Rob

Ok. so here's the deal. I'm finally getting around to writing about what happened to me on my mom's bday, December 30th.

I go to work. I'm expecting the usual lazy friday, although i have to be a bit more cautious tonight since the night before my boss put me on probation, seeing as how a week before i left the pool deck with a dozen little floating children in the pool. so if i was caught away from the pool deck again when kids were around, i would be let go.

so i was on the lookout. making sure that if i did go out to the front desk, that i somehow had my back covered. luckily for like an hour there was nobody even in the pool. so i was ok.

i went out to the desk to talk to my coworker, when i saw my other coworker, Rob's, car in the middle of the parking lot.
he just sat there. i figured he was watching me. cuz the guy really wants me fired.
maybe he'd report back to my boss...

so he kept sitting there in his car. eventually he starts driving off, but he just goes to the farside of the parking lot and parks between my car and my coworker's car. i tell her.
"he better not be drunk. i don't want him to hit my car."
she says that there's no way he'd be drunk.
however, she wasn't at the pool on Friday July 3rd, which was the last time Rob had pulled the showing-up-to-work-plastered stint.
i figured it's right before the holidays that the man gets the loneliest.
he's got no family, his parents are dead.
not sure about siblings, and he's also not so big in the friends department.

so even though i don't really like the guy, i do feel for him. that's why i let him do his thing last time when he came staggering into the pool.

but this time. he's being more weird. after parking between our cars, he rolls around to the upper lot and sits up there for a while. just sitting in his car.
time passes and he repeats the process, going back down to the middle of the lot and sitting there.
all the while i think he's watching me, so i'm hiding behind pulled blinds while talking to my coworker.
he goes for a third round of musical parking spots until he ends up again in the upper lot.
by this time it was 6pm and my other coworker came in to relieve the person already at the front desk.
they watch Rob as i go to check on the pool.

when i come back, they tell me that he ducked behind my car.
i ask, "are you sure he didn't fall?"
they say it looked deliberate.
so the first front desk person is off, Karina, so she offers to go out to her car which is two stalls up from mine to see if she can see what's up.
Once again i head back to the pool.
when i come back, Elisa, the relief, tells me that Karina heard the sound of air hissing from somewhere (most likely my tire).
so i get worried and walk out there.

i see Karina taking her time with putting stuff in her car as i walk below both her and my car.
when i get to the street, i see Rob sitting on the ground in front of my car leaning into the juniper bushes intently focused on Karina making sure she can't see him and isn't looking.

eventually, i speak. "She can see you." i say.
Rob's head turns my direction and his jaw drops.
"what are you doing back there?!" i calmly ask.
"D-dinner." is all he could muster.
maybe that was his intended excuse if he got caught, that he came to get one of those frozen pizzas out of our employee fridge. he wasn't so eloquent in his answering, however.

so i disregard that and move on.
i tell him. "Look. I don't know what you're doing back there, but you're making me very nervous sitting there infront of my car. You can either get back in your car and go home, or you can use the pool."
Struggling to get to his feet he tells me he wants to use the hot tub.
Strangely, in the almost two years that i've worked at the pool. that's the most i've ever spoken to the man.

So now Rob is inside. he goes to his dingy office and does whatever he does. I stay outside and check out my car to find that the right, front cap on my tire was missing, along with half of its air.
wonderful. at least it wasn't totally flat and i could drive it to the nearest gas station. it didn't looked slashed or slowly leaking, so that was a plus.

In the meantime, Elisa has called our boss who came and had a long conversation in the locker roomwith Rob. I'm not really sure what went down, I just left them alone, something Rob didn't do when my boss' wife was chastizing me the week before. When they were done, Rob staggers back outside. He got into his car and sat down.
I followed from a distance and eventually ended up standing right outside his window where he pretended to not see me and manuever ever single item in his car around. His favorite game: seeing how long he can ignore you.
Eventually the rain and cold temperatures get the better of me in my shorts and sandals and i head to go back into the pool. as i round about the junipers and reach my car, only about 30 feet away, i turn around to see that somehow Rob had bolted.

