Layover Larry

Let me tell you about Larry the Legend. Not his real name, but I like alliteration.

Today is a Wednesday. Thursday is a holiday, so Larry is taking a four-day weekend with his manager’s blessing.

A project manager (known for being a d**k) calls an all-hands meeting for that Friday. When told that Larry would be on vacation with his family that day, he didn’t care.

Project Manager: “Larry must be here for the meeting! It cannot wait!”

The project manager put pressure on Larry’s manager, and when Larry’s manager wouldn’t budge, he went above them to the C-Suite level, who made it very clear that Larry needed to attend the meeting “or else”.

Larry was told this, and it was expected he would just work from his hotel room on the Friday, and attend the meeting remotely. 

Nope. 

Larry flew from the state where he was vacationing into the office. He attended the meeting, which lasted about ninety minutes, and then he went straight back to the airport to fly back out.

He burned a whole day’s labor and round-trip airfare, which was expensed directly out of the project’s profit to spite the project manager. I applauded his pettiness.

The project manager was livid and demanded that Larry be fired. Larry’s manager refused, obviously, but the project manager went to the top level again. This time the CEO himself stepped in.

CEO: “[Project Manager], the client who is paying us to deliver this project has already asked Larry if he wanted to leave our company and join theirs. The only reason they’ve come to us to carry out the project is that Larry chose to stay. If we fire Larry, he has a cushy job with the client waiting for him, and they’ll cut us out. What I’m trying to say is don’t f*** with Larry any more, capisce?”

On Monday morning, Larry called into the office saying that all the extended travel on both Thursday AND Friday left him feeling out of sorts, so he was taking paid sick days for the rest of the week. The project manager was livid again, but was told to STFU and accept the week’s delay as karma for being a d**k the week before.

Larry strolled into the office a week later, healthy and tanned, walked right over to the project manager, and said:

Larry: “Don’t f*** with my vacation ever again.” 

Larry got back to work on the project, and he was so good that the client never even realized there was a week’s delay.