Life Musings

I'd like to whine a little bit about idiot co-workers. Not my current colleagues, mind you, but people that I've worked with in the past.

First, there's "Wippy" (not his real name), this company vice-pres that I once worked with. The less said about him, the better. Suffice to say that people did not like him, and for good reason.

Then there's GC, this grad student that I was forced to work with. First of all, he was rather crude for an educated man. He would habitually utter racial slurs (referring to Indians as "Hadji," for example), and he would habitually answer the telephone with a gruff "Hello?!!" He also had a sign up in his cubicle that said, "This is a fag-free zone." Now, I don't care what your stance on homosexuality is; such a display is simply inappropriate, no matter what.

Now, I'm pretty tolerant of co-workers who make mistakes. Heaven knows that I've made my share. I'll never forget the time when I was desperately trying to assemble a near-prototype robotic control system, with a lot of telephone help from the manufacturer's customer support. As I was trying to debug the system, one step at a time, he decided on his own to disconnect two of the motor control amplifiers and put them in the same enclosure as two other amps. Why? 'Cuz it looked prettier that way, that's why.

I had to gentle point out that I was trying to debug the system. I pointed out that it was very important for us to perform all changes one at a time, so that we could isolate whatever problems were occurring. He said nothing in response, but I hope that he was suitably chagrined.

Even worse was his buddy Dave, a real hothead. We had all predicted that Dave would most likely shoot himself in the foot once he graduated and started working somewhere. Part of me hopes that he learned his lesson graciously, but another part of me (a part that I'm not proud of) hopes that he was humiliated, just as he would habitually brownbeat the people around him.

I remember when Dave tripped over a wire that had been strung across the floor as a hasty prototyping measure. He grabbed a knife, cut through the wire, and then acted outraged when the machine it was connected to stopped working. What were you thinking, fella?