The dream job

Remember, said my friend Barney, it takes two to tango. Barney's metaphors and analogies are oftentimes severely oblique and sometimes not at all in context. That's one way, he says, of messing with people's heads.

In this instance he's relating to me, over a cup of Gloria Jeans, how he came to be on the payroll of a company for 10 months and do precious little work. It started, he says, with his predecessor, a man who had quit the post in disgust.

"He, like you, was an Indian, before he switched sides, became an Aussie and started cheering vociferously for Ricky Ponting," says Barney, adding, "He was also a workaholic and that, ironically, is what brought about his departure." This has me suitably intrigued. There isn't much history of companies dismissing staff that are workaholics.

"Was it ill-health and overwork," I ask?

"No it wasn't," says Barney.

"A better job? A promotion?"

"Few people quit in disgust over a promotion," Barney reminds me.

For five minutes my attempts at guessing the reason sound a bit like trying to put a horribly unsuccessful finger on the killer in an Agatha Christie whodunit.

Eventually, much in the manner of the revelatory ‘The butler did it', Barney sighs and discloses, "It was the supervisor."

It turns out the supervisor was a woman, so I wonder aloud if there were, perhaps, sexist tensions?

"Nothing like that at all, mate," says Barney. "She happened to be a sympathy and praise freak. She could survive for weeks on the teeniest morsel of praise served up by her boss, The Director."

Somehow, in my mind I cannot reconcile this supervisor's desire for praise with the departed worker's disgusted departure. Until Barney explains.

One day, just one day in the whole year, this workaholic worker got laid low by a flu bug. This happened, coincidentally, at a time when the supervisor herself was running a bit short on praise from the director. For that whole day his workstation was unattened and his workload pending. But by mid-afternoon, the sup-ervisor had a brainwave. She seated herself at the absent workaholic's desk and began clearing his pending files, little by little, forsaking her own workload, but making sure her boss was aware of her lionheartedness.

The following day when Mr Workaholic somehow dragged himself back to the desk, he was told to take it easy, because the redoubtable Miss Supervisor was going to give him a hand. At this, Mr Workaholic took serious umbrage.

This went on for a month. Finally, Mr Workaholic felt that his supervisor was seriously denying him the right to feel proud about his work output. He issued a warning that went unheeded.

Miss Supervisor, meanwhile, was being praised lavishly at meetings for her large-heartedness and her unstinting support for the colleagues she supervised. It all got too much to bear. Off went Mr Workaholic to look elsewhere for a job.

In came Barney, the new appointment. He'd met Mr Workaholic twice before the disgruntled employee left and Barney picked up from him the real reason for his leaving.

"Mate, that was like music to my ears," Barney says to me, tilting his cup to drink the last of the coffee. "I take great pride in my work, but I am even more proud of people who take work off my hands. I can befriend them forever."

One of the most laid-back times he's ever had, he says.

"Just come in, turn on the computer, check out Hotmail, mess about with Yahoo Messenger, then send out an SOS and cite a problem with some working file and … presto, Miss Supervisor has taken over.

"I learned to add my own praise to that of the Director's," says Barney, smiling sagely and adding, "Ten months, mate. Beach money. No pun intended."

So what happened, I enquire. Why throw a good thing away? It is at this point that Barney becomes evasive.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.