We all know that today is Scott’s last day and usually it would be customary for one’s workmates to do a little bit of a speech, but Scott hates to be the centre of attention so we’ll just say a big thanks and best of luck with everything.
Seeing as though we’ve got you all here, however, we’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about ‘Bob’ – this other guy we worked with a while back when we were working somewhere else. He recently quit his admin job too so this is apt. Bob was a really cool guy and we all worked in jobs spookily similar to our current roles at a different university, called … Melmourne University. Anyway, Bob had done time at this Uni for a while. He’d sort of stumbled into a career in administration that didn’t wholly suit his personality; he was more of an outdoors type. Sometimes he even got in trouble for fixing his bike in the office and if you even mentioned that you had a flat tyre his eyes would light up and he’s bounce out to the bike rack to fix it for you. He had regular panic attacks when his cycling gloves got lost in amongst his files. He said it was just because he was unable to ride his bike without gloves, but we think it was really the symbolism of this fabricated office life eating his real life. He saw the files as an uncontrollable beast becoming more and more consuming with each day.
While it was kind of surprising that Bob ended up working in an office, you could also see exactly how he got there. You see, Bob loved people. Most people have a lot of discretion when distributing kindness but Bob loved everyone. He had time for the most laborious of phone calls and was friendly to people with even the stupidest questions. For this reason Bob was forever on the phone. And no one only called him once; they phoned back, again and again and again. Walking around the campus with Bob was a little like being in a Disney parade. Every second person waved and called out to him.
Bob particularly loved the ladies. He purchased his lunch every day and proved that the way to a man’s heart truly is through his stomach by having a crush on a girl in each of the campus eateries. The most obsessive of crushes was ‘wedges girl’ a sultry Eastern European looker who always offered him sour cream.
Once we clued in to Bob’s love of the ladies we tried our best to help him along. We hand-picked potential girlfriends, took secret photos of him and emailed them to single girls we knew and tried hard to establish the relationship status of every girl within a 10km radius. When we were assessing applications we would always show Bob the photocopy of the applicant’s passport to see if he found her pretty. We’d shout ‘Found you a girlfriend!’ but he was never that impressed. Nor was he impressed when we squealed and giggled in the background when he was on the phone to a pretty girl. Or when we monitored his tone when serving people at the counter and pointed out to him each time he deepened his voice. Or when we queried his heightened level of service to an attractive female. The list goes on.
Bob could be quite shy about making the first move so we’d sometimes chat up girls for him but he’d usually clam up. It wasn’t only girls that Bob could be reserved with, when he announced he was quitting he was reserved in applying for a new job so we helpfully emailed some applications through to places we thought he might like to work. And if we were out with him we would always ask people if they would like to hire him. Bob thwarted all our attempts and this helped us to learn another truth about Bob. He works to his own schedule. You can’t hurry him along.
Although we only worked with Bob for a short time we began to notice a circular trend to his life. He started out on the couch assessing what he wanted out of life and then his good friend dragged him into the front office. His people skills lead him from one job to the next and then he ended up back on the front office. Now he’s heading back to the couch for some more thinking time.
We believe that wherever Bob ends up he will continue to wow people with his patience, friendliness, generosity and sense of humour. We hope he ends up somewhere outdoors having adventures that he can write into a book one day.
We think Bob will go on to live an incredibly exciting life, marry Wedges Girl and die with only two regrets. One: that he never took up the offer to join the Australian Boys Choir when he was in primary school and two: that he never got in that damn box.
