Part of my working career was spent being the construction manager at a university. It was a wonderful job and I worked with a lot of great and also, some rather strange people. Sometimes it’s the strange people with interesting idiosyncrasies that tend to stand out in one’s mind. I’ll share about two different individuals.
For example, one of the chemistry professors at the university was a man of renowned brilliance, (at least that’s what he claimed) but he lacked all common sense as far as I could tell, and I’ve always sort of prided myself in being able to judge if people had common sense. For instance, if a man can carry on a conversation about day to day activities, current events, remembers the names of his wife and kids, has a few hobbies, can ask and learn things from other people, then he most likely has common sense.
Two things stand out about this Dr. of Chemistry that made me realize the man had no common sense. Our construction site was fenced off; the road in front of the student union building was torn out and would soon be replaced with landscaping, trees, flowers, grass and the like. An army of excavators, backhoes, dump trucks and graders worked at the site from sunup to sunset on a daily basis.
I was in the pickup with the foreman of the construction company. We inched along at a modest 2 mph discussing various aspects of the project; some grade changes that had to be made so drainage water would flow, and we reviewed the schedule. From out of nowhere, Dr. Chemistry came walking through the middle of the construction project reading a book (most likely about organic chemistry or its close relative) and smacked right into the side of my moving pickup and fell over, flat on his back!
“Can’t you watch where you’re going?” Dr. Chemistry shouted as he stood and brushed himself off. “You could have killed me.”
Startled, I jumped out to inspect the pickup, making sure he hadn’t put a dent in the door.
Dr. Chemistry looked around and then eyed me warily. “Hey, what did you do with the road? You can’t take our road, why…this is university property, now put it back!”
It was my pleasure to escort Dr. Chemistry off of the project. He seemed to have no recollection climbing over the construction fence or even dodging the heavy equipment as he traversed through the project, eventually walking into the side of my pickup. He was even concerned that his book had been damaged and thought I should pay for the damages!
On another occasion this same Dr. Chemistry decided to take up jogging. One of my brother-in-laws was a coach at the same university and just happened to be in the field house teaching an archery class, when Dr. Chemistry decided to jog around the track, while of course, reading a book! Arrows flew all around Dr. Chemistry as he jogged, oblivious to the dangers that flew past him. When my brother-in-law noticed the new jogger, he had all the students draw an arrow and point them at Dr. Chemistry. He then stepped in front of Dr. Chemistry and pulled the book from his hand and then turned his head to face all of the bows and arrows!
Dr. Chemistry was shook up and told my brother-in-law in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t be in there shooting arrows since he had taken up jogging and this was the only time he could do it. It didn’t seem to matter to him that a class was in session.
One of the drawbacks at the university was the ever constant call for meetings. Some people were so regimented about having meetings that even though there would be no agenda items for a meeting, and no one could come up with anything to discuss of any value to the university, a meeting would still be called because the time had already been allocated and so we would have the meeting.
It was in one of these meaningless meetings that I had a rather absurd conversation with one of the university administrators. It was the first…and also the last time the man ever talked to me.
He leaned over to me and in a very soft but also very sarcastic voice said, ”This has to be the most boring meeting I’ve ever attended! I don’t even know why we’re here.”
He didn’t have to convince me of that. The man then bent down and opened his brief case. He fumbled around for a few minutes and then pulled out a brochure about China. He smiled as he looked at it under the table.
“Are you going to China,” I whispered?
He looked at me and in a nasally tone of superiority whispered back, “I’ve already been to China. As a matter of fact, I have been to more than 13 countries!”
I must confess that the air of superiority in one’s speech tends to rub me the wrong way, so I decided to have some fun…at his expense of course, even if he most likely would never get it. I looked at him and whispered, “Wow, that’s great.” His chest seemed to grow 3-4 inches with my comment. “Does that mean you’ve been to 14 countries?”
He gave me a perplexed look and wrinkled his nose. “What are you talking about? I said I have been to more than 13 countries.”
“So how many more,” I prodded? “Like 1 more or 5 more or what?”
His face took on a more distorted look. “You don’t get it do you?” He sneered quietly through his teeth. “I already told you, I have been to more than 13 countries.” The veins started to protrude a little in his temples and his face took on sort of a pinkish hue.
I could tell the man was getting annoyed, so I smiled and did some quick calculations under the table on my fingers. He had a perplexed look on his face as he watched what I was doing. When I finished counting, I turned and whispered, “Me too. I’ve been in and worked in 38 more countries than 13! So how many countries have you actually been to? My count is 51, what’s yours?”
He didn’t answer a word. He just glared at me and steam seemed to rise from his collar again.
Actually, my wife has never cared for me telling about this little exchange of words because according to her, she says it makes me sound like a snob. So just for the record I am not a snob, nor anything close to being a snob. However, I don’t care to be talked down to, so when someone addresses me with an air of superiority it kind of gets under my skin. I still find it amusing that a university administrator had a hard time figuring out how many countries he had actually been to.
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Memoirs of a Worker
Non-FictionI have had a very eventful life. The stories that I post are from real events that I have witnessed. Some of them are quite humorous, some may be totally outrageous and shocking, but all of them are true (Most of the time, real events are lots bette...
