The Flames crawled up the walls of the apartment building, consuming everything in it's way. Just then, Pride noticed that her car was also melting. As she stood there watching everything that she had owned go up in flames she noticed a figure standing next to her. She turned and saw him and said, "Bob, what are you doing here?"

Bob paused for a second and then said, "I was on my way for a," at this point he paused his speaking and started moving his arms like he was swimming and then he continued, "swim. I saw some smoke and I thought I would drop by and see what was going on."

Pride returned, "Well Bob, that's my apartment there. Everything I own is burning down, I have nothing."

Bob didn't say anything, he just nodded his head for a second. After a few seconds of silence, filled only by the sounds of the flames Bob spoke again, "So, do you think you're gonna be at work today?"

"No Bob, the only clothes that I have are these pajamas and I think that my day is going to be pretty busy with this," she said motioning to the fire.

"Well do you want me to tell Cathy that you won't be in?" Bob said, referring to the HR director at AudioNet.

"Yeah, that'd be great, thanks Bob," with that Pride turned to watch the fire for a second longer. When she turned back, there was no sign of Bob. She thought she had imagined the whole thing until several hours later Cathy showed up to console her.


Bob has become sort of an urban legend since that occurence for that and several other stories involving him. As I knew him personally for a period of time, and I have first or second hand knowledge of most of the stories, I thought I would clear the record here and tell the stories as they originally happened. I hope this clears up some of the confusion.

Bob worked several positions at AudioNet, most where he had to call lots of people and in a lot of cases leave messages for them. His name was Bob Jacoby and he always left his name like this, "This is Bob Jacoby, that's Jacob with a Y." Which by itself is pretty harmless, but he did it while sitting atop a large blue ball. Yes, a large blue ball. It was almost as if he went to a gym and stole one of their stretching balls (you see how much I go to the gym, is there such a thing as a stretching ball?) and brought it to work. He would sit in all manner of positions atop the ball, sometimes on his belly, sometimes his side, sometimes sitting on it and sometimes bouncing. Always delivering the same message, that's Jacob with a Y.

After AudioNet got purchased by Yahoo, my wife ended up in a cubicle across from Bob. Yahoo liked to spend lots of money on things that they probably didn't need to. I mean, it was stuff that was nice for employees, but it's probably part of the reason that they had to lay off so many employees, so it was a wash really. One of the things that they liked to spend money on was an ergonomics expert. He would come around and ask people about how they worked and how they wanted to work and based on that totally rearrange their workspace. At any rate, Kristen had her desk raised a good three feet higher than a normal desk. During all this time, Bob had taken to sleeping under his desk, at meetings and I'm assuming just about anywhere but home. He made some snide comment to Kristen about her workspace and she shot back with, "Well, maybe you should bring in a sleeping bag to be more comfortable when you sleep here."

Bob didn't take it as an insult, in fact he took it as constructive criticism. He relied to her with, "That's a good idea, I think I will." The next day he came in and started taking his naps in a sleeping bag instead of just on the floor. One must truly wonder how he kept his job as long as he did.

Sometime while working there he managed to get a date with some hapless girl. When I heard the telling of this story initially I thought that was the odd point, that he actually had a date with someone, damn I'm mean. So he's on this first date and they are at a restaurant. There comes, as there always will, an uncomfortable silence in the date. This is what he does, it's going to require a little reader participation. Here's what I want you to do. Take both of your hands and hold them out in front of you. Now make like you are giving a thumbs up with both hands. Extend the topmost finger away from you. You should now have something that roughly could look like a gun. Now act like you are shooting the guns in rapid succession, three shots at a time. Now you have pretty much what he did to fill the silence. The girl got up to go to the bathroom and never came back. I guess she wasn't a big lone ranger fan.

One day about a month before Christmas, Kristen looked over into Bob's cubicle not to see him sleeping but changing into some large furry outfit. Watching further she realized that he was putting on a reindeer outfit. He walked around the office for most of that day handing out candy canes to confused employees. After all they have literally just come back from Thanksgiving break and here's this guy dressed up like a reindeer giving them candy. I would have had it tested for arsenic.


Well, those are most of the stories involving Bob, I hope they were as entertaining to read as they were to hear about or participate in. If you have any suggestions for future columns, please email me at one of the contact addresses in the link above.