Garth

Everybody differs from others, but colleague Garth was really different. He had an excellent knowledge of a lot of things, but in particular about his work field in the office. On top of that he was always available to give you very good, very thorough advice if you had questions about foreign taxes or social insurances. The thoroughness was great, but also a disability. He seemed to be never able to make decisions on the cases he handled. There were always new questions to be asked, other aspects to be looked upon. He would talk about this in a very loud way which was not exactly everybody's cup of tea, so it had been hard to find someone who wanted to share a room with him.

He had a habit that required a lot of his working hours. Garth always wanted to check packages on which was mentioned ca. or approx.. After counting the amount of things, like bolts; nuts; tissues; rubber bands; raisins and so on, he would exclaim: "There are never more than they say there should be! This tells you 50 paperclips, but there are only 46. That's thievery! If it's 49 I can understand, but 46 is ridiculous.

One day Garth told everybody he had thought of something ingenious. He had designed a spreadsheet that would warn him when he should buy a new box of sugar cubes for the coffee. He refused to use the sachets the office provided with our coffee. According to him in that sugar there were chemicals added; rather he wanted to be safe than sorry. So whenever he took a cube it would be registered on his spreadsheet.

His roommate was not his friend. Garth was always ready to point out that he didn't have friends, he seemed to be proud of that. If anyone said Thank you my friend, he would react with You're not my friend. I don't have friends. I had a nickname for his roommate, never told others about it. For me he was You have to be crazy wanting to work over here and got along very well with This is not MY work. They would get extra coffee from the machine for their endless coffee sessions together with various other colleagues. Normal talk would be to complain about the work stress and the awful management.

The two of them came up with something and they had to tell everybody in the hallway. In every room were two workers and the two friends went from room to room, bursting with laughter.
They had added one sugar cube to the box Garth was saving in his desk. "Let's see what happens."
They warned me: "You are not going to ruin the fun." I told them I don't want anything to do with it.
After a few days Garth himself went from room to room: "I don't get this. The spreadsheet is not correct. I have one cube extra. This can't be right."

The coffee sessions of the friends and their mates were filled with laughter for days on end. After a week colleague You have to be crazy to work over here got some remorse and told Garth what they had done. That solved the problem for Garth but also ruined the work relation between him and the pranksters. You have to crazy to work over here had to switch desks with a female colleague who had been ill for months and could not object sharing an office room with a person with no friends.
After she finally returned to the office she turned out to be able to get along with Garth very well.
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