Paddy the Just
In defiance of all conventional racial stereotypes, Paddy was an Australian, who found himself working for one of London's myriad "direct sales" companies in the mid-2000's. Despite being a direct colleague of mine, I never got to know him that well, although he gave me the basic lowdown on his background - spent the first 20 years of his life surfing (and had the body to match), didn't own a suit before he was hired as a salesman, found British terminology quaint and bizarre at the same time, and so on.

The shop ran according to the following principle: you went out into the field every day and knocked on doors to try to sell whichever charity was the flavour of the month. You also tried perpetually to recruit members for your team, in order to boost your income with the commission from their sales as well.

One evening Paddy came back to the office after a day in the field looking like he'd just had to sacrifice his first-born. In contrast to every other evening, he went straight into the back office, talked to no-one and stared into the middle distance. Polite enquiries as to his well-being were met with barely-contained enjoinders to get fucked. The full story was not to emerge until the following day.

Paddy had recruited a local chav who'd concealed his true colours during the interview process. The previous afternoon, Paddy and the rest of his crew had come across a team of builders having their tea break on the wall surrounding a building site, and Paddy, being the gregarious type, had struck up a conversation with them. After chatting for a while, they both went their separate ways and Paddy was mentally formulating his pep talk to boost his sales team for the rest of the afternoon. At this point, the chav sidled up to him and said "Hey, look: I nicked this phone off one of the blokes on the building site. Hardcore innit!". Paddy apparently lasted about an eighth of a second before grabbing the chav by the scruff of his neck, frogmarching him back to the building site and saying "This guy's got something to say to you." Forced the chav to return the phone on the spot, fired him on the spot, and spent the rest of the day being thoroughly disgusted with humanity. One of the few people with any morals in the office, to be honest.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 7 Nov 2013, 21:49, Reply)