meeting with the uber-boss, Bob scheduled a meeting with the interns. Staff presence was encouraged, but optional. We all showed up for the entertainment value.
Bob kicked off the meeting with a long speech chastising the interns for their inconsistent schedules. He told them that we are a nine-to-five shop, and emphasized the importance of coming in early, and leaving late. The irony was almost too much to bear. The interns stared at Bob with blank expressions, until Jason intervened.
“We work part time,” he said, without much emotion.
“So what? You should still be here on time,” Bob insisted.
“I am here on time. On time for me is 2pm.”
“On time is 9am. Everyone has to be here at 9am.”
“Not me. I have class in the morning, and I only work in the afternoons.”
“We can’t pay you for the hours that you don’t work here!”
“You don’t,” Jason said, while the other interns nodded. “We get paid hourly.”
“Oh. Ok. Well, nobody told me that,” Bob said as he shot an angry look at Nick, and then another one at me.
The part time nature of their employment made clear, Bob moved on to discuss all the fun things that the interns do at work, and how they should stop doing them immediately. Bob suddenly became the evil dad from Footloose, a persona that suited him quite well.
“Stop having such loud conversations, stop playing such loud music, turn off your cell phones, stop browsing Facebook,” he stopped to take a breath.
“And no dancing either,” Nick said with a smirk.
“And you have to stop enabling them,” he said to Nick with another frightfully serious look.
“Don’t bring your girlfriends over, don’t call your girlfriends, not here, not on company time.” Another deep breath, and, “we are not paying you to have fun. You are here to work, and I don’t want to see anyone slacking off.”
He was the stereotypical pointy-haired boss, and completely unabashed by it. The interns, however, were the picture of apathy. This wasn’t their career. Without the fun perks, this wasn’t even a very good job. And their expressions were the epitome of not giving a shit. I was impressed. But Bob didn’t notice, and was quite pleased with himself. Staff dismissed.
Posted in Bob | 54 Comments »
Jim’s Quips:
If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.
The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.
Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world, because there’s nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.
I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large out of focus monster roaming the countryside. Look out, he’s fuzzy, let’s get out of here. — Mitch Hedberg
When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can become deadly projectiles.
They say Flintstone’s vitamins are chewable. All vitamins are chewable, it’s just that they taste shitty. I’m glad they made Flintstone’s vitamins because I used to watch The Flintstones and go, “Man I bet you if I ate that dude, I would be healthy.” — Mitch Hedberg
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. — Homer Simpson
When birds fly in the right formation, they need only exert half the effort. Even in nature, teamwork results in collective laziness.
I love my fed-ex guy cause he’s a drug dealer and he don’t even know it…and he’s always on time. — Mitch Hedberg
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals … except the weasel. — Homer Simpson
Bob’s Quips:
We call ourselves a “capacity building” organization; self-motivated and self-initiated capacity building. For example, in 30 years, I don’t think I have signed a check for the company.
I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly.
In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of psychic energy becomes a primary concern.
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
I’m going to miss Blockbuster. I’m gonna miss being CEO and all that stuff. We had an atmosphere where everybody was happy. When people make money, they’re happy. — Wayne Huizenga
We’re not about liquidating companies, but if you do that, why is that terrible? We’re not blowing up the factories. The person who buys it should be able to make the asset more productive. — Carl Icahn
Posted in Bob | 17 Comments »
Don’t worry, don’t worry. Nobody got dooced. Not even Bob. But, he is not the only one who is allowed an unofficial, or even an official vacation. More stories are coming, but do allow me a brief vacation. Patience is a virtue, or something like that – sit tight, don’t despair, etc, etc, etc.
Posted in Bob | 31 Comments »
Much to everyone’s surprise, Bob became extremely absorbed with the class. I’ve never seen him take such an interest with any intellectual endeavor. He threw out the remainder of Jim’s technical manuals and computer science text books, and filled the shelves of his office with various Russian textbooks, spelling workbooks, travel guides, Tolstoy cliff notes and Dostoyevsky translations. He purchased expensive language software and a Russian keyboard, and monopolized the time of Jason the Intern for a whole day, having him set up and configure it all on his computer.
The Russian class also became the most popular source of excuses for Bob’s absences, the frequency of which was growing as quickly as the population of Fibonacci’s pet rabbits. The two hours allotted for classes were a given, and whenever anyone questioned his whereabouts in the middle of the day, Bob read a prepared speech about the importance of self enrichment through higher education. Soon, we found out that the lectures were also supplemented by a series of mandatory recitation sections, taught by a voluptuous graduates student, who virtues Bob never failed to praise in most inappropriate and obscene terms. So while, for the first time in a long time, Bob reported for work consistently and promptly, the time that he spent at the office during the day was declining rapidly.
