Coworker Saved Me From Being Murdered at Work
I worked as an Infrastructure Manager in the corporate office of a minor retail chain (about 14 years ago). The conditions were kind of sucky, so the IT staff were mostly a good group of funny dudes and dudettes who tried to make the most of it and got along great.
The software development lead was a pale, pudgy mid to late 30's guy Phillip. Phillip had an untreated condition that caused him to compulsively lie constantly and without hesitation. Not little lies, big ones. Straight faced. No matter what the topic was, he would add in. Sometimes we would bring up subjects to see what he would say. It didn't matter if it was 1 on 1 or in a car with 4 bros, he did it. All the time.
Since a common drinking thing with friends is asking me to list Phillip lies around the fire, I'll just rattle off some for context:
A mouse was getting into his cupboards. He taught it to talk by using M&M's as positive reinforcement.
He got his high school marching band signed to a record contract. (my all-time favorite)
He could kick 90 yard field goals, but NFL teams passed on him because he has had 3 heart attacks.
He was the sole survivor of two plane crashes.
He once stole a firetruck to put out his neighbors bonfire because smoke was getting in his house. When he took it back, he parallel parked it and they were so impressed they offered him a job.
He was tired of his computer crashing so he hacked into Microsoft and fixed their source code.
He built a model rocket at science camp and landed it on the moon.
He was disqualified from the Moto-X Big Air competition at the X Games for getting into a fight.
He ripped up his diploma and gave his high school principal a tombstone piledriver off the stage during graduation.
He used to do falconry, but with Bald Eagles.
As a kid, he was some sort of Encyclopedia Brown for the FBI/CIA.
Multiple number one hit songs, popular video game premises, and the entire concept and name of MySpace came from a notebook he had stolen from his car.
You get the point. It was weird. It was also stuff like "Sorry I'm late getting back from lunch. Some guy tried to rob the grocery store, so I jumped across the register and choked him out. They wanted me to stay and talk to the police, but I was worried he would press charges when he woke up."
I know this probably doesn't have the impact it should, but it's hard to explain how odd it is to have like a 40 year old dude in a shirt and tie tell you that when he test drives a car, he takes it to this place where he can do a backflip in it. He only buys cars that survive the backflip, and that's how he ended up with the Hyundai Sonata you're sitting in. It sucks the air out of the room..like when someone is yelling on the subway.
Once one of the owners called me and said "None of you guys were around so they sent that Phillip guy up to help me. Never let that guy anywhere near our fucking suite again. He's fucked up." No idea what happened, but I heard it had something to do with Babylon 5.
Anyway, the other guys would sort of egg him on at times. I honestly didn't. I felt really bad because I would think about if he knew he was doing it when he was doing it..and how that made him feel. Like, "You're doing it again, Phillip." Perhaps, knowing he might not get away with it this time...or it was one more thing to keep track of in the lexicon.
What I was pretty firm about was that no one was going to call him out on it. Mostly because I didn't know what he would do, but also because I didn't want to work in an environment where everyday was some "BULLSHIT!" argument..and it wasn't really fair to him. He couldn't help it. I made sure every new hire knew the rules.
I had been there for about 3 years and never had any sort of untoward interactions to him or about him. If anything, I was overly empathetic of what it must be like. All we truly knew about him was he lived in a mobile home on his family's property (which had a giant fountain from a Vegas casino in it because he knew a guy who dismantled one and smuggled it to him), and he had married his wife when he was 31 and she was 16; which required parental consent in our state (she had rented an office in an Insurance company to convince him she, too, was in her 30's).
BIG WEIRD EVENTFUL JUMP FORWARD: one day Phillip was sitting in the developer suite and, out of nowhere, said "Hey Ricky (another developer)...check this out." He had a picture of himself with guns in tactical gear. He said "I asked for the Cho (VTech shooter) Special. Tomorrow, *me* is dead. He's been trying to steal my power. You may want to call in sick."
Ricky, thankfully with everything I fucking have in my body, was like "Cool, man."..then got up, promptly went to Legal, and reported it. Phillip got led out in handcuffs and term'd. He obviously wasn't held too long for threats. The police told me to keep my doors locked and my curtains closed until it all blew over. I cleaned the garage out so we could park in it and limit the time exposed outside. It was a tense few months for my then gf and I. It was well known that I used to have to go in to work super early to cover for my engineers on Fridays..before anybody else was there. Just me and a big empty parking lot. I remember thinking on every drive over that it was likely my last day on Earth, and how I just hope I don't hear anything first before it happens.
When I closed on my first house, I teared up a little bit. People thought I was being sentimental, but I was thinking about how Phillip, finally, doesn't know where to find me.
It kind of fucked Ricky up and he soon quit. I once asked him what made him report it in spite of the normal stream of wtf ever we were used to..and he said "Motherfucker was talking about 'power'...like he was Skeletor or some shit."
Ricky's on my FB feed constantly with very angry/opposing political views as me, and I've never put that dude on snooze once. I'm thankful for anything he has to say.
As a weird follow up-I met the guy's cousin a few years later. The dude told me that Phillip and his wife had a weird relationship...like, she would buy Phillip nothing but toys for Christmas. Not action figures or funko, etc (the dude telling me this collected action figures and movie props), but like airplanes and dinosaurs and firetrucks and shit...and he would just sit around on the floor playing with them making noises. It wasn't a weird sexual thing...just another big red flag flapping in the breeze.
TLDR-My deranged coworker spilled the beans about murdering me and got arrested
Story Shared by: jcmando