Bob and Rich
Bob was a nice guy. I liked him. He was easy to like. Everybody in the office liked him.
Nobody liked Rich though. That guy was a fucker. We all hated his guts.
But Bob liked Rich. None of us could figure that out. How could such a great guy like Bob be friends with that asshole Rich? We all talked about it, but nobody could come up with an explanation.
After a while people started disliking Bob, because of Rich. That was the only reason. Bob hadn’t changed. He was still a great guy, but we took to disliking him because we couldn’t reconcile his friendship with Rich. Bob became an asshole by association.
One day Bob suddenly stood up in his cubicle. He looked around at all of us. He looked right in our eyes. Everybody stopped what they were doing. “I have something to say,” he said. He got up on his chair. “You’re all a bunch of assholes. Fuck you. I quit.” Then he got down off the chair, gathered his things, and walked out the door. We never saw him again.
Somebody accidentally sent Bob an email that was going around about Bob and Rick being assholes and friends. We found it still up on his computer after his sudden departure. It was a pretty scathing dissertation on his and Rich’s friendship. Rich came over while everyone huddled around Bob’s cube, looking at the email open on his monitor. “What the fuck?” he said. “You guys don’t like me and Bob?”
“We think you’re assholes,” someone said. Someone else said, “Look, don’t take it personally, we just never liked you.” Rich shrugged his shoulders. He took a sip of coffee. “Feeling’s mutual,” he said, and walked off.
After that Rich became a God in the office. He was cool as hell. He didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought and they all worshipped him for it. When he started dating Janice, the hot admin in Legal, his personal stock rose even higher. Then he got a big promotion and became manager of our team. Eventually I became friends with him. We hung out all the time and pretty much ruled the office together. He was in charge and I was his right hand man.
“You ever hear from Bob?” I asked Rich one day over lunch.
“Bob who?”
“Bob Martin.”
“Oh, that guy. What a dumb-ass. I talked to him, like, twice. He weirded me out. I don’t know why you all thought we were friends. We weren’t. I was glad when he quit.”
“You guys weren’t friends?” I said.
“Don’t be stupid.”
