Last weekend Bruce went down to Virginia Beach. The house he grew up in is down there. It's currently divided into pieces and rented out. That's not legal, but whatever. Not my house. He went down to pick up his dad's old pickup. The brake light came on. He did the sensible thing and left the pickup there to get the brakes fixed.
Tuesday: Behind the Colonel's desk is a storage area. Cubicle partitions divide the room into conference room/office and storage. Since she was out Tuesday I finally had permission to go back there and sort through 24 drawers of files. And the 4 boxes on top of the cabinets. Can't forget them.
Bruce spent 3 hours working on a birthday card for the Colonel. That's standard for him, but still disgusting. I tried putting him to work. I handed him the 4 boxes and asked him to go sort their contents. A little while later I look out into the office and see him pulling smaller boxes from inside the big box. The smaller boxes looked suspiciously familiar.
"Bruce." I say. "What's that in your hand?"
"It says 'Swann Collection' on the side."
"There's another set of those? We just packed those up yesterday. The Colonel is taking those slides home."
"These are those."
"Are you done sorting the other boxes?"
"No, I sorted stuff the other day and the Colonel said I was doing it wrong. 'Don't throw that out.' So I'm not doing that anymore."
"So you're going through already packed boxes and unpacking them!"
"I was curious what was in them."
"You're undoing our hard work because you're nosy!?!"
"Uh"
"What's wrong with you? You can't do simple tasks? What are those? Are those empty folders the ones we asked you to take and put with the others?"
"Uh."
"You can't even take folders from one room to another?"
"Get out! We tried to make you useful but you can't even carry empty folders from one room to another. You're emptying packed boxes. You're actively counterproductive. GET OUT!"
"Well maybe I should leave."
"You definitely should leave. Right now."
That night he drove back to Virginia Beach for the truck. I should make it clear that it's a 5 hour drive from DC in good traffic. He drove there and back. For some reason he was "sick" in the morning.
Most of the office will be telecommuting 4 days a week. Everybody thinks he should be fired or at least be made to go to the office every day. But the Colonel is willing to give him the chance to screw up. Apparently the first part of his screw up is to move to a place 6 hours from our new offices. On Wednesdays he thinks he'll drive up for the day and drive back. In fact he'll wake up several hours late, get stuck in traffic, and show up in the office when the rest of us are packing up to go home for the day.
The boy just ain't right.
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