Meet Bob Roberts

Early in my business career, I went to work for a company owned by Don, who was probably the father of downsizing before anyone knew the term. Don was cheap in the sense that a diamond is hard.

He had rules like you couldn’t requisition a pencil from office supply without turning in the stub of the one you had been using. And, if you wanted to send a letter of less than 5o words, you were required to use a postcard. It saved an envelope and a couple cents in postage.

We were staffed under that philosophy, which meant we worked our tails off. But, we played just as hard. It was a fun industry and a gaggle of creative, young employees.

A subset of merry pranksters met regularly at a nearby tavern after long days. Fueled by a heady mixture of fatigue and martinis, many a plot was hatched there.

One night, we were joking about how Don couldn’t remember the names of many employees. He was a tad the plantation owner.

And yet, he was adept at overriding you in meetings by citing opinions or data from another to verify that his idea was better. Actually, they were all his opinions since none of the cited sources ever remembered supplying the information. Don just attributed to suit his position.

This gave birth to Bob Roberts at one of our tavern sessions. If Don wanted an irrefutable source, we would provide one.

We began subtly by having him paged over the office PA system. “Bob Roberts. Bob Roberts, please pick up line three.”

Then, we authored and circulated memos emanating from him and cited them in meetings. We saw to it that Bob was congratulated in the company newsletter for getting engaged.

It didn’t take long for Don to started attributing to Bob, supporting his own position. In one meeting, Don became frustrated with us and demanded we call Bob into the meeting. We were prepared for that and told him that Bob was in New York on sales calls.

This repeated several times with variations and we knew that we could play that card only so many times. At a tavern caucus, we decided to get rid of Bob before he blew up in our faces.

At the next meeting where Don requested Bob’s presence, we assumed rehearsed expressions of puzzlement. “Don’t you remember, Don? He took a job in California.”

“Oh, yeah. Too bad, he was the best employee we had.”

Damn right, and we created him.