Fat Man And Lil' Hitler (Part One)

In a district (and well, let's face it, a company) where there were a lot of obnoxious, detestable people, there were two RGIS employees who personified the words villainous, wretched and abominable. Their names were Moby and Leo. They were brothers, they were Team Leaders, and they were despicable.









Moby, in his late thirties, was older than Leo by a couple of years. He stood about 6'2" and by his own admission weighed close to 500 lbs. His personal hygiene was deplorable. Besides his mottled, crusty skin and greasy salt-and-pepper hair, he sported a body odor that was NOT to be believed. Oh my God, nothing that man or nature has ever created smelled as bad as Moby. I am unable to precisely describe his stench. Try to imagine what a 500 lb. dead, rotting skunk would smell like, and you might be pretty close to the truth.









Moby blamed his rank odor on the fact that he only had a bathtub in his apartment, but no shower. He said that he was so fat he couldn't fit into the bathtub, so therefore he couldn't bathe. I maintained privately that this was bullshit. For one thing, how many apartments nowadays have only a bathtub, and no shower? And another thing, even if the 'no shower' thing was true, if he has some form of running water in his home then there's no excuse for him to smell like a crap-filled toilet. I mean, he could stand by a sink filled with hot soapy water and take a sponge bath, right? And maybe wear some deodorant once in a blue moon, or aftershave, or SOMETHING to mask his malodorous reek. Please, for the love of humanity!









A perfect example of his horrible stink occurred one day during an inventory at a mini mart at Two Rock, a Coast Guard training base in Petaluma. Since it was such a tiny little store it only needed two people to count it, and I was the lucky one who got to work with Moby.









We did the perimeter of the store first. Then Moby told me that the two of us would work the gondolas from the outside in. That is, each of us would start on opposite sides of the store and, doing the gondolas, work our way towards and meet up at the center of the store.









All morning long I was aware of a foul odor permeating the store. For a while I thought that it was some food in the store that had gone bad. I kept intending to ask the store clerk if maybe one of the refrigerated cases had maybe gone out, lost its power and caused some cheese or other dairy product to spoil. I never got around to asking him, and once Moby and I finished counting and met up in the center of the store I realized that I wouldn't need to ask. The smell was Moby. Imagine hot, rotting cheese on a 90 degree summer morning. Gross! You could smell him from 4 aisles away. It was all I could do to keep from vomiting.









During the busy times of the year, like January and February, our district would have several of us auditors do a lot of back to back to back stores. We were always short of people to staff these inventories, so these back-to-backers were absolutely necessary for the veteran auditors like Moby to do. As I mentioned in a previous entry we would often only have enough time between stores to rush home, freshen up, grab a quick bite and get maybe 40 winks before we had to head out to the next inventory.









Well, with Moby being so unconcerned with his hygiene as he was, naturally he would skip the freshening up part, and just inhale a cold pizza or two and crash for a long nap, then wake up and drive to the next store, without bathing or changing his clothes and underwear. He would do this for weeks at a time. Can you imagine someone who never showers wearing the same pair of underwear for 2 to 3 weeks? Is your stomach churning at this moment? Then you know how any auditor in my district felt when they had to work next to Moby. Think of what must have been gathering in his shorts. Picture what a 500 lb, sweaty, unwashed man might be producing and collecting in the folds and crevices of his body, and then depositing into his underwear. Vomited yet?









We knew this about Moby and his undies because he told us. He knew he reeked, he knew we were disgusted by his reek, and he didn't care. During the hot summer months, when his foul stench was particularly pungent, auditors would walk right up to him in a store and tell him flatly, "Dude, you stink." Moby would only smile and say, "Yeah, I know." He would then explain about his no-showering policy, and his fetid drawers. His outer clothes needed no explanation. We could tell that he never changed his RGIS polo and khaki pants, because he would show up at inventory after inventory with the same stains in the same places on his clothes. The dark patches on his crotch and seat of his pants were particularly noteworthy.









AAM Dean told me one time that Moby's personnel file was an inch thick with complaints about his personal hygiene. The complaints came not only from us, his fellow employees, but RGIS customers as well. Several stores, like Bath & Body Works for example, banned Moby from ever doing another inventory for them because they were so offended by his smell.









