The crazy party excuse.

A person can be either socially incompetent or technically incompetent, and still succeed in IT. Somebody who is technically incompetent, but can still talk the talk, can certainly get by on charm, and (that most elusive of all traits) people skills. On the other hand, if somebody is a technical genius, nobody really cares if they are awkward, or stinky, or unable to maintain eye contact. And so, everybody is constantly oscillating in their little niche on this technical-social competence spectrum.

Bob, however, is both technically incompetent and socially unbearable. It’s hard to believe, but really, it’s true. We don’t know each other so well yet, dear reader, but you will have to trust that I am not making this up.

Bob came to BPU with “15 years of professional experience” in IT. That’s what he says every time somebody challenged one of his idiotic ideas. Truth is, Bob went directly from being a hardware grunt of the lowest degree (the fellow who physically moves your computer from one desk to another but lacks the expertise and authority to turn it back on) to an IT manager. It literally happened overnight. He was promoted during the dot-com boom, when all talented people left their moderately lucrative jobs with financial institutions for extremely lucrative jobs with startups. And one evening, when everyone who knew anything about technology walked out of the office forever, it was a choice between Bob and the janitor. And because Bob was a US citizen and had an Associates Degree, he got the promotion. I have come to accept it as just one of those completely unfair karmic accidents, like homeless kittens or juvenile diabetes.

Everything Bob knows about technology he read in a trade journal. And not even the good kind of trade journal, but the kind written specifically for IT managers. Furthermore, I don’t think that he actually reads the articles, but rather, gets most of his information from advertisements. In fact, I don’t even know that Bob can tell the difference between an advertisement and a legitimate, unbiased report (that’s probably why he continues to forward bogus SPAM about pharmaceutical stocks to the rest of the staff).

Because Bob worked at a corporation (although, it’s probably more accurate to say that he received a paycheck from a corporation) he looks down on what we do at our small university IT shop as quaint. In his mind, a technology is worth only as much as it costs, and so he sees our patchwork of affordable open source applications as a scourge that must be wiped out with enterprise solutions.

The first victim of his big-picture thinking is our ticket-tracking system, Bugzilla. It’s unclear if he hates it so much because it’s free, or because it’s easy to use, or maybe because it works so well and fulfills all our needs. Either way, at the beginning of the week Bob announced that we would be replacing Bugzilla with Jira – an expensive, bulky, Java-based system we know nothing about.

And that is the long story (the short story is always simply “Bob is an idiot, and here we are”) of how I found myself stuck in a conference room with four Jira sales-people, a small wall clock ticking away the minutes of my life, and a large pot of coffee. The leader of the sales people poured himself a third cup, and gave me an awkward smile, which I understood to mean “when the coffee runs out, we are leaving.” Bob, who scheduled the meeting for 8am on Monday morning, was nowhere to be found.

By 8:45 the coffee was at a dangerously low level.

Ding, new email! Ah, of course.

From: Bob Bossman
To: Anna Shore

Anna,
I am running late. Something must’ve happened to my alarm clock. I had a crazy party at my apartment last night with some artist friends of mine, and we got totally drunk! You know what I mean. Anyway, stall the Jira people for as long as you can, I am on my way.

Peace out,
Bob Bossman, Executive Director

I inform the Jira people that it’ll be just a little while longer, and relate a version of the excuse that makes Bob seem like a normal human being and not an obnoxious jerk.

By 9:15, the Jira people are packing up their glossy brochures, Jira-branded pens, and other shiny sales gear. The leader gives me a dirty look, mumbles something about unreliable university hippies, and leaves.

To nobody’s surprise, Bob doesn’t show up just as they leave. Nor does he show up an hour later, or two hours later. At 1pm we get the following email:

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Terrible headache, need to sleep it off. See you all tomorrow.

- Bob
————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

As we later found out, the drunken debauchery with sexy artist friends was in fact an all night Magic the Gathering tournament at a downtown comic book shop, where Bob was sighted by one of our interns. The terrible headache was probably real. The intern reported that Bob took a serious beating from a 12-year old boy, and left the scene distraught, his mana depleted.

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Joon in July

The month of July was rather miserable for Bob’s health, but quite propitious for his social life.

Every week Bob was plagued by some unpleasant illness, which precluded him from coming to work. As time went on, the illnesses got more pronounced, more contagious, and more exotic. At first, it was food poisoning. The following week, food poisoning turned into salmonella poisoning, which later became either a severe case of cyclospora or a mild case of trichinosis.

However, when Bob did show up, he seemed to be in unusually good spirits, which we attributed to Joon, his “Asian girlfriend.” That is how Bob referred to her, and we followed suit. Apparently, Bob met Joon during a speed dating event. She was a bartender at the lounge where the event was held, and offered Bob vodka and some much needed comfort after he suffered 30 rejections in the course of one hour.

We never met Joon, but Bob often regaled us with sexually explicit and painfully disgusting stories about his relationship with her. In fact, he took every available opportunity (and even some unavailable ones) to point out that Joon is a female with a nice behind, and that he, Executive Director Bob, taps that behind often.

