control, shift, cheeseburger

I really don’t like to tell tales out of school. What goes on at the office, as far as I’m concerned, stays at the office. The situation here a couple of weeks ago with a new employee we hired and subsequently fired, was an eye opener.

First, everyone knows I am a progressive, free thinking individual. What does that mean? It means I’m not given to, as Marlon Brando in Superman: The Movie said, “Wild, unsupported statements.” The guy that we hired, whom I will call Erich (an homage to Erich von Däniken, who regaled us with stories of ancient astronauts in the ’70s) was a real basket case. He subscribed to almost every popular conspiracy theory going around today.

Again, let me point out, that I totally back the proposition that people can believe in anything they want, including the flying spaghetti monster, but if you are going to present a conspiracy theory to me, you’ll want to give me an argument that is better than, “There is all kinds of scientific evidence to back this up.” What evidence? Where is it located? Can I at least get you to give me a tag or a keyword so I can do a search on Google?

History of this incident; my employers hired Erich on February 15, just before the President’s Day holiday. I had developed the flu during the weekend, so I didn’t come back until 2/20, therefore, he had been working here one day before I returned. When I came into the office, things were already disrupted. Apparently, Erich had laid down his beliefs with the group and since I’m the oldest person in the call center and have declared myself a skeptic, all eyes were on me to rebut Erich’s claims with a clear statement. Needless to say, I did. At this point, Erich decided that I was an unreliable stooge (that and the fact that I’m a Mac user put me right in the doghouse with him), possibly working for the CIA in some capacity (kidding about that last thing).

Here is a list of things that Erich weighed in on, links where appropriate:

• Hollow earth
  Earth expansion (to explain continental drift)
  American interment camps being prepped by Homeland Security to house Americans
  Mayan calendar prophecies
  The so-called “Beltway Snipers” John Allen Mohammed and John Lee Malvo from 2002 were CIA patsies.
  9/11 “truth” theories
  Face on Mars
  Earth spins faster, therefore time is “speeding up.” I can’t find anything on this, I believe he made this up out of whole cloth, or misinterpreted a real science article about the speed of the earth’s rotation.

There were some other things that spouted from his lips, but I decided early on to stay out of it and just let it all wash over me. There were a couple of times I couldn’t let go to what he said, but for the most part, I stood mum. Not only did he make these fantastic statements on breaks or at lunches, he declared his opinion while people were on the phone around here, disrupting our work.

The day of his firing (Thursday, 3/6) was traumatizing. He had said some things to another agent which were abrasive and rude. He was talking to a prospective client about using our software on a Mac server. He could not adequately answer the caller’s questions, got off the phone and immediately started asking, what were to me, stupid questions; “Does Apple make servers? How would you upgrade them? They can’t be any good, right?” The day before this, he had taken a Mac call, and since I am the Mac guru at work, I just told him to get the guy’s phone number, put it in Yahoo! Messenger, and IM it me. We use Y! Messenger at the office so we can communicate questions or comments while we are talking on the phone to our colleagues. Erich was not on my buddy list so I asked him to send me an add request, which I would accept then he could send the number.

It was at this point that Erich lost all credibility with me as a nerd. He said, “I don’t know how to do that, can’t I just send it to you in an email?” I told him if he didn’t have a Y! account to create one, download the software and send the add request to the rest of the group, I would even help. He turned a deaf ear, and said he didn’t want to to do that. I said we would have to talk to our supervisors; Y! Messenger is not only for questions and the dissemination of user info, it is primarily used to post break and lunch announcements to the rest of the group. In other words, it’s a requirement of our job. He would have none of this, so I reported this to our supervisor the day of the termination.

My supe asked me, “We’re going to let him go tomorrow (Friday, 3/7) do you think you can hang on ’til then?” My reply was to kind of screw up my face and say, “Yeah, I think so.” My supe went and talked to his supe and shortly thereafter, the festivities commenced. The supervisors took him into the conference room, and in about 90 seconds he came storming out, check in hand, made some comments about people being dicks, and left. This put most of my co-workers on notice. They kept the door to the office locked because they thought he might come back blazing away with a semi-automatic weapon. I personally thought the biggest guy in our office could break the frigtard over his knee like Bo Jackson snapping a bat in two.

The moral of the story gang is you are never going to know what kind of person you are hiring. Everyone puts on an act at a job interview and we have rejected candidates who would have probably fit into our organization because they simply didn’t pass the background check. Erich did, and now we have hired another. I didn’t even know we had hired him until yesterday, but he seems like a nice guy, and a competent computer nerd. He’s learning php.

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