You may wonder why, if there were so many complaints about Moby's horrible odor, he wasn't fired by RGIS. Well, as in the case with Moby's equally distasteful brother Leo and also psycho Ethan, AM Jeff and DM Kenny heavily depended on these three Team Leaders to run a majority of the smaller inventories that my district handled. They were the only TL's trusted by the managers to run most of those inventories. The other TL's, Jeb and Douglas, were both in their 60's and not highly regarded by either Jeff or Kenny. AAM Dean ran a few inventories himself but Moby, Leo and Ethan handled the bulk of the non-department store inventories. If any of those three were let go (and believe me, all three deserved to be fired for a number of reasons), that would mean Jeff and Kenny would have to run more stores, and the both of them were looking to do fewer inventories, not more. Jeff said that his goal was to eventually have enough TL's to ensure that he and Kenny would only need to put in an appearance at a really big inventory, like a Macy's or Target. Then they could spend most of their time back at the office, doing God knows what. I think Jeff had dreams of really buckling down and concentrating on making out our schedules weeks in advance, instead of how he usually did them, which was at the last possible minute. Kenny envisioned spending most of his time hustling up scores of new customers, but this too was a pipe dream. Because of their distrust (Justified in Jeb's case. Douglas could run a store pretty well, but I think Jeff engaged in a little age-ism where Douglas was concerned) of TL's Jeb and Douglas's ability to run more stores, because the other auditors (like myself) flat out refused to become Team Leaders (who needs that kind of crap?) and run inventories ourselves, Jeff and Kenny needed Moby, Leo and Ethan. And believe me, those three were perfectly aware of their manager's dependence on them. That's why they took the liberties that they did, with their personal hygiene and/or questionable behavior.









Moby's funky body odor aside, he also offended many with his personality too. Although he tried hard to present himself as the stereotypical jolly fat man, he would be unable to keep up that facade for very long, for his inner being seemed to be one of self-hatred, jealousy and rage. Self-hatred of his own wretchedness; his morbid obesity and deplorable smell must have affected him more than he would have us believe. Jealousy in that for all of his and his brother Leo' years of service with RGIS, no manager ever gave Moby and Leo the respect that they (and only they) felt they deserved. The jealousy came from the fact that other auditors in our district would get the praise and accolades Moby felt he and Leo had earned but never received.









The rage that Moby exhibited toward other auditors earned him much contempt as well. When he ran an inventory that didn't go smoothly (a frequent occurrence), his false, happy face would disappear and his true, bitter self would emerge. If some poor newbie had screwed up an area, maybe counting liquor as grocery or grocery as GM (general merchandise), Moby would lose it and call the newbie every filthy, insulting name he could think of. And often right in front of them too. And God help his crew if the store manager had a problem with the way the inventory was going. The customer might complain to Moby about some areas being off on their dollars, or being counted in the wrong department. Moby would take it from the customer, and then proceed to hunt down a scared little newbie in the store and rip the guy a new one. A 500 lb person like Moby could be very intimidating. Seeing him barrel down a grocery store aisle screaming after a newbie was terrifying, and led to his great unpopularity.









I can attest to all of this personally, as I was often on the receiving end of Moby's wrath. As a newbie, I struggled at first with the inventories that I did. I made mistakes, and Moby never failed to point those mistakes out to everyone else and make fun of me for having committed them. But as the months progressed, and I became better and better at counting, and received not only some rare praise from AM Jeff and DM Kenny but from managers of other districts as well, Moby's jokiness dissipated and his resentment and jealousy of me began. He resented the compliments that managers and other auditors would make regarding my work. Just out of my earshot, Moby would downplay my abilities as a counter. When other auditors would say to him that they really admired my ability at counting, and wished they were as fast as I, Moby would tell them that no, I wasn't really very good, it just looked that way because the area I was counting was quite easy to do, or had been prepped by a store employee, or any nonsense that he could make up to make him feel better about himself. With newbies, he could get away with telling them crap like this because they hadn't been around the inventory business for very long and were apt to believe anything a veteran had to say.









But with managers, who knew better, Moby had no recourse but to seethe with resentment when they would say in his presence that I was a really good counter. Instead of being happy for me, or at least being happy that he had a good auditor in one of his inventories, he would instead look for ways in which to make me feel as bad as he did. He would do really lame things like, if I had committed an egregious sin like forgetting to tuck in my polo or was walking around with an untied shoe, he would pounce at me with catty, unkind remarks. Or if I had forgotten to tag one shelf, he made sure that everyone in the store knew it. Really stupid stuff like that. It was pathetic behavior on Moby's part, and sad too. I understood why he was doing it, but that didn't excuse his actions and words.









(Coming up: Part two.)