As the middle of the semester approached, Bob became increasingly agitated. He complained openly about what a rotten, difficult language Russian was (never failing to mention the unfairness of the fact that so many beautiful women speak such an impossible language). Bob began taking even more time off, but this time his excuses were particularly cryptic.
When he exhausted all his afternoon doctor appointment excuses, he had to get more creative.
From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu
Everyone,
I just got a call from my super, and he said that the toilet in my apartment exploded, and flooded the whole apartment. There is raw sewage all over my living room. I am going to have to head back there to begin the clean up. I’ll be out for the rest of the day.
- Bob
This is a fairly plausible excuse, which, sadly for Bob’s credibility, turned out the be completely false. I am not sure why, when Bob fabricates and excuse, it’s often so graphic in disgusting details. It would have been completely sufficient to say that there is a problem back at the apartment that requires his attention. I guess Bob feels that he could cover up the blatant falsity of the excuse with additional information.
About an hour after Bob left to attend to his feces-smeared apartment, Jason the Intern reported for his shift.
“Hey, I just saw Bob pawing over some sophomore in the student center,” he announced in his familiar nonchalant tone. Then, with a momentary expression of pure revulsion and genuine concern for the women of his generation, he turned to Nick and said, “that sort of thing should be criminal, you know.”
That was all that Nick needed. In Bob-related matters, it’s not at all difficult to bait him.
“I am going there to confront him,” he said. “He is a damn liar!”
“Ok, I am game,” Dave announced.
Ben had to go to a meeting, and ever since our night-time adventure at the Apple Store, Tim’s been very uncomfortable with all this. Nick and Ben looked at me. After our little bonding and plotting session at the pizzeria, we’ve formed an unannounced, unspoken, unofficial alliance against Bob.
“Ok, but let’s make this quick.” And off we went.
The student center is a busy hall, swarming with busy, caffeinated undergrads. It is like the college exhibit at the zoo of humanity. There you can find every breed and variety of the undergraduate student – the sexy cheerleader from Wisconsin, the even sexier art student from Madrid, the jock, the nerd, the chess genius, and hipster, the alternative rock musician and his entourage, and… and Bob! That’s right. There he was, not too difficult to spot at all – a 43 year old man, with the desperation in his face all the more obvious in a sea of youthful hope.
He was sitting at a table with a young girl, who looked as uncomfortable as young girls have every right to be in the presence of Bob. This time, however, Bob didn’t have that hungry look in his eyes that he typically gets in the presence of a live female. He looked at the girl, then at his book, then at the girl again. And I realized that Bob fit in with this crowd a lot more than I initially realized. He exhibited all the characteristic signs of pre-midterm anxiety, a very common condition with the entire student population this time of the year.
Nick approached with an expression far more confident than the situation called for.
“Hey Bob. What are you doing here?
“Studying.” Bob was frustrated, and unfazed. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you had to go home because of your toilet.” Nick decided to ignore Bob’s question.
“Right. That’s fixed.”
The girl looked uncomfortable. She glanced at her watch, and with completely inappropriate joy in her voice, exclaimed “time is up!” She began to gather her things. Bob handed her two twenty dollar bills, which she happily accepted.
“I am getting tutored,” he said.
“Yea. I gathered that,” Nick said with that familiar edge.
“That class is so fucking hard.”
A sad an familiar predicament, indeed, but Bob wasn’t going to get any sympathy from me. Burdened with my own coursework, I was struggling to study for my midterms without the benefit of an afternoon tutor.
“The older you get the harder it is to learn a language,” he tried again.
Still, not an ounce of sympathy from either one of us. And at this point, Bob realized that his excuses were lost on us. I count this as the moment when Bob decided that he wasn’t even going to try.
“Whatever,” he said, as Nick continued to glare at him. “Get back to the office.”
After that, things got worse. The familiar awkwardness was replaced by tension. Bob seemed to acknowledge our dislike for him, and retaliated with equal hostility. Nick was the self-proclaimed ring leader, and while the rest of us were often prone to quiet resignation, Nick was always the one to point out the injustice of our situation, and to provoke our rebellious tendencies.
When Bob failed his midterm, things got even worse. He dropped the class, and instead of sulking in his failure like a proper human being, he found solace in making our lives miserable. As the end of the semester approached, our once weird work environment, which you could joke about lightly at cocktail parties, turned into a truly unhappy dead-end career.
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Posted in Bob | 51 Comments »
Tim once mused that Bob is so terrible at his job because he just doesn’t care enough about it. I thought that was a very gentle thing to say. But, as it turned out, it was also quiet incorrect. Even when Bob really cares about the task at hand, he still can’t do it properly.
Bob received a memo from the uber-boss, instructing him to send everyone to a professional development class. Sadly, the specifics of this rather useful initiative were left to Bob’s discretion.
