Eggy Bob
I've been working for twenty years, so this could well be the first of many....

Eggy Bob was my first boss. We were fresh from school, keen as mustard, and terrified into silence for the first week. Eggy Bob inspired awe in each fresh clutch (for that was how he referred to us) of juniors. We did all the crap jobs, the running around to the shops, the franking of letters in a big scary machine. There were six of us at a time and we stayed juniors until admin jobs opened up. It has to be said, for ninety-odd percent of the time, Eggy Bob was easy meat for a bunch of winsome wee lassies. We wound him round our collective pinky fingers. Those were the days!

So how, then, did he qualify for this QOTW? Eggy Bob was important. He was a SUPERVISOR. It said so on the name thingy on his desk. He had a chair with wheels AND arms. But more, much more than this, he had a telephone. Odd as it seems today, back in the dim mid-eighties not every desk had a phone. Eggy Bob's did. When it rang (maybe twice a week or so) he answered it promptly and barked his surname by way of a greeting. It was invariably his wife, but still, it added to his sense of importance. He had a phone! He was SOMEONE.

Now on a very, very odd occasion, Eggy Bob's phone would ring while he was absent from his desk. Woe betide the junior who answered it if he got back before she'd completed the call and scuttled back to her own desk. Yes, we were exclusively female. For some reason, they never hired boys as juniors.

Eggy Bob's usual placid nature deserted him on these occasions, and he erupted in a manner reminiscent of Krakatoa. He'd hold his hand out for the receiver and bark "My call I believe" in the stern voice of a headmaster. When he'd completed his call, the receiver would be replaced and all hell let loose. The poor girl who'd answered the phone would be reduced to tears in minutes by the bollocking of the century. This had been the pattern for years, and no-one seemed to think anything of it. Twenty minutes after the bollocking, he'd be back to his usual jovial ebullient self. All forgotten.

Until one day, in my last week as a junior, the phone rang on Eggy Bob's desk and he was nowhere to be seen. I jumped up, head turning like a meerkat on sentry duty, praying he'd appear in time to answer it. No such luck. A nearby supervisor yelled at me to "pick up the bloody phone, girl" so I did. Took a brief message from Mrs Eggy Bob and hung up. Turned around and there he was, hand still out for the receiver. Sadly, being born without eyes in the back of my head, I hadn't known he was there. He was offended. He was angry.

The first thing he did was to yell "Why did you answer my phone?", his standard opener. At this point, most of the previous girls would have been ready to cry. Not this one! Made of tougher stuff, I pulled myself up to my full (if diminutive) height and answered "Ronnie told me to."

He was flabbergasted. I was told later that no junior had ever answered this question with the truth. God knows why not. None of them were completely stupid - but maybe terror had frozen their brains. In my case, as the youngest child, I have been accustomed all my life to answering a shouting adult with the phrase "he told me to!" It was a conditioned response, I didn't even think about it. After that day, every new junior was told to wait until another supervisor shouted at them before answering the phone, so they could safely blame someone else. No more bollockings - unless one of the juniors did something really, really stupid. In which case they deserved it!

Oh, and why Eggy Bob? Every day, out of his briefcase, came two egg sandwiches for his lunch. Monday to Friday. Without fail. Followed by two hours of the most noxious farts known to man, something akin to the breath of Satan I should imagine.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:25, 2 replies)

Fantastic nickname!
*click* just for the name given to him alone.
( girlinthehole, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:39, closed)

Thanks BGB
but I can't actually take the credit - he'd been called that for more years than anyone could remember!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:09, closed)