The Saga of the Office, Part 1

For want of anything interesting to share, I’ve decided to relate the “Saga of the Office.” Last year I worked at a Major National Security Firm in Kansas City. I worked with some . . . interesting people. Once, we had five people quit or get fired over the space of six weeks or so. This is a complex but sometimes hilarious story. All I can say is, I'm beginning to understand Dilbert more and more. I'll refer to the people here by letters, just because some of them have the same first name, and I think it makes things funnier to use letters.

Okay. So, A was a compulsive overeater. He was 30 and still lived with his mother, and was about 200 pounds overweight. I didn't work with him, but he got tired of his job, and decided to act passive-aggressive instead of quitting. He would eat, then refuse to clean up his mess, leaving it for the next shift to clean up. He would "miss the opening" when he had a bowel movement in the bathroom and not clean it up. The officers put up with it. But then more things started occuring. X told me some employees in the building had heard a closet door rattling. When they opened it, there was A, lying on the floor in the closet, snoring! A denied that it was him, but frankly, he wouldn't have been hard to identify in his uniform. C (who worked with him) told me that, while C was on patrol in the building, A would sneak out, drive down to the 24-hour Hyvee (grocery store) and binge at their all-you-can-eat pasta bar. A also denied this. Eventually, G, the general manager of A Major National Security Firm in Kansas City, made a surprise visit and discovered him outside, talking on his cell phone, with no one inside monitoring the security console (telephone and security camers), so he fired A.

B was also seriously overweight, but not quite as much as A. He was 40, never married, and (apparently) pretty seriously ill. He took upwards of a dozen prescription drugs and had diabetes, IIRC. Anyway, I worked with him over the weekends. He had a game leg (his ankle would swell up when he stood or walked around) and had a doctor's excuse. What this meant was that I would have to do most of the walking patrols during the 12-hour shifts that we worked together. His eyes were also very sensitive to light, so he would wear sunglasses all the time, and would request that we turn off the overhead lights. I hadn't worked with him very long when I came back from a patrol to discover him, legs propped up in a chair, lights out, sunglasses on, head back, snoring away! At first, I was angry. But then I thought, "Wait a minute. I like him better when he's asleep." When he was awake, he was one of those annoying people that tries to draw you into arguments about conspiracies, UFOs, and whether Catholics are Christians (no, according to his Paranoid Protestant mindset). And he kept the phone by him and always awoke and answered promptly when it rang or when I contacted him by radio. So I let it go.

After A was fired, there was some shifting of schedules and X wound up working with B. She wrote him up (reported him to the supervisors) first thing for sleeping. G made another surprise visit at night, walked in, and found him sleeping. He was fired.