Of course, a meeting was scheduled to discuss the task at hand. And, of course, it was rescheduled, because Bob’s cat needed to be taken to the vet. It was rescheduled a second time, because Bob’s cat kept puking up the prescribed antibiotics, and needed to be taken to the vet again. (At least, there was continuity between these two excuses, so we had some reason to believe that the cat did in fact exist, and that it did, in fact, feel quite ill).
Eventually, the cat, undergoing a course of the latest in feline pharmaceuticals, began to feel better, and our meeting finally took place.
Bob, in his superb management style, explained the value of professional development as follows: “I was told that you all need to take a class or something.”
We got excited. Bob napped with his eyes open while we talked about the different conferences we’d like to attend, and the skills we’d like to acquire or refine. Then, he woke up, and informed us that he already decided what sort of professional development we’d be getting, and that we don’t really have to concern ourselves fantasizing about conferences and such. He said that as if it were a good thing. Then he read the list.
I was signed up for “Project Management for Systems Administrators,” and Nick was signed up for “Systems Administration for Project Managers.” But it got worse. Marek, who was a Certified Systems Administrator on multiple platforms was to attend a week long “Unix for Beginners” class, and Tim, who looked so hopeful when Bob mentioned a design conference in California, was distraught when he heard that he would be attending a Photoshop Basics course in Newark, New Jersey. Ben and Dave, both PHP and Perl experts, were given a choice between a week-long Java course or a week-long C++ course. That’s pretty much equivalent to being given the choice between stabbing yourself in the eye with a ball point pen or a pair of scissors.
And while we were all too absorbed with that miserable state of affairs, Bob took advantage of our momentary lack of attention to mention that he would be fulfilling his own professional development requirement with a semester long beginners Russian class from BPU’s Slavic Languages department. It took only a few moments to register.
“What do you mean, Russian,” Nick asked. Lately, he’s been the first one to question Bob’s frequent idiocy.
“I want to learn Russian, it’s a beautiful language.”
“So what,” Nick persisted, “it has nothing to do with your job. If you take Russian, I want to take French.”
“You can’t. I already told you what you are taking.”
“Well I don’t care. If you are taking a class that has nothing to do with your job, so am I!”
A chorus of “yeah’s” erupted from the rest of the staff, and I decided that it wouldn’t be prudent to mention that we were also taking classes that had nothing to do with our job.
But then, Bob explained that there wasn’t enough money in the budget for him to take a course off-campus, and so he had to take advantage of BPU’s tuition exemption program for employees, and sign up for something from the general catalog. Of course, that was a lousy excuse. The general catalog offered plenty of computer science, information technology, and business administration courses, all of which were a lot more relevant to his job than beginners Russian. So we argued back and forth, until Bob finally broke down and confessed to his true motives.
“Next month I’m going on vacation to the Ukraine, and I want to learn Russian,” he told us with a tentative smile.
Nick began to question the ethical ramifications of Bob’s decision, but quickly gave up. So, while we had to suffer through painfully boring and completely irrelevant classes, Bob got to spend two hours, three times per week, in the company of attractive undergrads and an interesting instructor, preparing for his upcoming vacation.
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Posted in Bob | 46 Comments »
That was just one example of how Bob bogged us down. Marek, Nick and I were pretty good at dealing with Bob and his craziness. (I suspect, because he was a little bit afraid of Nick who was able to match Bob’s crazy-aloof look with a crazy-axe murderer look). But Ben and the programming team (which, at that time, consisted of only Ben) was really hurting. You see, Bob fancied himself a programmer, and whenever anyone (usually Nick) made a comment about his minuscule contributions to the group’s projects, he would respond by breaking some perfectly functioning piece of code (usually by trying to edit it in Microsoft Word), which created a ton of additional work for Ben.
And so we found ourselves in a unique predicament. This was the first time that SITG was not able to get things done. We were missing deadlines, letting clients down, really struggling. Ben was really losing it. At wit’s end, he approached Bob and demanded that he hire another programmer to help him with the massive amounts of work. Miraculously, Bob agreed. I think that he was excited by the prospect of hiring somebody. He did all the paperwork and managed to get a posting for a junior level programmer up on all the major job sites.
We were immediately flooded with applications, and Bob began to schedule interviews around his busy social schedule. The first dozen people that he brought in seemed like talented programmers, but Bob dismissed them all based on his impression that they “wouldn’t fit in with the group.” This, of course, meant that they were hip and groovy people who would fit in very well with our team, and would need only a few days to see Bob’s apparent douchebaggery. Next followed a string of possibly competent individuals – their resumes seemed alright, and their work experience was acceptable. Unfortunately, they spoke no English at all. One fellow from Bangladesh made an especially positive impression on Bob, probably because he realized that this guy would never talk back during meetings (because he couldn’t). Bob was ready to hire him, but it turned out that his work visa was about to expire, and Bob couldn’t be bothered to push the paperwork through HR. Then he interviewed a clever woman with a ton of work experience, excellent references, and obvious programming talent. I was excited by the prospect of having another female at the office. Ben was excited by the prospect of having somebody help with all the work. The interview lasted for approximately fifteen minutes, before the woman grabbed her bag, and ran out of the office, mumbling something that sounded a little like a combination between a string of obscenities and a plea for the help of some divinity. We didn’t bother to ask what happened, but Bob summed it up for us right away. “She was hot,” he said with a creepy grin.
