Monday

Hi

This is one of my experiences working on the Isle of Wight.  Hope Bob is out there!

I Was With Bob

It was hot in the office in Plessey, hot and sweaty. This was our monthly ‘get together’ as our enthusiastic boss put it. During these sessions the whole microwave team discussed what had to be achieved, what hadn’t been achieved and why. Minutes were kept and reviewed at the start of the meeting. This was usually the most painful part and these meetings had begun to develop an emotional group-analysis feel. Raymond had been the first victim.

He was a young trendy thin chap from London who talked really fast and had his straight long hair tied back in a ponytail. The first time I saw him I thought this chap should be in sales not here. Certainly at this meeting he was probably wishing he was in sales or anywhere else but here, for that matter, getting the roasting he was receiving. It began innocently enough. While reading through the minutes it became apparent Raymond had not even started work on the array antenna that he had assured us would be completed by this meeting. The division manager paused and lowered his head bull-like in Raymond’s direction.

We had a teacher like that at primary school. He wore bifocal lens and when about to go in for the kill would lean both forearms heavily on his desk, half rising from his seat while lowering his head. His beady eyes would glare over the top of his glasses and focus on the object of his wrath. As a child I used to think of him as trifocal.

Our manger did a similar manoeuvre now and Raymond’s face became stained with colour. His explanation was feeble by any standard. Okay, if one had misjudged how fast the task could be accomplished or even found the project simply impossible, that can happen, but not to have tried, well that was tough to explain away. Unfortunately, under attack Raymond tried first to change his story and then worse still, attempted to blame someone else. That was when it became embarrassing and uncomfortable for me. Another person’s humiliation never seems to give me the adrenaline high that others experience. In sympathy my stomach muscles clenched and unclenched in uncomfortable rhythm. I looked around the room and saw the majority of those there were enjoying this spectacle and joining in on the kill. Beam me up Scotty! The meeting ended with the manager handing Raymond back his entails and roughly sewing him up with a ‘you’ll have learned a lot from this experience’. Yet from the happily relieved and flushed faces the team had, on leaving the office it was as if they had had a refreshing outing. Is it because I’m the only female on the team that I feel just weary and slightly grubby? You know that feeling when you’ve sat up very late watching a disturbing play on television, and afterwards feel so very tired and in need of a mental shower before being able to sleep.

One of the team is a chap called Bob. He is very like one of those figures that people make fun off. Huge spectacles, tall and lanky with huge hands and feet. He has permanently hunched shoulders as if he is uncomfortable with being so tall. His face is long and on the ugly side of plain and yet he is someone I have come to respect so much. Everyone on the site fiddles their travelling expenses; it is as natural as breathing to claim for first class travel and then go second class, or by car, thus pocketing the difference. Bob would never, could never do this. Therefore anyone travelling with Bob anywhere had to be honest too. If three people were travelling together to Portsmouth for a meeting, then it was a bit difficult to explain why one of the three spent so much less. It amazed and gave me a little spark of hope that people accepted this. Okay, he took a lot of stick at first but gradually people grew to realise that, just as the sun shone in the morning, this was one of those intractable rules of nature, or laws of physics that just did not waver. Overhearing two engineers in the lab, filling in their expense forms I heard one say ‘I made twenty pounds on my trip this time, not bad for a day out’, the other in a sad but placid fashion murmured, ‘I was with Bob’. In fact it became one of those well-used phrases to signify innocence.

Once we fixed a huge plastic spider to the roof of our lab, by a series of strings attached to the door. When anyone entered, this huge monster would swing down from the corner of the room towards them. It was very disconcerting and as our room had the only combination lock on site, there was that prolonged delicious anticipation as we heard the fingers of our next victim fumble with the combination lock. To the cries of surprise and accusation we all made the same shout of innocence, ‘I was with Bob’. The fact that someone so uncool, so traditional, so different as Bob was, could survive in Plessey, gave me, as another ‘outsider’, much consolation.

After one particularly fraught meeting, I cornered him and asked him why it was, he always managed to come out of these meetings ‘smelling of roses’. He was never the subject of the wolf pack, or a party to their games. He said, he had two principles that he never wavered from in such circumstances. One was that he never spoke on any subject unless he knew more than everyone else in the room on that particular subject. Secondly, when he was asked how long it would take him to do a particular job or project, he always thought to himself how long he thought it would take and then mentally multiplied it by three. This figure would then be given and duly minuted after some discussion. The second principle enabled Bob to almost always have the satisfaction of finishing his project before the deadline, giving an efficient and competent feel to his work. The first principle meant Bob stayed silent during many board meetings and sometimes refused to be drawn on subjects. When he did speak, however, it was as if the oracle had spoken and a silence followed, as his words were thoughtfully digested and respected.

Black sheep like Bob are gems; they light the way for others because they dare to be different and in doing so make room for others to do the same. I, as the only woman on our team of engineers, always looked upon Bob as the workhorse of our animal farm, uncomplaining, diligent and productive, but not handicapped by jealously, greed or aggression. Such individuals create an environment around them in which learning can take place and growth occurs. They bring the principle of equality into the work place because their odd existence makes room for everyone else, to be what they wanted and that included me.