I have had the pleasure of meeting thousands of people throughout my career. However, I have never met an individual like Kevin. Saying Kevin was special would be an understatement. I feel like my chances of working with another Kevin in my career would be like getting struck by lightning while learning I won the lottery. For this reason, I believe it to be imperative that his stories should live on and be shared with others.

 

The Introduction

In March of 2015 my boss decided that Kevin a mid-20s, tall and skinny man should be our new night shift contractor that helps with everyday support for the business’s critical infrastructure. My coworker Sam and I were tasked with training him but after the first week it was very clear that he had zero interest in learning or doing anything. We still tried to get him involved with different tasks, but it felt futile. When we would bring him over to learn something new after a couple minutes he would either start texting, stop paying attention, or just wonder off. At times it felt like we were training a donkey. When we gave him projects to work on he just won’t do anything, nor would he ask any questions. It got to the point if he came into work and stayed the entire night it was a step in the right direction. However, during the entire time he was at work he rarely talked to anyone and would sit in the corner surfing the internet.

 

After a couple weeks our boss asked how Kevin was doing. We told him the problems we were having and my coworker Sam and I both recommended that he be fired. My boss being very nonconfrontational said give him some more time but told us if he doesn’t seem like a good fit his contract was up in July (2015). After about a month we were noticing the same problems with Kevin and it wasn’t getting any better. We asked our boss one more time to let Kevin go. However, our boss told us that they decided to renew his contract for another 6 months and that they would have to make that decision again in December. Here Sam and I were stuck with a contractor that offered zero value or, so I thought.

 

The time that I spent with Kevin was very short; less than a year. I realized early on that someone with his inabilities and total lack of employable characteristics would never stay employed long at any one spot. He made everyday interesting but was totally oblivious to the reasons why. After the first month or two of working with him I realized that I needed to start to document some of his activities and excuses not to get him into trouble but rather for my personal amusement to break up the stress of work. As a prerequisite to the longer stories, I thought it would be prudent to provide a list of shorter stories on why Kevin was either late, didn’t show up or left early from work. These shorter stories will help with understanding the true Kevin.