And then I had an idea. I called my friend Dave, who was happily employed as a programmer at an unscrupulous investment bank. Dave and I had been friends since high school. We roomed together in college, and see each other pretty frequently. I always felt that Dave was a good person. So I am not sure what exactly compelled me to ruin his life by convincing him to work at SITG. Absorbed in my own delusions, I tell myself that I was just trying to help out Ben by getting somebody competent to assist with the work. But in my darkest moments, I admit that this was a clear case of misery looking for some company. So, I suppose that if there is a hell, and if I do end up there, this will be the primary reason.
When I talked to Dave about the job, I mentioned our relaxed work environment, our tuition benefits, and the satisfaction of working for an organization that doesn’t exploit children and torture puppies, (which I recalled, from my Wall Street days, to be the daily routine at a financial corporation). I knew that Dave was a spiritual sort of person, and I waxed poetic about karma and doing the right thing. I said nothing about Bob. It worked, because Dave submitted his resume the same day. The following week he came in for an interview, did remarkably well, and managed to impress both Ben and Bob. That very same day he accepted Bob’s offer, and agreed to start in two weeks.
Hiring Dave was the one thing that Bob did right. I was surprised. We all were.
Dave’s first day was nerve wrecking for me. Did I just foolishly ruin a great friendship? How much will he hate me when he finds out what it’s really like to work with Bob? I greeted Dave at the door with a bag of home-made cookies (positively made in somebody’s home, somewhere) as if that would somehow make up for the misery that would ensue.
Our first staff meeting was excruciating for me, and eye opening for Dave. Bob did his usual crazy shtick. He told Dave and Ben that PHP (the language that all our applications were written in) was a dying language, and since they were too slovenly to learn Java, it was a good idea to start programming in C#.
“What the hell is wrong with that guy?” Dave asked without even a hint of humor.
“Oh you know, he is weird.” I desperately wanted to change the subject. “How’s your mom?”
“You didn’t tell me the manager was an idiot.”
“Yep.” It was time to fess up.
“You convinced me to work here, and you knew that this guy was nuts!”
“He is hardly ever here. And the rest of the team is great.” That, at least, was the truth.
As Dave learned more and more about Bob, from other staff and from personal experience, our relationship became increasingly strained. I was overwhelmed with remorse, even though Dave didn’t do anything in particular to guilt me into despair.
Surprisingly, Bob took an immediate liking to Dave. He felt that he found a kindred spirit, somebody with whom he could commiserate about how backwater University IT was compared to the high-profile, high-cost, high-efficiency world of for-profit corporations. And even though Dave took every opportunity to avoid a conversation with Bob, Bob felt that Dave reciprocated his happy feelings of comradery.
“We need to do something nice for Dave,” Bob told me one afternoon.
“Let’s give him a raise,” I suggested.
“Why not let him work from home once in a while,” Nick jumped in.
“No, no, no. We need to throw a welcome party for him,” Bob decided. “We need to introduce him to the clients and the rest of the university community.”
This wasn’t a terrible idea. Office parties were usually great, and even with Bob around, we could still have some fun.
“Anna and Nick are in charge of planning,” he said to no one in particular.
“Planning what?” I was confused. “We’ll just pick up some beer and order a few pizzas.”
“That’s what we always do,” Nick agreed.
“No! What sort of image will that present? We need to throw a classy party, otherwise everyone will think we are a bunch of slobs.” The little wheels in Bob’s little brain were turning. “I am thinking wine and cheese.”
“Shouldn’t we ask Dave what he wants?” Ah, Nick, the perpetual voice of reason.
“No, it’s going to be a surprise. I’ll work on the guest list,” Bob said with girlish giddiness. So much for reason.
The party was to be held on Friday afternoon, in our shabby little office. Bob never told us how many people were invited, but we assumed the usual list of characters from the various administrative departments that we work with. As per Bob’s instructions, we picked up a couple of cases of wine, and two giant cheese platters. Bob saw the goods, and complained that it wasn’t nearly enough food.
“Want to order some pizza?” Nick really liked pizza.
“No! Just go get more cheese,” Bob barked with scorn.
So we went out again and got two more giant cheese platters. This was enough cheese to feed a small village, but Bob still seemed unsatisfied.
“It’ll have to do,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll have enough cheese for everyone.”
“How many people did you invite?”