A typical exchange -

“I am not supposed to smoke.”
“It’s very bad for you.”
“But I always smoke after sex, so now I smoke several times a day.”
“Uhm.”
“Because I have sex with my Asian girlfriend Joon several times a day.”
“Right.”

And so on, in that manner.

Soon we learned that Joon was a waitress in Brooklyn, that she liked clam chowder, and that she had Fridays and Mondays off. And so it didn’t really strain our credulity too much when Bob’s bouts of poor health began to manifest on Thursday afternoons.

It would happen like this. On Thursday, Bob would show up for work with two overstuffed overnight bags. He would spend most of the morning on the phone. Even with his door closed, we could overhear bits of conversation about nightly rates at various bed and breakfast establishments. By noon, Bob would start to reschedule his Friday and Monday meetings. By around 2:30pm he would start coughing, wheezing, sneezing, massaging his temples, and feigning stomach cramps. At 4:30, he would announce that he was leaving early because he didn’t want to infect anyone.

On Friday morning we would get the following email:

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Hello Everyone,
As you recall, I was getting very sick yesterday. I called my doctor and he said that it’s probably food poisoning and that I should take it easy. So I am going to stay home today and try to get better. I won’t be checking email or answering the phone.

Sincerely,
Bob Bossman, Executive Director

On Monday morning we would get a brief follow-up:

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Still sick.

- Bob
————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

On Tuesday, Bob would show up for work, looking well and well-rested, wearing a souvenir “University of Vermont” or “I love Maine” t-shirt. He would always have some regional treat for us – maple candy, chocolate lobsters, a large print of a Cape Cod lighthouse for the office wall. Bob spent much of Tuesday at his computer, cropping and uploading pictures of him and Joon in front of various New England landmarks. On Wednesday, he would call us all into his office and subject us to the slideshow with live commentary. Whenever somebody asked about the date of the trip, Bob quickly changed the subject. On Thursday, the cycle began anew.

Many coffee breaks were spent in heated debate about exactly what was wrong with Joon. Most agreed that she had to be deaf and blind, but still, that was not enough to justify a month-long relationship with Bob. As it turned out, Joon’s student visa was about to expire, and Bob told her that he would hire her as a web designer. However, Joon, who was neither deaf nor blind, decided that she would rather take her chances back home in Malaysia than spend any more time around Bob. Lucky her.

: : : :

Laryngitis, stomach flu, imaginary car.

Skipping work is by no means a crime. In my opinion, it’s not even morally questionable, that is, if done properly, sparingly, and in a considerate manner. Bob’s absenteeism, however, is neither clever nor tactful. His excuses are usually a direct insult to our intelligence.

Monday morning:

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Hello Everyone,
I am feeling ill this morning. It might be either laryngitis or a stomach flu. I will be at home taking it easy today.

Sincerely,
Bob Bossman, Executive Director

I am not one to begrudge anyone an illness. I am even willing to dismiss the fact that Bob’s Monday morning malady coincided with an all-day Firefly marathon on the SciFi Channel as a random occurrence, (which is not easy to do, considering that Bob dedicated 30 minutes of previous week’s staff meeting to an extensive review of all Firefly major and minor characters). However, the most offensive and irksome aspect of Bob’s excuse is the qualification of his condition as “either laryngitis or a stomach flu.” Those two diseases have absolutely no symptoms in common. Laryngitis is categorized by a cough, sore throat, and loss of voice. It is completely incredulous how these symptoms could be confused with those of a stomach flu (nausea, fever, stomach ache). So, while a simple “not feeling well” would have sufficed, Bob chose to administer a figurative slap in the face with a blatantly false excuse.

The next day, Tuesday morning:

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Hello Everyone,
I will be taking today off to fix my car. Something happened to it yesterday while I was driving (don’t worry, everyone is Ok). I guess I should know that this piece of junk can’t handle a 50 mile road trip anymore. So now I need to take it to the mechanic. I’ll be out all day.

Sincerely,
Bob Bossman, Executive Director

Even on it’s own, this excuse is only marginally acceptable. We all know that Bob doesn’t have a car. On several occasions he waxed poetic about how not having to own a car is a major advantage of living in the city. But compounded with the previous day’s laryngitis-stomach flu excuse, Bob’s imaginary broken car delivers a powerful one-two punch of awkwardness and disrespect. Did he forget that yesterday he was too sick to come in to work? It logically follows that he must have been too sick to drive around. (And drive around so much so as to break the car!) Yet, here we are.

Our staff has been split. Some claim that Bob is too stupid to realize how ridiculous his excuses are. Others think that he is purposefully devious, and reveals the false nature of his absenteeism in such an obvious way for sick kicks. Logic favors the former, and evidence the latter. I am still undecided.

: : : :

Three Long Months

I recall the day when Bob first walked through the door to our office, three months ago. It was a sunny afternoon. The first week of May. Birds were chirping, servers were humming, and things were generally swell. That is, until a clinically obese cloud of arrogance, misfortune, and incompetence descended on our unassuming professional existence.

