NOTE: The names in this story have been changed. Once you read it, you will understand why.
A few years ago, we had a new salaried employee start at work. I will call him Crazy Bob. I didn’t get to meet him until the end of his first week when I went to lunch with him, and a guy named Ed that was mentoring him in his new job.
They sat us at a table large enough to hold 6 people although there were only 3 of us. Ed and I sat across from each other and Crazy Bob sat at the other end of the table. Crazy Bob was either talking or texting on his phone the whole time. I thought he was probably taking care of some business with just moving so I didn’t think much of it. Occasionally he would lean in and start talking about something completely unrelated to anything that we were talking about. One time, he leans in and asks Ed if he’s into guns. Crazy Bob was in the National Guard and had done 4 tours of duty in Iraq. Ed says he has guns but he’s not a fanatic about them. It turns out that Crazy Bob is a gun nut. He told us had several ideas for patents he was working on related to guns and other weapons that he had shared with defense contractors. At one point, he shows us a picture of him in a bunch of military gear that he would normally wear in the field. There are guns, bullet belts, helmets and all sorts of other things he is wearing. Then he leans away from us and is back into whatever he’s doing on his phone.
Part of Crazy Bob’s new job was to run meetings that I would normally be required to attend. The following week he attends the first of one of these meetings. Ed was leading the meeting so Crazy Bob could get a feel for how these meetings go. I ended up sitting next to Crazy Bob, who was distracted by his phone and not paying attention to the meeting. At one point in the middle of the meeting, he leans over to me and asked, “Did I ever show you a picture of my dog?” I had seen the picture at some point earlier in the day but he showed it to me again. He pulls back his phone and it looks like he is swiping through his pictures the he shows me another saying, “Here’s another picture of my dog.” He swipes some more and says, “Here’s a picture of me when I’m serious about my work!” It was the picture I had seen during the lunch of him in his military garb. He swipes some more and says, “Here’s a picture of all the guns I had on me.” It was a picture of his guns and bullet belts. He swipes some more and says, “Here’s a picture of all the other stuff I had on.” There were canteens, helmets and other military stuff. It was as much stuff as I had seen in the first picture. He swipes more and says, “Here’s a picture of my wife.” It was a headshot of a lady. It wasn’t the best picture in the world. It was blurry and maybe a little pixelated. I couldn’t really tell how old she was or how attractive she was from this picture. He swipes some more and says, “Here’s another picture of my wife.” This picture is more in focus, but it’s a picture of a woman standing in front of a big screen TV. She is wearing a white top and black leather pants and facing the TV, her back to whoever was taking the camera. I’m trying to process this. I’m asking myself, “Did he just show me a picture of his wife’s ass? I think he just showed me a picture of his wife’s ass!” As I’m process this, he is swiping his phone and says, “Here’s another picture of my wife.” This picture looks almost identical to the previous one, but it is zoomed in where it’s just showing her ass. There is no doubt that he is showing me a picture of his wife’s ass.
He doesn’t show me any pictures for a while or talk to me. I’m still trying to figure out why he would show me the pictures of his wife. Is he just proud of the way she looks? Is he a swinger looking for people to swing with? If so, I really don’t want to know any more about that.
Later in the meeting, he leans over and starts telling me a story about how he got his job here. He was living in Michigan at the time but met with a local National Guard unit. He was looking for a job in this area and had just interviewed with another factory in town. He told me they said they were impressed with his resume but didn’t have anything for him at the time. He was getting ready to leave town when someone from out HR department called him to come for an interview. He told me he thought it was divine intervention that got him the job. I thought to myself, “What does God have against our company?”
I had told a few people about the new guy sharing pictures of his wife. It got back to his supervisor who was not happy about it. The supervisor called me into his office to ask me to tell him what happened. When I told him the story, I could tell he was not happy with his new employee. I told the supervisor that I was not offended by what I he had done and that I had been shown much worse. It wasn’t anything that I thought he should get in trouble over and I was more concerned with him not paying attention in a meeting where he was supposed to be learning his new job. Then the supervisor tells me that he has had other complaints about the Crazy Bob. Crazy Bob is extremely tall, and one time was in the men’s room, he looked over the top of the stall at someone, supposedly to check to see if they were occupied.
After this discussion, I was a little concerned that the supervisor was going to say something to Crazy Bob. I was concerned what a gun nut would do if confronted about this, especially if I was the only person he had shown the pictures of his wife’s ass. He might think that I was had complained. I decided to tell my boss about it just in case anything got weird. I also thought he would enjoy hearing the story.
When I told my boss, he told me the name of the person that Crazy Bob had peeked at in the men’s room. I went to that person and he told me his story. He said he was sitting on the toilet and suddenly, he looked up and Bob was staring at him over the stall door. He shrugged his shoulders before Bob stopped staring. This guy had shared his story in a similar way that I did, thinking it was just odd and funny. When the Crazy Bob’s supervisor had heard it, he blew it out of proportion. He told Bob’s supervisor not to say anything about it but said that he did anyway.
A few weeks after that, I was coming into the plant from the parking lot. As I walked from my car to the door, I passed by a big truck and its motor was running. I didn’t see anyone in the vehicle. I didn’t recognize the vehicle either and didn’t think to tell anyone about this truck. I didn’t remember it until lunchtime when Ed and I were going to lunch. We walked by the truck and it was still running. When I told Ed the truck was running when I came in, he told me it was Crazy Bob’s truck. He called someone to get them to tell Crazy Bob that his truck was running. When we returned from lunch, the truck was no longer running. We didn’t know if Bob had gotten the message or if the truck ran out of gas. A little bit later, I walked by Crazy Bob’s desk and asked him what was up with his truck. He said, “You aren’t going to believe this, but I’ve got a poltergeist in my truck! My wife’s house is haunted and sometimes that thing follows me to work! I was at a guard meeting 2 weeks ago and I stopped for gas on my way home. I couldn’t find my wallet. I looked all over for it and even called back to my supervising officer to see if I had left it there. He couldn’t find it. I had looked under my shaving kit twice and hadn’t found it. As I was about to pull away, I picked up my shaving kit and there it was. If someone we don’t know goes down in the basement of my wife’s house, that thing will throw shit off the shelves at them!”