“About 50. Maybe 60.”
“What?” We were shocked. I was pretty sure that cramming more than 20 people into our tiny office was a serious fire code violation.
As was expected, Bob was so proud of himself for thinking of the party, that he couldn’t keep it a secret for a whole week. So, Dave arrived that morning wearing his best button down, eager and excited to meet his clients and colleagues.
Promptly at noon, hordes of people from various administrative departments that SITG has absolutely nothing to do with, began showing up at our office. They descended on the cheese platters in hungry swarms, and soon most the cheese was depleted. Bob greeted these strangers with firm handshakes and winks of familiarity.
Bob’s guest list was noticeably female heavy. What was strange was that so many women had the same name. As I fulfilled my obligatory requirement for small talk, I met four Anabelle’s, five Bethany’s, and three Christina’s. It was too much of a coincidence, so I asked Bob about it.
“Where did you find all these people?”
“I just did a directory search,” he admitted somewhat sheepishly.
“So you just searched for women’s names and invited whoever you could find?”
“Well, I only got up to the D’s.” That would explain why I didn’t meet any Elizabeth’s.
This party was obviously about Bob, and not at all about Dave. Dave’s name wasn’t even mentioned, as Bob continued to schmooze with different professors and administrators who were just as confused by their presence in our office as we were. An hour passed in this manner, and I was yet to see a familiar face. Dave was obviously forlorn as he realized that there wouldn’t be any welcome for him, nor anything in the way of an introduction. I saw him chatting quietly with Nick in the far corner of the office, a safe distance from the cheese platters. I made my way over.
“Yep,” said Dave.
“Yep,” said Nick.
“Yep,” I sighed in equal resignation.
“How long do you think this party will go on for?” Dave asked.
“Not sure. Want to leave?” I suggested.
“I couldn’t get to any of the cheese,” Dave said. “Want to go get some pizza?”
“Yes!” Nick was pleased.
We looked around for our other team members, but couldn’t see anybody. So the three of us left, unnoticed by Bob or the strangers around us, and shared a large pepperoni pie at the local pizzeria. And when Nick ordered the second round of beer, our temperament changed from frustration and dismay to anger and shock. Anger at Bob, for being so inconsiderate, obnoxious, and incapable. And shock, that we have let it all go on for this long.
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Posted in Bob | 18 Comments »
Miraculously, Bob did something right! Oh, he resisted, he tried to do the wrong thing, you can be sure of that. In fact he did so many wrong things leading up to it, that he hardly deserves any credit at all. But it turned out right in the end, and I suppose, that’s what matters.
Since Bob started as our manager, everyone has had a lot more work to do. Of course, that’s the opposite of what should have happened. But by now, I hope you realize that Bob is not simply a drain on our sensibility, but on our productivity as well. Countless hours were spent researching some new, horribly impractical technology that Bob wanted us to implement. Bob’s initiatives, literally reeking with an overwhelming stench of incompetence, were consistent only in their absolute absurdity. One day he would demand that we purchase the most expensive enterprise solutions (the kind owned by investment banks and global companies with an IT staff roughly one thousand times the size of ours). The next day he would have us completely re-engineer readily available and completely affordable software. We were so busy working on his mindless projects while trying to fulfill our obligation to our clients that we didn’t even have the time to question his madness.
And while it was quite obvious that there was a conscious, often malicious motive behind Bob’s actions, it did seem that sometimes he created so much work for us out of utter stupidity, and an inability to understand the sort of basic concepts that a six year old with a computer would have no difficulty grasping.
One afternoon he approached myself and Marek with a demand that defied logic.
“Give me a backup of everything,” he said with the kind of authority that an insane person should never have.
“What?” we said simultaneously.
“Backups. You know, of our stuff. I need them. It’s very important.”
As Bob walked away with a confident gait, Marek looked at me with pure desperation in his eyes.
“My English is not so good, Anna.”
“I don’t even think he was speaking English,” I shrugged.
“What does he mean, ‘backup of everything,’ it makes no sense.”
“No argument from me.”
“He is not normal, not sane. It is sentence that means nothing.”
“Look, maybe if we pretend that the conversation never happened, he will forget all about it.”
A sound plan. We banked on the fact that Bob’s brain didn’t operate like the brain of a normal human being, and hoped that he would become absorbed with yet another psychotic endeavor, and leave us alone, at least briefly. But the next day, Bob approached us again.
“So, how about that backup? Is it done yet?” he said this as if he were asking for a cup of tea and some toast.
“A backup of what?”
“Of everything! Don’t you remember? I need a backup of everything!”
I could see sweat forming on Marek’s forehead. I marveled at his self control, and wondered whether he was practicing zen meditation when he wasn’t hacking into the Pentagon.
“Bob.” He was speaking slowly, enunciating every syllable. “Do you know the meaning of words, back-up and eve-ry-thing?”
