The Ass Folder
Some winners have worked for me over my too-long tenure at my current employer. It’s only partly my fault, I mean sure I hired them but media research attracts a particularly pungent mélange of weirdoes, losers, obsessive-compulsives and, as a fellow sufferer put it, “nervous underachievers”. One of the younger ingredients in that stew of oddballs recently left my employ after a fairly short tenure and while nobody else in the department was particularly heartbroken to see her go (not that she was disliked, rather she simply opted to have as little interaction as possible with all other members of the department) we were all puzzled at one of the things she left behind: a red folder that she sat on every single day of her employment.
I have no idea why she did it. She wasn’t a particularly healthy person to be sure – in the six months she worked for me she took about six or seven sick days and for many others she was a nonstop coughing machine –but if she thought having a folder under her ass was protecting her from infection she was sadly mistaken.
Of course, this young lady wasn’t the strangest of the strange though she was up there. One fine summer I had an intern work for me who happened to be the college roommate of the president of our division’s son. He certainly was well acquainted with a sense of entitlement, showing up for his interview with my then-boss in shorts, a t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap and a distinct aroma of weed. When my then-boss asked him what hours he wanted to work for the two days a week of his internship he suggested 10 to 4. My boss gently reminded him that he was expected to put in 8 hour days (bear in mind that my company expects 9 hour days of its salaried employees, skirting labor law by saying we have an hour for lunch that few of us can ever take) and Stoner Boy took a 9 to 5 shift. Of course, it was 9 to 5 when he bothered to show up. He often had back problems, stomach problems, or (my very favorite) he called in sick the last day of his internship because his “parents were coming home from vacation that day and they needed him to move some furniture”. It was just as well, between his sporadic hours and the fact that he showed up baked half the time (or went downstairs during the day to smoke up) there wasn’t much I could trust him with anyway and because of who he was it wasn’t exactly like I could make him get me coffee. Even though I wanted to.
Another prize-winner who worked for me was a guy who dreamed of being a fireman. This guy took the exams, worked out (he was quite skinny and couldn’t keep weight on which was his downfall) and actually decorated his cubicle with fire department paraphernalia and had fire truck pictures as his screensaver. Still, he couldn’t crack his dream job and in the meantime made me nuts by being generally awful at his job (after a brilliant interview, which tells you everything you need to know about how useful interviews are as a predictor – actually Little Ms. Ass Folder was a great interview too) and calling in sick not in the usual ways like you would if you weren’t trying to insult your boss’s intelligence (food poisoning, back went out, toilet blew up and I have to wait for the plumber, running a low-grade fever but should be fine tomorrow, etc) but rather by outrageous bullshit like “I tore my ankle ligaments playing hockey last night and spent the night in the emergency room” and then showing up for work the next day walking without a limp. When I questioned Mr. Wannabe Hosehandler he got a panicky look on his face and said “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought and it felt better today”. Uh, right.
The postscript for Wannabe Hosehandler is a few years later a former co-worker of mine who had moved on called me about hiring him, I said “don’t do it”, said former co-worker hired him anyway because “Naw, man, really? He was a really great interview and I think he’s grown up since then” and six months of suckitude later Wannabe Hosehandler quit on short notice because he finally got hired by a police (not fire) department out west in Wyoming or Montana or someplace. Guess the civil service standards out there are lower than those in the NY area.
Old Wannabe Hosehandler didn’t leave behind an ass folder though. Though one trait he did share with Ms. Ass Folder was an incredibly annoying tendency to have all conversations via e-mail even though both of them sat about ten feet from my office door. WH wasn’t quite as bad as MAF though; MAF was so clueless she didn’t realize that I was going to be out of the office on her last day of employment (even though I had mentioned it in our weekly staff meeting) and when I went to say goodbye and wish her well at the end of her second to last day she had already gone. The next day she left me an e-mail saying “Hi DC, I didn’t know you were going to be out of the office today but thanks for the opportunity and good luck to the team”. Really it was an appropriate end to our professional relationship. She didn’t say a word to anyone else except to ask about where to leave her desk keys. When I came in on the following Monday the Ass Folder was still on her chair, creased and worn. Given MAF’s poor health, nobody wants to touch it. A cleaning lady recently moved it from the chair to the desk and there it sits a monument to MAF’s brief tenure among us. Nobody wants to touch it, but somebody’s gonna have to toss it before the new person starts.
