For the last 3 and a half years, I've worked for the events department of the college I went to. One of my co-workers has been there for 43 years, which is not just since way before I was born but since even before my dad went to school there. He's been there longer than most of the buildings on the campus. His last name is Batty and that's what everybody calls him, and pretty much everybody who works in our building knows him. The name almost sounds made up, just because he really is pretty much crazy. He talks to himself, and sometimes he's clearly doing it on purpose just to freak people out, but it's hard to tell how often he's doing it it for real. He also has a pretty thick local accent and kind of sounds like 8Ball from 8Ball & MJG and is really hard to understand sometimes. He's a pretty funny dude sometimes, though. He's really set in his ways and is kind of a pain in the ass to work with and has a pretty bad work ethic, but at his age, I don't really blame him. He had a minor heart attack a year or two ago, but came back to work less than a month later. He'd been talking about retiring for years, and everyone kinda wished he would. I mean, he's earned it by now, but every year he'd say this is his last year and then still be there the next. This summer he finally kept his promise, and a few weeks ago he went down to the HR office and put in the paperwork for his retirement. July 1st was supposed to be his last day of work, but last Thursday he had another heart attack, actually two of them, barely a week before retirement. Supposedly he's home already and doing ok, and since his paperwork was already put in his retirement's official. So I guess this isn't a sad story, and I don't really have any point for posting it other than to write about it and get it out of my system. But I am gonna miss that crazy old motherfucker.

Labels: story time

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 8:07 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.