“What?” Bob was laughing, he was clearly in good spirits, and Marek’s accent often amused him.
“Backup. Everything.” Marek repeated even slower. I saw a few blood vessels rupture, and his left eye began to twitch violently. I knew that I had to intervene.
“Now look, Bob. What you are asking just doesn’t make sense,” I said. “You can’t have a backup of everything. You need a backup of a particular thing at a particular time.”
“I need a backup of all our servers for all time.” So, he knew that we had servers. I underestimated Bob. But he clearly didn’t understand the passage of time, so perhaps I still had an advantage.
“That’s impossible, Bob. Can’t be done.” It was one of those times when you begin regretting what you said before you even finish saying it.
“Can’t be done!” He didn’t say it like a question, and I knew what was coming. “You are one of those people who say NO all the time. No, we can’t write our own operating system! No, we can’t have a backup of everything! People hate that! You impede progress!”
“Ok, we’ll do it.” Marek gave me a classic crazy-girl-what-are-you-doing look. “Come back next Wednesday.”
The following Wednesday, we didn’t have a backup of everything, but neither did we have Bob. Jason the Intern told me about an anime convention in New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, and I expected (correctly) that Bob would not miss a chance to add to his manga collection.
Marek gave me a look of admiration, as we read Bob’s email that morning.
From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu
Subject: Sprained back
I will not be able to come in to work today. I sprained my back last night during my tango lesson. I was trying a very advanced move with my partner, who is a professional ballroom dancer. I won’t be answering my phone.
Sincerely,
Bob
That was even more proof that he was at the anime convention! I noticed a trend – whenever Bob was involved in a particularly geeky activity, his excuse always portrayed him doing something glamorous and sexy. A Magic the Gathering tournament became a cocktail party with hip friends, a Star Trek fan fiction event became a date with a European fashion model, and an anime convention became a tango lesson with a professional dancer.
When Bob returned to work on Thursday, he forgot about his outlandish backup request, and left us alone. Unfortunately, Bob forgot to mention that we were in violation of a university mandate to have redundant copies of our backups stored in an off-site location. He received the notice about our lack of compliance along with a detailed write-up of the policy. He compressed the forty page document into three incongruous words – backup of everything. So, when we learned about the violation, Marek and I had to postpone all our other projects and commitments, and scramble to make duplicates of critical backups to be sent off site along with other disaster recovery tools and documents.
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Posted in Bob | 21 Comments »
Bob is an insecure man. On its own, that’s not an especially terrible affliction, one that can certainly be dealt with through some carefully timed compliments and an occasional sugary treat. But combined with nine community college credits worth of management courses, the insecurity can grow into a full blown pathology. That’s what happened to Bob.
The primary source of Bob’s professional insecurity is Jim, our former manager.
A few words about Jim. Jim is a god among managers. For every one of Bob’s flaws, Jim has at least a dozen merits. He is competent and educated in both technology and business. He is pleasant, helpful, and fun. He is the sort of manager who engenders trust and loyalty not only toward himself, but toward the entire organization. Working for Jim was a blast, and at that time I even thought that a career in IT was not a terrible way to go. The best thing about Jim is that he always did the right thing and stood up for his staff, regardless of the unpleasantness such actions evoked from the powers above.
Jim created SITG when he was a student at BPU. He spotted an administrative need, which he was able to fill perfectly from the comfort of his dorm room. SITG was a one-man shop that grew into a respectable university IT group. And even though Jim left, his influence here remains.
And so, I commiserated with Bob. Jim is not an easy act to follow. But it’s not impossible to succeed in his footsteps. A clever manager would try to capitalize on Jim’s popularity with the staff and the clients by embracing his principles. A clever manager would understand that change has to be gradual, and would allow ample time for a smooth transition. A clever manager would try to embrace his predecessor’s best decisions, and avoid immediate massive overhauls in operations and culture.
Bob, however, is not a clever manager.
In Management 101, Bob learned that when you take a position as the new manager of a group, the first thing that you have to do is completely wipe out all signs and memories of the previous manager. (In actuality, that is probably not what was taught in the class, but it is nonetheless what Bob learned).
“I have to establish myself as the top dog,” he confided one day.
“You are the only dog,” I told him.
But he didn’t care. He imagined himself in an intense death match with Jim. He could smell the smoke from the circle of fire around our office. I could see the flame in his crazy, delusional eyes every time that Jim’s name was mentioned, (which was often). Jim, of course, was oblivious to all this. He had a new job, half way across the country, SITG and it’s problems a distant memory.
