Holy Crap!! Did you shake hands with the “Finger Painter??

I had thought about telling my stories in the past, but, something always seemed to come up and I would forget about it.  The idea occurred to me again, when I was talking to one of my co-workers, and I was telling him, you would not believe some of the work stories that have happened in my past jobs as a federal contractor.  I would tell you, but I can’t repeat the stories here.  Specifically, I was thinking about the f the “Finger Painter” story, at least that is what the guy was labeled as at work.  So, here is the “Finger Painter” story…

I was working on a long term contract that was falling apart, and our company was at risk of not meeting yet another deadline.  The government was threatening to cancel the contract.  They had made this threat before, but this time, they did not seem to be bluffing and everyone was getting nervous.  The gossip was that they were going to get rid of prime contractor and management first, and the sub-contractors would probably end up working for another prime contractor.  The prime contractor decided to create and incentive to meet the deployment deadline.  They taped a large pink Sticky note pad (pink slip count down)  on each floor, close to the entrance.  Each pad had numbers on each page counting backwards to 45 to 1.  Each number represented the amount of days we had as a contractor to make the project delivery date.  And, each day, one number was removed from each pad on each floor.  Obviously, the work environment was becoming very intense.  Most people had started looking for other jobs.  Others worked their buts off to try to make the deadline, however, some people can't handle stress and they begin to act out.   One of our employees had such issues.

First, someone found a paper bag full of feces in the parking lot.  And, then, the bags in the parking lot began to be appear more often.  Next, it escalated to a guy going into the men’s bathroom and finding feces smeared all over the bathroom stall.  The prime contractor had their suspicions of who might be performing these acts, but they needed to catch the perpetrator, so they began having security inspect the men’s bathroom on an hourly basis.  Security did try to keep the issue a secret; however, it was noticeable because you would see Security guards walking into the Men’s room with a clipboard.   Eventually, Security caught the guy, and he was a prime contractor employee.  So, they tried to keep the situation quiet, and they got the employee the mental help that he needed.  Also, if they had to refer to the issue in meetings, they would refer to him as  the “Finger Painter”.  Anyway, this wasn't the type of story that you would usually hear about on a multi-million dollar government project.  And, you definitely wouldn't think that the company would allow an employee they knew had issues with stress to continue working on the project.  Yes, I said knew, he had behaved the same way on a previous project. Luckily, the project continued, the prime contractor and the government were able to renegotiate a new deadline date. After the renegotiation the Finger Painter went away, at least we think that he did.

Now you may be wondering, how did I find out something that they were trying to keep a secret, well no, I don’t work for HR.  Actually, it was quite innocent, I was walking past our conference room, and I overheard the Facilities Director yelling, he had absolutely lost it.  Here is what I overheard... “First, when we build this building we have to install toilets that flush automatically because the employees are too lazy to flush after they go to the bathroom.  And now you are telling me, that I have to look for someone who on top of that cannot wipe their ass and has to smear it all over the bathroom stall!  Is that what you are telling me?!!!”  Ordinarily, I would keep walking and ignore the situation, but I couldn't.  Instead, I went around the corner and ducked behind the door to listen to the rest of the meeting.  The rest of the intelligence was gathered from coworkers and actually witnessing security going into the Men’s bathroom with a clipboard every hour.  (Yeah, like no one would notice that.)  The group of friends that I hung out with at the time often joked that we would not shake hands when we would meet new people in meetings.  Because you never knew who’s hand that you were shaking.  

#fingerpainter