A week or so ago, my co-worker Barney left the company for good. Honestly, I can't say I felt all that sad about it, which made me feel bad. I wish him well on all his future endeavors, but in some ways I'm a bit relieved. It did cause me about another two days of extra work to release an engineering notice he left not quite closed when he left, but that's OK. You gotta do what you gotta do. When he left, he didn't really have another job lined up. His plan was to take a bit of a break from work first. He said he had a couple opportunities either on the east side of the state or down in Florida. I know his mom lives in Florida and seems like she might need help, but he also seemed like he might not go there. So who knows.
He did have some good qualities. He was a very "persistent worker" as someone said. And by all appearances he always tried to do the right thing. The issue sometimes came in when he didn't seem to understand what the right thing was - mostly in an unaware way, not in a malicious way. Also, once he understood a concept, I think he really got it. But, it often took many repetitions for him to understand.
I wouldn't say we ever got into any arguments or had any bad blood between us, but even after three years I still never felt like I really knew him or understood him. He kind of mystified me. Here are some details on why.
First of all, for about the last six months he wasn't actually using his cubicle. Maybe once a day he'd stop by for five minutes. He spent pretty much all of his time squatting (figuratively, not literally) with his laptop on a lab bench in the back corner. He'd sit there even when he wasn't doing lab work - when he was doing "office" type of work. Sometimes he would use the cubicle if he needed to make some phone calls. Rickshaw, Kadmium, and I put forth several theories. First we thought maybe we were too loud and breaking his concentration. Then we thought maybe it was just Rickshaw he didn't want to be near. We could never figure it out for real. I didn't verbally express this theory, but I think maybe it made him feel safer to sit in a corner with solid walls and lab sounds rather than sitting with his back facing the entrance to our cubicle area. Or, maybe he didn't like the vibration of the floor that sometimes happens. Or, the cold drafts and noise that come from the air handling system. Maybe he didn't like sharing his cubicle with a more senior female engineer. Who knows.
As he's been working here longer, a lot of his really nervous tics like drumming his fingers, etc. for the most part weren't very obvious anymore. This seemed like a good thing. But, he was still overly polite. In my opinion, so polite and apologetic to be annoying. To me it didn't seem so much like humility and politeness, but more like really poor self esteem. He also shied away from attention (good or bad) at almost all costs. This causes me to wonder.....are there really people who are naturally polite to a fault? Are there people who naturally do not want any limelight at all? This seems kind of contrary to what I know - that human nature is selfish, and we all have an inner need to be recognized and appreciated in some way. Was Barney born the way he was, or did some traumatic childhood experience or abuse cause him to become that way?
Richshaw and Kadmium were also discussing him a bit, and their conclusion was that Barney was so humble and polite and didn't want to cause any trouble, which is why he never initiated conversation. He never wanted to risk being a bother to anyone. Maybe......and that's probably the correct explanation. I never got a "danger" vibe from him, but sometimes, to me he seemed so odd and isolated that I wondered if he was secretly a serial killer.
We have a team meeting once every two weeks, and there are about twenty of us all in one room. Our boss has been quite clear on several occasions that we're expected to consistently attend this meeting. Lots of engineers hate meetings and wish they didn't have to attend, but they still do attend because our boss wants us to. To me, it seemed like Barney tried to avoid these meetings as much as possible. And, when he did attend, he would always sit in the back in a chair that was not pulled up to the U-shaped table that most of us would be sitting at. This further contributed to my poor self esteem theory.
There were a couple times when I saw him stand up for himself or show some emotion. One time was when we were discussing future work, and he made it quite clear to our project leader that he wanted to do design work and not spend all his time following test requests through the lab. The other time was when I was asked to help review some of his parts lists. He became very defensive about it, and it was clear he didn't think he needed/wanted anybody to help review his work. Unfortunately, I couldn't grant his wish on that one. We painstakingly reviewed every parts list per the command of our project leader (after Barney lobbied that he didn't need any help with the review of the documents). I'm pretty sure we wounded his pride on that one, but there was some evidence the review was warranted.
Maybe I shouldn't post all these thoughts in print at all. Charity covers a multitude of sins you know. And it's not nice to speak ill of the departed. But I feel the need to solicit some opinions and/or insights from my readers to see if they can shed any light on this just in case I meet someone similar in the future. He wasn't all bad. When you could get him to laugh, he had a very infectious laugh. And he did a lot of work for the company.
I guess I'll never know the true Barney - he'll continue to remain an enigma.
