Bob’s Other Job

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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