Jack the liar - the final chapter

This is the 4th and final chapter in the Jack the liar series, a true story of working with a compulsive liar. If you haven’t read the previous parts, please start there:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Once you’ve lied about not being at work for being stabbed and having a tube in your bum, it’s hard to keep your job at that company much longer.

You are probably wondering how Jack lasted as long as he did for all of these events to take place and it’s a good question. From memory, he billed very little which is a key part of a Recruitment Consultants role.

But he was great at excuses. He would tell the boss he was sorry, he had other things going on in his life but starting tomorrow he was a new man. He was convincing. I think people wanted him to do well so they gave him some extra rope but Jack never changed.

Our boss was away but our MD was in town and Jack knew what was coming, he came prepared that day. I’ll never forget how thick that folder was, you know the ones Lawyers carry into court? That’s what he brought into the office that day, at the time I had no idea what it was and I’d never seen him carry a folder before.

The MD took him into a meeting room and 30 minutes later he emerged, gathered his things and left.

I can remember this vividly as I was in the middle of training someone on their first day and the awkwardness was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I said to the Junior quietly “I promise you this isn’t a normal thing”.

Once he left the office our MD gave us a debrief, we’d agree to part ways and Jack was on gardening leave.

“What was up with the folder?” I asked

“They were his list of complaints about all of you” she said.

There is a gif that perfectly captures my and all of our faces in that moment:

I only remember two of the complaints and as far as we could tell, he had a couple of pages of written evidence (i.e. he had typed it up and printed it) and the rest of the folder was filled with blank paper.

There were no emails or documents, just word docs that he typed and printed. I’m guessing all that blank paper was from the work printer, there is no way he was paying for a ream of paper - more than once Jack brought in a plastic or bum bag full of coins and asked where he could cash them in and he was on a higher salary than me.

In order to explain the first complaint, I have to give you some information that wouldn’t normally be relevant to the story or appropriate to share.

Jack was white and his girlfriend was Asian. Again, not an overly relevant part to the story until now.

See, Jack would often tell stories about his girlfriend and speak in a racist, stereotyped accent. These were very one way conversations, we’d listen & roll our eyes but not one engaged with him.

But Jack’s 1st complaint was that his colleagues were racist towards his girlfriend (who none of us had ever met by the way).

The 2nd one is a little harder to explain and not sure how to explain this without getting banned from LinkedIn but my best attempt is this; he would often throw half eaten food in his bin under his desk and it left a smell. One of our colleagues told him the smell coming from the bin was coming from his pants and that smell was fishy.

I hope you might be able to connect all of those dots to imagine the real dialect.

So Jack is gone, a void in our daily lives, where would our drama come from?

Turns out Jack wasn’t going far and took a job at another agency that was about 400 metres away from our office. We’d see him but never spoke, a lot of crossing the street or pretending to be on the phone from both sides.

But one day I saw him having conversation with his new boss, looking upset.

I paused the music on my phone but left my earphones in (call me Bond, James Bond) and walked behind them. A sloth would have yelled at me for walking slowly, I was trying to gather up as much tea as I could in the few seconds I would have.

It was the same old Jack, giving the excuses on why he hadn’t billed, how he was going to turn it around tomorrow. How he had let them down but also let himself down but things were going to change.

Jack old boy, you had that act down pat that is for sure.

He didn’t last that long there and next we saw he had moved countries but it was hard to keep track of him, he had blocked us all on social media. I didn’t care too much but every few months I’d have a random thought about him and then try and find him.

I tracked him down to any agency in Asia and he seemed to stay there a while but then totally disappeared. I’m not sure if he changed his name or removed himself from social media all together but I haven’t been able to find a trace of him for a few years now.

I hope you’re out there somewhere Jack, you would be the first person I’d want to interview on a podcast.