FUCK! now i have to watch my car again!

We tell our boss that Rob just up and dissappeared, and he goes walking around the neighborhood to find him.
Things get a bit more dead, but i'm still worried about my car. i get distracted when one of the patrons i know pretty well comes up to me and tells me it looks like there's puke all over the locker room floor.
sure enough. right where Rob had been straddling the bench, there was a brown, liquidy puddle.
i wasn't about to touch that shit.
my boss came back and sprayed it with cleaner and i hosed it down the nearest drain.
fucking Rob. always cleaning up after that guy...

About a half hour later, Rob shows up again. This time to actually use the hot tub. But he takes his sweet time in the locker room. Actually he just straddles one of the benches with his head hung down.

I don't care to watch him as he uses the hot tub, so i go and talk to Elisa and Karina, who decided to hang around for the excitement.
Once Rob is done with the hot tub, he goes back into the locker room to get his towel.
He comes back out with a small rubber basketball who he fakes throwing at one of the patrons who gives him a look of, "what the fuck are you doing?".
i'm standing by the lifeguard desk, on the outside, so as to not be pinned behind it.
Rob walks by with his towel draped on his shoulders and mutters, "If you don't get that flat fixed, I'm going to tow you."
I didn't really catch what he said until after i thought about it, so i just nodded and said ok.
maybe that pissed him off even more.

he goes back into the locker room, finds his way to the toilet and sits there for 20 minutes.
He leaves again. When i figure out that he's left again, i follow again.
i start walking down the steps to see Rob casing my car, checking out the tires.
A patron coming into the pool walks by and has a few words with Rob.
I ask the guy as he passes me what Rob said.
Apparently Rob was going to go to Fred Meyer, half a block away, to get a pump for HIS tire.
i yell at the unexpecting patron, "That's not even his F... That's not his car!"
Rob sees me and starts heading north to Fred Meyer.

That's when I've had it.
I walk back in and tell Elisa. "I'm going home, fuck it. I'm watching Rob more than I'm watching the pool. I don't need to put up with this shit!"
So she calls the boss, and this time both him and his wife come out.
They apologize and say that it's ok if i want to leave.

By that time i already had all my shit together. I wasn't going to wait for their go-ahead.
I get into my car and putt a block away and across Lake City Way to the Chevron across from Fred Meyer.
Air ain't free, so i have to rummage for 50 cents. finding this i go back to the machine and realize that there's two spots for the quarters.
not sure that i have two more quarters, i go inside to ask the guy which spot to put them in.
he acts like i have no idea what he's talking about and when i prod further, he says he'll hook me up. i hand him the 50 cents and he presses a button from behind his desk.

the rain was coming down heavily still and i was still in my t-shirt, shorts and sandals.
that tire took forever to fill and i got totally soaked. especially my back.
somehow in the process, in my numbed state, i bloodied my knee. never felt it, don't know how it happened.

5 minutes later, the tire was full and i made some calls.
grandpa was in the hospital. i needed to visit, but couldn't til about 1am.
so i wandered in a daze to Fred's and got some consolation.
I picked up a few coworkers there and we went to see Grandpa.

all in all, not such a good night.

however, come Monday, i get some actual good news.
Rob was suspended for a month. He isn't allowed to enter the club for at least two weeks (although he already violated that the day after the incident, but i wasn't there).
It seems that they're in the process of finding new people, actually, they already have two possibles lined up.
I show up on Monday to everyone with a smile on their face. "It's been an unusually stress-free day," she tells me. All because Rob isn't there to bug her.

This has turned into such a good thing. The guy who tried to get me fired is now himself getting fired.

No more having to see him wear something from the lost and found.
No more smelly lockers right as you enter the locker room.
No more intentional annoyances just to give him his jollies.
No more knives or saws laying around in the open.
No more of his touching the girls while being wet.
No more picking up his kickboards and noodles.
No more picking up his trash.
No more farts in your face.
No more mildewed towels.
No more Rob.

Life is good.