Truth is, we had been without a manager for some time. Three months, to be exact. Jim was our former lead, and after 10 years (a lifetime, in IT) of productive and inspiring leadership, he left us for greener corporate pastures. It was difficult at first, but we stuck together as a team, and managed to keep the proverbial ship afloat. So of course, when we heard from The Dean that we were getting a new manager, we were thrilled. Here was going to be somebody to help us with the grunt of desktop support, with the daily and nightly challenges of systems administration. A UNIX guru and a Windows expert. A programmer with a keen eye for hidden bugs. We were psyched, because a new manager meant that we had to do less, that our lives would get easier, and that coffee breaks would once again be copious and indefinite in duration.

So that was our mental state when we were first confronted with Bob. He was not exactly an Adonis, but it wasn’t his physique that we were interested in. People skills, we whispered in anticipation. Technical expertise, we mumbled happily as we waited to shake his hand. Exactly five minutes passed before Bob began to shatter our hopes for a productive and pleasant life at the office. The first person that he struck out with was me.

“So, you are the girl at the office,” he uttered with a smirk. “We had a girl at the office at my last job. She made the best coffee! Better than Starbucks!”

“I am in charge of the Windows environment,” I replied, deciding to give him another chance. Sexual harassment could be charming, if done properly.

“I know a guy at Microsoft. VP,” he said definitively, and looked away. Our first conversation was over, and I immediately began to resent the fact that it wouldn’t be our last.

His next strike was pitched by Marek, our brilliant systems administrator by way of the Soviet block. Marek introduced himself, and concisely described his role within the group. A simple “nice to meet you” would have sufficed, but Bob, obviously feeling unfulfilled by his exchange with me, embarked on a long, and completely unprovoked history of the Ukraine and his extensive recreational travels there.

“And you know what they say about the women in Odessa, Mark, eh?” he whistled and winked.

“What?” Marek was obviously taken back. This was the first time we’ve seen him looking so confused. But Bob just kept winking and whistling.

“And Kiev, what a place, eh Mark?”

“I wouldn’t know. I am from Prague. I’ve never been to the Ukraine.” I guess he decided to allow Bob to call him Mark. A bit of a trump card to play later, I suppose.

“Well you should go, you don’t know what you are missing.” And with that, he moved on to the development team.

Already wary, Ben, Dave, and Chris introduced themselves. They spoke extensively about the PHP environment, and the development infrastructure that all our sites are built on. It was a convincing speech, evangelizing the merits of open source, PHP, and mySQL.

“Hmm. You know, I think this place will run much better on Java and Oracle. mySQL is just not enterprisey enough. We have to think big now that I am here,” he said, while our collective jaws dropped to the floor. “Anna, can you set up a meeting where I can discuss this with the boys?”

Swing and a miss.

And so it continued, day after day, week after week, for three long months. We were caught off-guard by Bob’s idiocy. Personally, I was fighting an internal battle between a desire to give him a second (third, fourth, fifteenth) chance and a much stronger urge to throw hot coffee in his face. Weekly staff meetings became exercises in restraint as Bob expounded on the advantages of every technology that we were not using, while denouncing the “small thinking” of our current infrastructure. Here was a man who wanted to change everything. For the worst. And in the worst way possible.

For three months Bob was the picture of punctuality. First one in, last one out. Tardiness was one of his many pet peeves (along with free software, service level agreements, and universal suffrage).

But one Monday morning, it all changed.

From: Bob Bossman
To: sitg-staff@bpu.edu

Hello Everyone,
I won’t be coming in to work today. My father, who is 79 years old, has long been suffering from schizophrenia. He is a good man, plagued by this terrible disease. My mother is a strong woman, but can no longer take care of him. We decided to institutionalize him. And I will be taking today off to check him into the mental hospital and get him settled in. I won’t have my blackberry or access to my computer, so don’t try to email me.

Sincerely,
Bob Bossman, Executive Director

Bob’s first unscheduled absence was justified by a tragic, heart-felt excuse about his father’s illness. I was touched, and began to feel guilty about all the animosity that I’ve felt for the man. Surely, he was under a great deal of personal stress, which, if anything, is a reasonable excuse for professional incompetence. I was feeling really rotten about my own behavior, until Nick pointed out that the excuse was bogus.

“Bob’s parents are dead,” he said plainly. “Remember, he told us about it two weeks ago.”

Of course! Ben was complaining about how much he hates spending the weekend at his in-laws, and Bob said “at least you have a family to spend the weekend with. Both of my parents are dead. Cancer.” And then he went on about how expensive funerals are, and how he would just want to be cremated. It was a really delightful conversation to have on a sunny Monday morning.

This was the first time that Bob made up an excuse to get out of work. We wondered what he could be doing with his free time, but we were still new to the world of managerial absenteeism, and decided that he probably just needed a day off to catch up on errands, and that the extensive and blatant lie was just another quirk of his already unusual and unappealing personality. As time went on, Bob’s absenteeism continued on a regular basis, and our speculations about his activities away from the office became more elaborate.

: : : :