Memorable People

I speak for the entire industry when I say that we interact with a lot of people on a daily basis. Most of whom we immediately forget. If we didn't, we'd go insane.

Well. More insane than we already are.

Anyway.

The law of large numbers dictates that despite forgetting most of the people, it is still possible to rack up quite a collection of memorable folks. Shamelessly capitalizing on a specific quirk of humanity to best remember those that fall into the ‘not awesome’ category, here is a list of the (not great) memorable people I can think of off the top of my head.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably say ‘ick’ at least once…as someone who is not a fan of musicals, I can assert quite confidently that it’s definitely better than Cats.

1. Contractor who called so often that I had her phone number memorized, could glance at the caller ID when the office phone rang, and tell my coworker to transfer the call to me because it's so-and-so. I spoke to her seven times in one day. To compound the issue, and for reasons that I will never understand, she would cry more than half of the time. It was a bit much.

2. Terminated a woman who was caught picking her scabs and eating them while on the production floor in a cleanroom environment. A cleanroom. As in sterile. As in: contaminant-free because the components they're producing could end up in, say, someone's heart.

3. Walked a lady off a job after she took her gloves off and stuck her hands in a chemical cleaning compound just to see what would happen. Enough said.

4. Walked a lady off a job after she got fired, and she spent the entirety of the walk explaining how she "got totally high on mushrooms once when she was weed-whipping last summer."

5. Contractor who got pissed when her taxes came back wrong, and she owed the IRS a shit-ton of money because her W4 was incorrect. She told our accounting department that the issue stemmed from her social security number being entered incorrectly in our system. Further investigation revealed that she deliberately gave us an incorrect number because (as later explained) she "didn't want anyone to steal her information." Interestingly, she did not seem to be any less pissed off when we explained that the issue was entirely her fault.

6. Continuing a theme: People calling in super angry because their important tax information doesn't ever get to them at their home address. Why? The majority decision seems to be to never put put your apartment number on your address?!? Do these people think their mailman knows (or cares) what apartment they, specifically, live in? No. He's going to show up at the apartment complex, put the mail that has the apartment number on it in the corresponding box, and send everything else back as undeliverable. But hey, if it makes you feel better to call someone up and yell at them because you don’t know your own damn address, be my guest.

7. Applicant who explained away the lack of work for the past three years as "just, you know, bumming around on my buddy's couch. You know?" No. I don't know.

8. Another applicant, when asked why he applied for the specific job for which he applied, stated that his "mom told him to get a job, so I just applied to everything to make her happy so she'd leave me alone." I guess you gotta quit mooching off your mom at some point, so it’s hard to argue with that one.

9. Called a guy to discuss his application, and he told me he totally had time to talk one such as myself. He was just sitting in the hot tub, relaxing, and wouldn't mind chatting with me while he soaks.

10. A lady answered the phone for a male applicant. Told me to "hold on, he's in the bathroom." Comes back a minute later to inform me that he would be ready in about three minutes if I wanted to wait. I did not.

With such a catalog to ruminate on, I feel it’s only human to come clean and admit that we do wonder where these folks end up in life after they pass through our company and gossip about them around the metaphorical watercooler in the office. In fact, this post was prompted by a recent update from a client that one of my hires from a few years ago was just promoted into a supervisory role at their company. (Yay! Not everyone sucks! Plot twist!)