Bob’s first idea was to completely replace the entire staff. Hiring all new people would benefit him twofold. The new people wouldn’t know about Jim, and Bob would be free to re-invent the place in his own, hideous, incompetent image. Also, the new people would harbor obligatory feelings of loyalty for the man who gave them their jobs (this bit was from Management 102). Fortunately for me, this didn’t pan out for Bob. The uber-boss categorically denied him the right to fire everyone. This wasn’t out of any particular affinity for us, but primarily because the paperwork involved with firing somebody is too much of a hassle for busy HR administrators. (Touché, university bureaucrats, touché).
Unable to get rid of us, Bob launched an assault on the technology infrastructure that Jim built. Each day saw a wacky new proposal to replace something that was working quite well with something unfamiliar, impractical, and expensive. This was met with much resistance, but it could’ve worked, had it not been for the expensive part. Delirious with Oracle dreams and Java fantasies, Bob failed to realize that university IT budgets were about as opulent as a PhD student whose stipend check hasn’t cleared yet.
Stuck with Jim’s staff and Jim’s technology, Bob turned his attention to the culture of SITG, where Jim made his most lasting contributions. When his comments about loud music, loud conversation, and lack of a strict corporate dress code didn’t make an impression on us, he began to frantically replace our cutesy, sarcastic wall decorations with fascist motivational posters urging us to “step up to the challenge” and “work to fulfill the greater vision.” We just stood back and allowed his madness to manifest itself in this fairly innocuous form. After all, an intentionally funny poster wasn’t as entertaining as an intentionally serious poster made funny with a few strokes of a black marker.
But that wasn’t enough, and Bob launched his foolish attack on our quips. The quips are a database of short quotes that Jim began to accumulate since the early days of SITG. Over time, each staff member made a lasting mark on the quips database. Our collection is eclectic, with selections from Mitch Hedberg, Rita Rudner, Jason the Intern, and many others. The quips are a happy addition to our day. They pop up on the pages of our ticket system, so whenever you start getting bummed out because your work queue is so very large, you can be cheered up with an amusing sentiment from Douglas Adams or Yakov Smirnoff.
And because about half of the quips were entered by Jim, Bob saw this as a direct threat, which had to be dealt with immediately. So one day, Bob stayed late, and manually (oh, yes indeed) deleted every single quip entered by Jim (about 1500 of them). This could’ve been done with one brief line of SQL, but Bob, of course didn’t know that. The following morning Dave noticed that the quips database had shrunk, and assumed that there was some sort of corruption or malfunction. So, he promptly restored the original database from the previous night’s backups. That night Bob stayed late again, clickety-clicking his way through 1500 records. This continued for a week – Bob’s futile deletes, Dave’s unassuming restores.
During staff meeting, Bob was visibly on the brink of insanity.
“Who keeps re-inserting all the quips?”
“What?”
“The quips! I keep deleting them, and somebody keeps re-inserting them!”
“Oh! I’ve been restoring the quips database,” Dave confessed in utter confusion.
“What? Why?” Bob began to sweat profusely, even though it wasn’t even warm in the room.
“Why are you deleting quips?” Nick jumped in.
“What? They are inappropriate. Clients might see them.”
“Clients won’t see them. They are restricted to pages that only staff can access.” Nick refused to relent.
“I spent a lot of time deleting them,” Bob was visibly losing it, “and you just keep putting them back, and it’s such a waste of time, I can’t believe you would do that.”
“Well stop deleting quips,” Nick said with surprising authority.
There was definitely a new, scary edge, plainly audible in Nick’s voice, and Bob must have picked up on it too. Because after that, he left the quips alone. So just like that, Jim won a fight he didn’t even know he was a part of.
Bob lost, and we joked, rejoiced and drank beer. But our little party ended abruptly as we realized that the next morning we would be back at the office, together with Bob once again.
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Posted in Bob | 52 Comments »
Week by week, we’ve been learning about the many bizarre worlds of Bob. There is, of course, the small world of our office. It’s clearly a minor and insignificant world in Bob’s universe, one which he visits infrequently, and only when he absolutely has to. We also know a bit more than we’d like about the sad worlds of his personal life – his Star Trek conventions, his Magic the Gathering tournaments, his mother’s basement, where he spent his glorious 30s (“because it was more convenient than renting”), and his numerous unsuccessful attempts to mate with a female. We always hear about these through awkward commentary during staff meetings, or any other conversations with Bob that we fail to avoid by faking a brain aneurysm. His real personal life has proven to be a lot less amusing than the imaginary life, which he relays through his absentee excuse notes – his exotic tropical illnesses, his sexy girlfriends, his ski trips in Aspen, his glamorous power lunches with top industry executives.
So, we’ve come to be familiar with these three faces of Bob, if you will – the unproductive office Bob, the lonely geeky Bob, and the glamorous popular Bob. That’s already a lot more split-personality than any one person can handle. And that is why we were completely caught off-guard by the revelation that Bob has yet another world that he has managed to keep entirely secret – his other job!
