smallest of all small worlds

The guy who sits next to me at work is one of those people who constantly feels the need to prove something for fear of appearing inferior otherwise. He treats every social situation as a contest of wit, always needing to one-up the last person's joke or comment with some biting flourish of his own. Rarely is this funny. Mostly it's just awkward.

He is extremely uptight. Last week, he completely lost it when he couldn't find his magnet. Yes, his magnet. He went storming off to our area manager demanding to know why things were moved without his knowledge or approval.

He has extensive in-depth knowledge about the most worthless things in the world, like how many times a baseball spins on average between leaving the pitcher's hand and connecting with the bat. He takes every opportunity to share facts like this with others, namely me and our 4 additional officemates.

He listens to baseball games through headphones when he's working on his computer. A while back, he suggested that our office pick a team to unite on and root for. We can even listen to their games together and cheer them on in the office. I did not mince my words when I said absolutely not.

Broadway and I joke that his penis is so small, it is negative.

Amazingly, Negative Penis is looking for a new job.

Amazingly, he knocked on the door of Broadway's college-roommate-slash-best-friend's firm.

Amazingly, in his eagerness to make everything a contest in which he has the lead, he reveals this fact to Broadway during happy hour last Friday evening after work.

Not so amazingly for Negative Penis, he didn't know Broadway's connection to the firm.

The backstory here is that the firm has gone through a recent split. Three of the six partners, seen as the smarter and more capable half, left to start their own competing firm. They invited a few people along from the old place, including Broadway's college roommate.

From what Broadway and I could piece together, it seemed that Negative Penis had submitted his resume to the old firm sometime not long before this split happened, and had had a phone interview with someone who evidently took a liking to him. This person also went along to the new firm after the split, then alerted Negative Penis of the situation and advised him to resubmit his resume to the new place.

Negative Penis told us the gist of this story during happy hour to show off how much he was liked and pursued by this firm, to the degree that someone would alert him of the politics and invite him to reapply at the new and better place. In not so many words, NP basically said that the job was in the bag.

A quick phone call to college roommate later, Broadway successfully blocked any chance that NP had getting an interview at the new firm.

We basked in the glory and satisfaction of vigilante justice.