Eh, maybe we shouldn’t say anything and just let the new guy/gal do it. I mean it’s not like it’ll turn him or her into some kind of psycho, right?
I have no idea why she did it. She wasn’t a particularly healthy person to be sure – in the six months she worked for me she took about six or seven sick days and for many others she was a nonstop coughing machine –but if she thought having a folder under her ass was protecting her from infection she was sadly mistaken.
Of course, this young lady wasn’t the strangest of the strange though she was up there. One fine summer I had an intern work for me who happened to be the college roommate of the president of our division’s son. He certainly was well acquainted with a sense of entitlement, showing up for his interview with my then-boss in shorts, a t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap and a distinct aroma of weed. When my then-boss asked him what hours he wanted to work for the two days a week of his internship he suggested 10 to 4. My boss gently reminded him that he was expected to put in 8 hour days (bear in mind that my company expects 9 hour days of its salaried employees, skirting labor law by saying we have an hour for lunch that few of us can ever take) and Stoner Boy took a 9 to 5 shift. Of course, it was 9 to 5 when he bothered to show up. He often had back problems, stomach problems, or (my very favorite) he called in sick the last day of his internship because his “parents were coming home from vacation that day and they needed him to move some furniture”. It was just as well, between his sporadic hours and the fact that he showed up baked half the time (or went downstairs during the day to smoke up) there wasn’t much I could trust him with anyway and because of who he was it wasn’t exactly like I could make him get me coffee. Even though I wanted to.
Another prize-winner who worked for me was a guy who dreamed of being a fireman. This guy took the exams, worked out (he was quite skinny and couldn’t keep weight on which was his downfall) and actually decorated his cubicle with fire department paraphernalia and had fire truck pictures as his screensaver. Still, he couldn’t crack his dream job and in the meantime made me nuts by being generally awful at his job (after a brilliant interview, which tells you everything you need to know about how useful interviews are as a predictor – actually Little Ms. Ass Folder was a great interview too) and calling in sick not in the usual ways like you would if you weren’t trying to insult your boss’s intelligence (food poisoning, back went out, toilet blew up and I have to wait for the plumber, running a low-grade fever but should be fine tomorrow, etc) but rather by outrageous bullshit like “I tore my ankle ligaments playing hockey last night and spent the night in the emergency room” and then showing up for work the next day walking without a limp. When I questioned Mr. Wannabe Hosehandler he got a panicky look on his face and said “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought and it felt better today”. Uh, right.
The postscript for Wannabe Hosehandler is a few years later a former co-worker of mine who had moved on called me about hiring him, I said “don’t do it”, said former co-worker hired him anyway because “Naw, man, really? He was a really great interview and I think he’s grown up since then” and six months of suckitude later Wannabe Hosehandler quit on short notice because he finally got hired by a police (not fire) department out west in Wyoming or Montana or someplace. Guess the civil service standards out there are lower than those in the NY area.
Old Wannabe Hosehandler didn’t leave behind an ass folder though. Though one trait he did share with Ms. Ass Folder was an incredibly annoying tendency to have all conversations via e-mail even though both of them sat about ten feet from my office door. WH wasn’t quite as bad as MAF though; MAF was so clueless she didn’t realize that I was going to be out of the office on her last day of employment (even though I had mentioned it in our weekly staff meeting) and when I went to say goodbye and wish her well at the end of her second to last day she had already gone. The next day she left me an e-mail saying “Hi DC, I didn’t know you were going to be out of the office today but thanks for the opportunity and good luck to the team”. Really it was an appropriate end to our professional relationship. She didn’t say a word to anyone else except to ask about where to leave her desk keys. When I came in on the following Monday the Ass Folder was still on her chair, creased and worn. Given MAF’s poor health, nobody wants to touch it. A cleaning lady recently moved it from the chair to the desk and there it sits a monument to MAF’s brief tenure among us. Nobody wants to touch it, but somebody’s gonna have to toss it before the new person starts.
Eh, maybe we shouldn’t say anything and just let the new guy/gal do it. I mean it’s not like it’ll turn him or her into some kind of psycho, right?
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