Last week, Bob’s absenteeism morphed from all-day getaways due to illness, family issues, or the classic “waiting for the UPS man,” into half days of alarm malfunctions and train delays. Bob would show up for work at around 12:30pm, bleary eyed and scruffy, dark circles under his eyes. He would mumble something incomprehensible about how he needs to purchase a new alarm clock. He would then proceed to lock himself in his office with a liter of Mountain Dew. His wardrobe also changed. Crisp designer suits (his not-so-subtle way of crushing our relaxed and groovy university vibe) were replaced by torn jeans and faded Rod Stewart t-shirts, which offended even our low standards for professional attire. Morbid fascination soon turned to genuine concern (we are not terrible people, after all) and frequent speculation about Bob’s late night whereabouts.
The mystery persisted until our intern, Jason, who serves as our link to the outside world and a frequent source of Bob sightings, casually informed us that he saw Bob fixing computers at the 24-hour Apple Store the night before. Jason is not an impressionable young man, and typically apathetic about all things not related to fantasy baseball, and so he didn’t immediately see the absurdity of the situation, and didn’t think to promptly report the news.
So it turned out that Bob had been working the night shift as a tech at the Apple Genius Bar. When I heard this, I immediately snapped into action and sold all my Apple stock. After that was done, I took a moment to ponder the minuscule probability that not one, but two distinct people agreed to give Bob a job in IT, and I organized a field trip to observe Bob in action.
We agreed to meet at 9pm at a Starbucks just around the corner from the Apple Store. I had fun pretending that I was taking part of some covert spy operation (oh, like you don’t do that). Even Jason the intern showed up to see what the “crazy old folks” were up to. Some of us even brought our spouses and significant others, mostly because they never believed any of our outrageous stories about Bob. Since we rarely do things together outside of the office, this turned out to be a fantastic, albeit surreal, bonding experience for our team.
We were so caught up with giddiness about our venture that we completely overlooked a major flaw in our plan. “How are we going to explain the presence of our entire staff here,” Nick mused as we walked through the door. It was a bit too late to consider an alternative, because Bob spotted us right away. Much to everyone’s surprise (and the dismay of the young woman that he was helping), he started waving to us frantically from the genius bar. Tentatively, we approached.
“Hi Guys!” Bob seemed truly pleased to see us. “Nick, you know about Macs, can you take a look at this laptop? It doesn’t boot up for some reason.”
“Uhm, it’s probably the hard drive,” Nick managed, weakly, after a glance at the screen.
“It’s the hard drive Miss,” Bob reiterated with confident finality.
The customer gathered her laptop and left dissatisfied, as the rest of us stood there dumbfounded.
“What are you doing here?” several of us said synchronously.
“Oh, I work here sometimes. It’s like a hobby.” Bob sounded more convincing than ever.
“Really?”
“Oh yea, this is a sweet gig.” He winked. “Awesome for meeting chicks!”
“Right, right” Ben nodded knowingly, as his wife shot him an annoyed look.
“And, of course, I love helping people with their tech problems,” Bob qualified solemnly.
And with that, most erroneous of all statements, Bob politely excused himself to look at another malfunctioning Apple product.
The following morning was a bit nerve wrecking. Sobered by sunlight and caffeine, we all sat quietly at our desks, anticipating Bob’s next move. At this point, we had no idea what to expect. It was a free-for-all of strangeness and absurdity. So we waited, and waited. 9am passed, as did 10am, 11am, noon. At 12:30, Bob showed up, bleary eyed and scruffy, dark circles under his eyes. “Overslept again,” he mumbled.
And so it continued. Our knowledge of his night-time activities did nothing to change Bob’s routine. When he began to consistently miss all his morning meetings, other people started to notice. And to complain. Until his boss (our uber-boss) called him in for a closed door meeting.
We were excited. This could be the end of Bob! Secretly, I was a little bit disappointed. I thought that Bob’s demise would be the result of some extremely questionable professional decision, or a series of sexual harassment accusations. Getting fired because of a second job was pitiful and almost unjust.
Bob emerged from the meeting unruffled. More than that, he was suddenly upbeat and cheery, head held high, a smile on his face. The following morning, Bob was in at 9am, wearing a brand new suit, gourmet coffee in hand. In the coming weeks, Bob maintained a flawless 9-5 schedule, and we were more confused than ever.
One afternoon, I ran into a friend of mine who works in the office of the uber-boss, and she relayed to the details of the closed door meeting. Apparently, Bob’s excuse about using the night job as a way to meet women was reserved only for us. When confronted by his manager, Bob said something entirely different. He explained that leaving his corporate job to work at a University forced him to take a huge pay cut, which he was happy to do because of his love for academia. But his salary here was just not enough to sustain his lifestyle, and that’s why he had to take another job.
And that’s the story of how Bob got a huge raise after working here for only a few months.
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Posted in Bob | 103 Comments »
