I didn't start noticing that something was amiss for about a week.
In the four years that Charlie had worked for me, I don't think he ever left the office any later than 5:02. But suddenly he started working late, a couple of times he was still staring at his computer when I left. Some people have suggested that the change in his behavior should have set off alarm bells, but I think I would have had to have been clairvoyant to know that anything was wrong, at that point.
During the second week, I noticed that not only was he working late, he was coming in early as well. It wasn't until maybe the third time it happened that I realized that the clothes he was wearing when I arrived in the morning were the same clothes that he had been wearing when I left the night before. So he hadn't actually gone home at all.
At that point I called him into my office and told him that, while I appreciated his dedication, I wasn't going to allow him to work all night. He argued with more passion than I had seen from him in the four years that he worked for me – he was making progress, he was inventing new ways of using this new tool, I had to let him put in a lot of extra hours if I expected him to meet his deadline.
I sent him home.
When I saw him the next morning, he was frantic. Turns out that he had bought a computer as soon as I sent him home – which came as something of a shock to me, because it never occurred to me that he might not have owned a computer. (But that does explain the late nights at the office.) He actually paid the Geek Squad to set it up and hook it up to the Internet for him – but when the Geeks left, Charlie was crushed to learn that his special Facebook account didn't work from his house. (He told me that he almost called the Geek Squad and asked them to come back, but he realized just in time that he couldn't very well reveal the existence of the secret account to them.)
I explained to him that, for security reasons, the account would work only from the computer in his office. He begged me to let him access the account from his home. I refused. He pleaded for so long that it began to get uncomfortable, but he finally accepted that I wasn't going to give in.
I was happy to see that he left the office that day at five, straight up. He actually smiled and waved on the way out. The old Charlie Carruthers was back.
Or so I thought.
| Next |  |
[ Everybody's Friend Home Page | Selected Writings ]
©2013 Henry Charles Mishkoff