Magneto

I think I've briefly explained my job to you before; that I take half-legible scribbles of electrical layouts and make them look pretty in AutoCAD. One of the guys who has always provided me with such scribbles is a guy that one of my buddies very accurately nicknamed Magneto. As in, the character in the X-Men comics and movies who can manipulate metal with his magnetic super powers. The nickname was given to him (behind his back) because he wears a bangle bracelet everyday that is constantly clinking against his desk. Constantly. And although I'm pretty sure that the actual Magneto character doesn't use a bracelet to activate his power (I think he just creepily reaches towards the metal and thinks real hard), it was just so funny when my buddy came up with that nickname that logistics aside, the name stuck.

There have been times where I've said I hate this guy. There have been times where I've wanted to punch him in the face. Hard. There have been times when I've wished that he'd be hit by a bus. Hard. Not killed by a bus, but injured to the point where he'd be put on permanent disability.

However, please don't think I'm such a horrible person yet. My super strong dislike of Magneto is totally justified:

First of all, I work in a very male-dominant environment. There are 143 people in my department. 14 of us are women. There was a day that I was feeling sick and I had been working on Magneto's project. He could see and hear that I wasn't feeling well, so he came over to me and said, "If you need to go home, don't feel bad about it. I know that I never talk to you -- because you're a girl -- but I talk to the guys all the time and I tell them that it's more important to take care of yourself so that you can be feeling your best at work and be able to focus on the job."

So #1, he's got an issue with my gender.

Secondly, every time he gives me work to do, he takes forever to explain every single little mark-up to me. And he'd start off by saying, "All of these changes are self-explanatory, but I'll explain them to you anyway." And his explanations would be like, "Okay, see this here, I added the letter "L" to the end of this word. It was misspelled P-A-N-E, but the word is supposed to be P-A-N-E-L actually. Panel. So I've added this letter "L" to the end of the word to make it correctly say "Panel" and then you'll circle the "L" to show people that you've corrected the spelling mistake." I'm not exaggerating. All that, just for an "L." And he had really nice handwriting too, so it's not as if he just wanted to make sure I could read his comments. He apparently just thought that I wouldn't be able to figure out what he meant.

So #2, he thinks I'm really stupid. Probably cause I'm a girl.

Thirdly, there was a particular incident where another guy had given me mark-ups to draft and that guy is the type who knows what he means in his head, but has trouble putting it down on paper. So he gives me half-done mark-ups. Sometimes it's obvious that information is missing and I can ask him for clarification. But other times it's not obvious. So I'd draft per his mark-ups and move on. Magneto was the independent reviewer on this particular project and noticed during his review that some things were missing. He called me into a meeting, along with the guy who gave me the half-missing work, and Magneto started lecturing me about how I shouldn't be afraid to ask questions. I tried to explain that the reason I didn't ask questions was because I thought everything was fine. It wasn't that I was afraid to ask, it's that I didn't know there was a question to be asked. As if he didn't hear a thing I said, he continued with his lecture about how important it is to ask questions so that we don't have to waste time doing things twice. There was no lecture given to the other guy about making sure his mark-ups were complete.

So #3, he's an asshole.

There was another time when I was working on one of Magneto's projects and I didn't quite understand his mark-up, so I asked him to clarify it. He answered the question, and then went on to lecture me about how I shouldn't hesitate to ask him any questions because it's better to ask, rather than make a wrong guess and have to do things twice. WTF am I getting lectured for now?!? Obviously I'm not afraid to ask questions, because I just asked a fucking question!! WTF is wrong with this guy?!?

So #4, he's a fucking idiot douchbag asshole.

But this past Thursday was his last day! He pretty much got forced into retirement. He's in his mid-60's and has been with the company for 27 years. He's talked before about retiring, but the boss has always been able to talk him into sticking around for a couple more years. But after all the shit that went on with our work being taken to the Chattanooga office, the boss gave Magneto an ultimatum. He basically told Magneto he had two choices. 1) Go to Chattanooga for the entire three months, or 2) Take his retirement. Magneto's got some health issues and, therefore, didn't want to be far from home in case something happened and he ended up in the hospital, or worse. So he said he couldn't go to Tennessee. Not even for a few weeks. Which forced him to take option #2.

He announced his retirement to our small group of 11 on August 30, making September 15 his last day. And as much as I dislike him, and as much as I was counting down the days along with him, I still felt a little bit sad for him. Even though he'd talked about retirement in the past, he clearly was not excited about it anymore. And as if our supervisor was unaware that Magneto didn't actually want to retire, J kept making comments like, "Did you see the stock market dropped again today? I sure wouldn't want to be without a steady paycheck in this economy." Like J thought he could scare Magneto into keeping his job and going to Chattanooga or something? It was pretty awkward.

So I came into work Thursday and J was telling me that I'd be working on Magneto's project and I said, "Oh wow, today is his last day. Yeah, gotta get his project done before he leaves." And J said, "Shit. I forgot." So without a cake, a card, or anything else to acknowledge Magneto's last day, J put me and C on a project to create an 18" x 24" poster that everyone Magneto works with in the company could sign. Since I sit in the same quad as Magneto, we decided it would work best if C made the poster on his computer, and since I've been at the company longer than C and had a better idea of who Magneto's friends and coworkers were, it was my job to go around the building asking people to sign it.

C had come up with a really nice sentiment to go in the center of the poster. Something like "You are one of a kind and will truly be missed. Your knowledge and dedication to the job has been a great help to us all and we will never forget you." So poster in hand, I was off to get people to sign it. J and the boss took Magneto out to lunch which made a great time for me to not have to sneak around whispering to everyone about it. However, most people were unaware that Magneto was retiring. Since he hadn't been excited about it, he hadn't been mentioning it to anyone. And unlike myself, it turns out that most people liked Magneto. So I had become the bearer of bad news letting people know that it was his last day. And I certainly didn't want to be spreading the word that he was forced into it, so I tried to play it off like he was excited about it. That was uncomfortable.

So the end of the day had arrived and the boss brought down two wrapped gifts from the company. Magneto took the packages, put them into the box of his personal stuff, and went right back to packing. Shocked, the boss said, "You can open them now," but Magneto replied that he'd rather just open them later. Maybe Magneto thought it would be something that would make him emotional.

So when Magneto left to bring a box down to his car, we hung our signed poster up very prominently on his overhead cabinets. But when he came back he didn't even notice. His head was sadly hanging down looking at the floor, and he just went back to packing up another box. When he came back from his second and final trip to load up his car, he thankfully noticed the poster, so we didn't have to awkwardly point it out to him. But he didn't bother to read the poster. He barely glanced at it before he took it down and rolled it up. Probably again so he wouldn't start crying or something. And I think we were all glad that he didn't see C's comment. After his sweet sentiment that he created for the poster, we were all shocked to read that his personal message was, "Don't worry. You only need a lot of money in retirement if you plan to live a long time." I guess he thought it would come across funny, but it really didn't. Magneto quietly shook the hands of anyone he walked past on his way out, and was gone for good.

But as sad as that day was for everyone to see, Friday was nice and quiet around the office and I was super happy to no longer have anyone talking down to me like I was a 4-year-old idiot and it was my first day on the job.