Rix
His name was Rix. I won't give his first name as I don't want to go to court. He'd only been in the company for six months when I was put in a new team under him. Well, more of a double-act really, just me and him. Due to my 10 years experience in various parts of the company and the exams I'd taken, I'd finally managed to get a job in a relatively interesting area: Strategy. He, supposedly, had had similar roles in different companies and came highly recommended.

LIAR.

How can I put it? He was so clueless that if he was chained down in front of a Bumper Book of Crosswords, with Inspector Morse on his left and Sherlock Holmes on his right to help him, he still wouldn't have been able to discover a single, fucking clue. I can honestly say that he added absolutely no value AT ALL in the year or so I worked with him. Mostly, I did the work then he picked over it. He fussed like an old woman and knew nothing and nobody that would help in our role. He was 100 percent free of gorm.

Funny thing was, I quite liked him at first. He was fairly easy to get on with and although ten years younger than me, that wasn't a problem for me: virtually all the managers I work for are younger than me, because they've had a decade's head start. But then his habits started to annoy me. Constant stories about his car, some BMW or other, e.g. it had a scratch and he spent the best part of three weekends sanding and spraying it until he'd ruined a whole panel and had to get it done professionally. OK, but why tell us the whole story every single day? Also, he'd constantly, but surreptitiously sniff his fingers - yuk, and when he said 'marketing' it came out as 'margeding' and WITHOUT FAIL, at every single meeting we ever went to (and there were lots), he'd use the word 'predicated'.

He would moan about how the work we were getting wasn't interesting enough. He thought he should be advising the executive board on strategy. The sum total of his knowledge was a passing familiarity with the BCG Growth-Share Matrix (see Wikipedia), which is probably taught in term one of A-Level marketing [that's Marketing 101 for our American cousins]. Imagine going to the top guys at NASA and suggesting that to get more thrust for their rockets, they should have a look at skateboard propulsion technology principles.

This numpty I then discovered, was actually two grades higher than I had originally supposed and, as a consequence was earning over £50,000 a year, while I scraped by on roughly half that, while I did his job. Towards the end, we weren't given any new work to do. Stuff we should have been doing was given to other people and what did Rix do about it? Did he have a frank discussion with his boss, ask why, suggest stuff we could usefully do? Did he fuck. He'd call a 'team meeting', which meant we'd get up from our desks with our pads and pens and wander off to find somewhere to sit. Then he'd bitch about everyone and everything and I'd advise him to pull his frigging finger out of his arse, stop sniffing it, and get something done. Then we'd go back to our desks no further on; this went on for a year. Gradually, he started taking more sick days and 'worked from home' a lot, it was only a matter of time.

In the next reorganisation he opted for redundancy and was refused, so he had to resign, while I finally got a decent job. Hurray! That was back in 2007...

About six months ago we were recruiting for a new strategy manager, our department boss (a very nice guy) came over with a c.v.

'Che, you were in the team when this guy Rix worked here weren't you? What do you think of him?'

So I said (pretty much verbatim) 'He was a complete and utter waste of space and if you give him a job I'll leave.'

'Well, that's fairly clear. I think we can forget him then.' and he dropped the c.v. into a re-cycling bin on the way back to his desk. Out of curiosity, I fished it out of the bin and read a more imaginative piece of fiction than even SpankyHanky could manage - though a hell of a lot less entertaining.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 11:32, 1 reply)

I like you, Che.
Best you always come through as a very honest chap.

Nice tale.
(Scritty Bakerman., Sun 21 Jun 2009, 9:28, closed)