The Return of Skippy Whitebread

My manager Skippy Whitebread is back to work today, after spending the last 7 weeks in Texas at Military Janitor School. He recently transferred from the Army National Guard, where he had to serve a year and a half in Iraq, to the relatively cozier (and Iraqi-free) Air National Guard.

As his new assignment requires him to climb into the cockpits of military aircrafts and clean them out after the pilots have made a mess of them, the U.S. government paid to send Skippy to some Air Force base in Texas for 7 weeks of intense training on how to throw garbage away and how to properly dust an F-18. And you wonder why our military spending is so high?

So Skippy is back from Janitor School, where hopefully Mr. Clean was there on the last day to present him with the Golden Mop Award. But is he thrilled to be back at work?

Not a chance.

You see, he's been here exactly 2.5 hours now (he never comes to work on time), and already he's sitting at his desk with his head down on the table. We secretly suspect he's sobbing over there, but we're all too chicken to go see if a grown man is crying.

It's quite pathetic to watch - our manager with his head down, like a naughty 5 year old in kindergarten.

Only Skippy hasn't been bad - he's just defeated. The overwhelming piles of crap he has to slog through on a daily basis is bad enough, but now he's come back to 7 weeks worth, all waiting for him. Things change mighty fast around here, and with a gazillion vice presidents and directors to appease, it's amazing we ever get anything done at all.

Skippy left here 7 weeks ago with a schedule that included 30 hours a week of meetings - no exaggeration - and I'm sure a couple more were added to his plate while he was gone. Most of those meetings he could drop out of; they really don't affect our department, but he refuses to let go of anything. He's a nice guy, but delegation and not putting his nose in the middle of areas he doesn't belong aren't exactly his strong suits. So he's a bureaucrat, trapped in his own little OCD world. Sad, really.

His OCD-fueled mind hasn't started in on us yet, but I know it's coming. We can see it all over his face. Obsessive Compulsives have that constant jittery look -- about ready to burst if they don't see everything happen to their pleasure NOW NOW NOW. So it's coming - it's just a matter of him picking his head up off his desk before he'll be back to his usual self.

And that is why my headphones are on extra loud today.

Skippy talks all the time about how much he hates it here, and how he wishes he was back in Iraq. You know your job sucks when you find yourself wishing to be in the middle of a firefight in the Arab desert...

So I hope Skippy is okay. For all our sakes. Otherwise, it's going to be a long, long week around here.