Locked in together with very little to do but monitor systems and wait for any potential shitstorm that, thankfully, never comes, these men must get really tired of one another pretty fast.
My job is kinda like that. Two staff, alone in the same sterile room all night long with little to do. Naturally we have much more freedom than missile silo military personnel would in using personal electronics to entertain us. And, of course, unlike those 1982 soldiers, we have wi-fi, laptop computers and the Internet to alleviate our boredom. But the dynamics of being in a somewhat forced proximity to one other person for such long and quiet hours is still there. You really get to know how the other guy ticks after a while. And sometimes, that can creep the bejesus out of you.
David is the newer member of our night crew having replaced June in April. He's personable, friendly, amiable and very accommodating. Gee, seems great right? A pleasure to work with so nice a fellow worker.
Well, yeah, except for one little thing...
I think he's nuttier than most of our residents here at the mental facility!
He's worked here before this current stint, as a part-time evening shift staff, and it wasn't long before the gossip queens were bantering about some of his "quirks." Chief among these, June and I would cackle about, was his unwavering, fanatical devotion to his wife's muffins. He'd bring in samples and absolutely pester folks to try them. He spoke almost in reverent tones as to their health and nutrient restorative properties and how his wife designed the recipe for them so well, that big corporations would kill for it. At first we thought his hyperbole about how companies would engage in murder to get the muffin's secret recipe was just that, hyperbole. But then, we found out...he wasn't kidding. He really thought there was a vast conspiracy surrounding the muffins, involving the administrators here at our facility and even a resident's father!
That's not his only conspiracy theory. He believes the feminist movement has somehow warped the way history and humanities are taught to the young in order to foster and bring forth a female dominated society in the future. He thinks that one of the residents here is in reality a corporate spy admitted here in order to get the point of view of a person suffering from mental illness. And don't even get me going on what he thinks about 9/11.
Another of his recent bizarre claims is that he supposedly has created a formula for teeth whitening that is uniquely positioned among the immensity of all others out there to corner the teeth whitening market. When he mentioned this to me, I jokingly scorned him for falling into "get rich quick" pipe dreams and he reacted with genuine hurt feelings, disappointed I wasn't offering him well wishes and support.
I guess his oddness is so disconcerting and creepy since overall, on the surface, he seems so down-to-earth and intelligent. But when you dig deeper, it seems like you're peering into the mind of a completely wasted pothead. Or worse.
Right now, as I sit across the room, him at one desk, I at the other, he's busily...no, not just "busily"...FRANTICALLY is a better word choice....frantically working on what I jokingly referred to as his Magnum Opus. It's an untold number of pages (ie: immense) of a composition, formatted like a vast bullet-pointed outline, from what I can sneakily gather by peeking at his computer screen. I went over to his netbook computer a few times when he left the room to go to the bathroom and it seems it has to do with perception of reality and consciousness. He's probably got some 500+ pages typed up of this humongous project, apparently utilizing most of his information from Wikipedia articles.
I told him that I noticed he was doing a lot of writing, night after night, shift after shift, and joked that I hoped it wasn't an endless, typed string of "All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy." over and over and over... He got the reference and chuckled, but quickly dismissed me saying it was "just an idea he had" and returned to his furtive labor. After I ridiculed his teeth whitening idea, I think he's withholding any further voluntary revelations about his projects with me. Fine with me, actually, I'd rather not go traipsing through the thickets of his troubled mind, thank you very much.
I just hope I don't turn around one night and find him sweating profusely and shakily holding a pistol to my head.