I Remember I Forgot

Several years ago, my company’s HR slackers, I mean professionals, forwarded me an applicant to replace someone who’d left my department. Jim, a skinny version of Drew Carey, right down to the glasses and spiky blond hair, seemed rough around edges. Nothing a little training and patience couldn’t fix, I assumed. And seeing as he was the only potential employee HR had been kind enough to send, I decided to hire him.

Unfortunately, this job seriously cut into Jim’s daydreaming time. On a regular basis I’d happen upon him in his cube staring at absolutely nothing. I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt – maybe he was finishing his tasks quickly and was simply bored. But none of his spreadsheets had been completed, so I ended up staying late to finish his work. It wasn’t long before my boss noticed. “I’m not paying him to count the fucking ceiling tiles,” she told me.

This went on for months, HR suggesting that I work it out by taking one of their courses titled “Communicate Effectively with Your Staff,” at which I learned how to put enough pressure on Jim to turn in his notice. (Company motto: we’ll lay off good workers, but why fire incompetent ones?)

While in the throes of the situation it was so painful it was possible that reruns of The Drew Carey Show would be made even worse by the bad memories of Jim. But it’s amazing how something that seems so all-encompassing, so agitating at the time, is really nothing but a bug splat on the windshield of life. Somehow I had completely forgotten about Jim, put the whole experience so far out of my mind I was surprised that I struggled to remember his name when I ran into him on the street a few weeks ago.

I had a similar experience on the 4 train this week. Sitting next to me were very young parents with their three-month-old baby. The baby was fussing and the father removed him from the stroller. Within a few moments, the baby had thrown up down the front of his bunny outfit and all over the poor guy.

Across the aisle was another set of parents with a young girl. The father didn’t hesitate to reach in his backpack for baby wipes. He pulled about ten from the pack and handed them to the other father. Not to judge a book by its cover, but it wasn’t something I would have expected from a guy with a D-E-A-T-H tattoo emblazoned on his neck wherein the T formed a dagger.

The young father tried as best he could to clean up the mess, but it was a futile effort. I felt bad for him and then a little worse for me as the unmistakable stench initiated my gag reflex. He continued to dab at his jeans and coat until, out of total embarrassment, he decided to do something my freshman-year roommate from France used to do. From a shopping bag, he brought out a bottle of Drakkar Noir and gave his clothes a few squirts. This, of course, only served to layer the vomit smell with the sweet musky scent of cologne. I looked around for an escape route.

Then, just like with Jim, it jogged a memory of an experience I had forgotten. I was riding the F train when nauseous stomach churnings overtook me. There was no time to get off the train. I moved as quickly as I could to the relative seclusion at the end of the car and tossed my cookies. Most people sprinted away with looks of horror on their faces. I was mortified. I briefly entertained getting off at the next stop and leaving behind my little gift so that I would no longer be affiliated with it. But then a Chinese lady inched toward me. From a distance of about ten feet she flung a travel pack of tissues at me. It was, at the same time, the nicest and most alienating thing a stranger had done for me on the train.

So I didn’t move away from the young father and his now putrid smell. I did what any good New Yorker would do. I carried on – business as usual.