Alright, alright, the wait is over. Its time for another inductee to enter the illustrious Co-Worker Hall of Fame. If you’ve missed the first two posts in this series you can find them here. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, you can nominate someone for the C-W HoF by emailing info@skitzzo.com. With all of that out of the way… here we go.

Absent Albert: Absent Al is probably the most frustrating Co-Worker I have ever worked with… that is when he was there. It was one of those fun situations where Al showed up just enough to let me know that I’d need to be covering his duties. When he was there good ole’ Bert would critique my work and that of every other employee in the entire company. It wasn’t a big company but you had to admire the man’s dedication. This had a double affect of sorts. The first was that Al always seemed busy when he was there and the second was that no one else really minded when Al decided to take one of his patented days off. That is except the person who had to do twice the work to make up for this lazy sod of a…. well this just isn’t that kind of a site.

Anyway, the fact that Al was less reliable than my grandparents’ 300K mile Buick wasn’t even the worst part. It was the excuses he would come up with. Over the course of a few months, Bert had a few illnesses, a couple of family emergencies (which usually consisted of him doing odd jobs around the house before going out to lunch), and his back gave out more often than the French army. After one such bout with 24-hour polio, or whatever it was that week, and the mandatory 3-day recovery period, Al heroically made it in to work on a Friday… and promptly asked to take a week off for his summer vacation… his SECOND summer vacation.

So, as you might imagine I took issue with Al questioning my work ethic one day towards the end of summer when I decided that I would indeed take the personal day I had requested 3 months in advance. Apparently we were a bit behind because good ole Bert had come down with a bout of pneumonia and hadn’t gotten his work done. Evidently sitting around in his robe all day and then chasing the ice cream man around the block put excess stress on his lungs. Will wonders never cease? Anyway when I told him that I was still taking the day off, Al got mad.

“Oh, so that’s how its gonna be huh? I guess that lets me know about your work ethic.”

I went off… “Are you kidding me?!? YOU’RE talking to ME about work ethic? You must be outside your mind!”

“Well I mean we’re behind and you’re taking the day off. I just don’t think that’s right.”

“Well isn’t that dandy? First of all we’re not behind, YOU’RE behind. Second of all, you don’t take days off, you take days on!”

After everyone else in the office, including the owner, were done laughing, Al finally realized exactly what it was I had said…. late as usual.

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