The De-organization of Bob

Another story excerpt from the upcoming collection. This one, well, it's weird, funny, and dark - wait, I think I might have said that for the others ones as well.

A story situated in an Office-like environment (as in, the TV show - though, this was written before that became popular). Two co-workers decided to make a wager that one of them can make our hero, Bob, the nicest most bestest worker in the whole joint, basically go apeshit.

Did I mention, it was a bit dark?

Look for Ethical Aspects of Animal Husbandry this summer.

            The De-Organization of Bob

            As it happened, Dave was just roaming around the office when he spied the open document on Bob's über-organized desktop. Dave's own desktop was littered with icons of past reports, unremembered downloads, aliases for files that didn't exist; in short, it was chaos. A single row of icons ran along the right side of Bob's perfectly centered document. Dave thought of white picket fences bordering groomed yards. Then he thought of his own rat's nest of a yard and reached over to Bob's keyboard. He deftly hit the "apple-a" and "delete". He imagined he heard a whoosh and quickly peered around to see if Bob had returned from coffee. He hit "save" before he sauntered away. He whistled as he walked.

            He was still whistling when he brushed against Bob leaving the coffee room.

            "Dave." Bob nodded.

            Dave whistled a hello. Garth had his feet up on the table. In one hand he held a half eaten cruller, the other held a folded newspaper.

            "Say, Dave, you're a smart guy," Garth gave the paper a snap, " what's a eight letter word for evil?"

            "Sinister."

            Garth took a huge bite out of the donut. "Hey, that fits." He sprayed crumbs as he talked. Dave started to whistle again. "What's with you?"

            "Sshh." Dave held a finger to his lips. He walked over and opened the door a crack. He turned back to Garth and grinned. "Wait for it."

            Garth raised an eyebrow.

            "What? OH NO!"

            Dave chuckled.

            "What'd you do to Bob now?" Garth asked.

            "Not much. He picked a lousy font for such an important report." Dave took a dark chocolate donut out of the box. "The asshole probably had it backed up in four different places anyway. I think the guy organizes his pencil shavings."

            "He's a hard worker."

            "Hard worker my ass. He's got to be the luckiest s.o.b. I've ever met. Always at the right place, right time. Remember the efficiency reports? He came in first because his files were all in perfect hierarchal order. I heard he got a fat bonus. And the power surge last month? Who had everything right up until that morning's work neatly stashed in 100 gig porta-drive?" Dave got up from his chair and walked to the vending machine. He pushed BLACK and then slammed the button for sugar repeatedly. A cardboard cup dropped, followed by a clump of sugar and a thin stream of jet-black coffee.

            "How can you drink that vile stuff?" Garth asked.

            "I'll tell you this much, if Mr. Perfect Putz lost a few files he'd be scrambling."

            "I dunno, Bob's a pretty solid guy."

            "Oh you think so? He didn't seem so solid a few minutes ago. I'd like to see what'd happen if a few more files went missing. Two weeks and he'd be crazy as a shit-house rat."

            "He'd recover. I'd bet on it," said Garth.

            And so the wager was set.

            Dave and Garth often had little side bets going on behind their co-worker's backs. They had polls on who would get fired next; who would file for divorce after getting caught in the utility closet with which secretary; who would go ape-shit and take everyone out with an automatic (thankfully that had yet to happen – though Dave said Bob could be the first).

            For the next few days, whenever Bob went to the bathroom or for coffee, Dave slipped into his cubicle. He'd delete whatever was on the screen, but after Bob started closing and saving everything, Dave had to go for the harddrive. He trashed the ones that looked like reports – he dumped Excel four different times. But Bob always had back-ups. In fact, except for the first day when they'd heard him from the coffee room, Bob said very little about the missing files. One day, out of frustration, Dave swiped all of Bob's pens.

            Dave's cubicle was across from Bob's and he had a little mirror that if angled right gave him a clear view of Bob. Bob returned from the bathroom looking clean and shiny.  Dave watched him sit down and immediately start typing. He didn't even notice the missing pens.

            Later, in the coffee room, Dave told Garth they had to turn up the heat.

            "You're the guy losing the bet. I told you Bob was solid," said Garth.

            "I'm giving him a virus. Something nasty," said Dave.

            "He works on a Mac. They're next to impossible to infect."

            "I know a guy."