Mister Beer Keg

Today's tall tale comes to you courtesy of office creepers. There will be at least one more of these, but this guy's tale of grossness will be enough for one day. 

When I first started at my job, I worked on a phone team. I was a temp and didn't really ever plan to stay, but I grew to like the characters on my team so much (and the pay was GREAT) that I just kept hangin out. One person on my team with whom I was not really friends was Mister Beer Keg (MBK), so-named because he chose that for his Yahoo! chat screen name (which he shared with me along with a host of other undesirable information) and also because he resembled a beer keg. Which may be why he chose it along with the fact that he loved beer. He was hugely overweight, sarcastic, unpleasant and generally downcast. I didn't have any interest in him for these reasons and ALSO because he was an ogler and extremely obvious about it-- like, did not EVER, AT ALL, disguise that he was ogling a woman. He would flagrantly stare at every part of your body under clothes, and he would do this both while talking and while listening to you talk. Rarely made eye contact. It was really unnerving and shifty and I started to hate being around him. At some point the team went out for beers one night and you know how sometimes there is a lull in talking to people you actually like and that provides the perfect opportunity for a less-than-savory character to swoop in and monopolize your time? Yeah, that happened with MBK. It was discovered during this time monopolization that we shared a mutual love of Guinness. And that is the one and only thing I think we ever had in common. It was the birth of a beautiful friendship. *sarcasm font*

So, I am way too fucking nice. Or was, anyway. When I moved to a new team, MBK began IMing me now and again to chat. And because I like to slack (hello, blogging at work) and because I at least didn't have to talk to him face-to-face, I chatted. Whatever. I didn't care. We sort of became friends, except for the part where I didn't really like him because he was a jerk to people and lazy to boot, OH AND HE OGLED, and so I made it a rule with myself that I never initiated the chatting. I would just answer his chats. Pretty soon he started telling me about the problems in his marriage, and I thought maybe that explained his general attitude, so I gave advice if I thought it would be helpful, and sometimes he followed it. Mostly not. 

And then one day...THEN! He started telling me, in chat, at work, about their problems in the bedroom. IN DETAIL. Here are some examples:

"Isn't the point of being a wife to let her husband finger her hot hole?"

"I exfoliated my balls just for that night and the woman didn't even have the decency to lick them."

"Then after the bitch got me hard and ready she said she didn't want to get pregnant and made me jerk off by myself and sleep on the couch."

"I was hoping she'd get drunk at the wedding and pass out so I could bang her in peace, but she refused to drink anything." 

AT WORK!!!!

I was thoroughly disgusted and tried to deflect the comments and talk about other things, but he would always bring it up. I started to avoid answering his chats specifically so I could avoid his bedroom talk. And because I was a freaking PANSY, I had such a hard time confronting people or saying anything that might hurt their feelings, even at a cost to myself. Even if I didn't like them. I've gotten much better but before, oh, it was bad for awhile. There was more than one person I barely knew dumping personal shit on me at that time, and I was so pathetic. How fucking hard can it be to say "Don't talk to me about this at work. Or ever." ??? One day I raged on MBK about someone else who was telling me detailed crap I had no interest in hearing (hoping he'd get the message-- he didn't), and he told me it was because I was approachable and kind, and I really listened and cared, and it showed. BAH! HA! HA!

Once in a great while, we went to lunch. I tried super hard to avoid it since I hated the way he looked at me, but it did happen once or three times because we were in the same building. One day we were mercifully finishing up and he blurted out that he was pretty sure he hated his wife and that for the first time, he really, truly wanted to cheat on her with someone else. Then before I could say anything, he flushed a deep, flaming red and said his ideal person was someone at work to whom he talked frequently. Oh, swoon, right? I babbled something along the lines of "Don't cheat, that's not cool, look at the time, gotta go." And I never had lunch with him again.

So this IM thing went on for nearly a year-- I remember that because my team got a new manager, and on his third day on the job, I flew into his cubicle and begged him to discreetly help me with this problem. Because that morning, the moment I logged into my work computer, MBK IMed me with this:

"So I got her to do it last night and I know she got off bc there was a huge wet spot on the bed."

IT WASN'T EVEN 8 O'CLOCK YET. Not that it's ever appropriate to say such a thing at work, as we have already discussed, but to start so early in the morning? For SERIOUS?! It was finally more than I could handle.

So my new manager helped me stop it. I knew this was a fireable offense, especially if I divulged how long it had been going on, and I didn't want that to happen-- MBK's wife was a bum and had no job, and they had a new baby, and I knew his paycheck was the only one coming into that household. I told Manager such. And he....he fibbed for me. I felt really awful about it, but he said if I didn't want the guy fired, it was probably the only way to go about it. He told MBK's manager that he had intercepted that morning's chat and I confessed that it made me really uncomfortable but that I was afraid to say so (truth) and that I tried to avoid talking to him at every opportunity. That manager gave MBK a verbal warning that he would be monitoring his chats from then on. And I assume there was more to the warning, given the content of his disgusting message, but I never bothered to find out.
 

MBK also still chatted me now and again, but since he couldn't talk to me about his marital or bedroom problems, there was nothing to chat about. He got laid off last month and I know I should feel sorry for that, but all I can muster is a deep sense of relief that he will never be chatting with me again. I don't give a crap about anything in his life, and I'm pretty sure he only pretended to care about mine so he could eventually (somehow? did he seriously ever think this would be a consideration?) lie on me with his huge beer-keg-shaped stomach.