Kicking up a bit of a stink

There are some advantages to being a lowly coder, you know.  Sometimes it is easy to feel a bit hard done by and downtrodden when you're at the bottom of the employment food chain, but rising through the ranks has its disadvantages too.

For example: today my team leader and my department manager must take a co-worker from this department into their office and confront the guy with the fact that pretty much everyone else has noticed that there is a bit of a personal hygiene problem going on.  Actually that's not the whole story, this guy is actually the coder equivalent of Alexi Sayle's character, Bobby Chariot.  You know the one that was the world famous warm-up comedian that was living in his car?  Well we've got that going on here.  Not sure if this guy's on pills for his nerves, like, but there is something dodgy going on..

I'd probably feel a little more sympathy if the person in question was a regular team member, but the fact that the guy is filthy-money-grabbing-contractor-scum means that there is certainly no financial reason why living in your motor is the only option (and no, I'm not really against contractors, it's just an in-joke here as that's how one of the other contractors here refers to contractors in general (including himself)). 

You see it's not been a sudden realisation that this guy's habits were decidedly, you know.. odd.  No, it's been a slow revelation, like a long-running series that gradually reveals plot points to you as the weeks go on.  Firstly people just commented on how hard-working this guy seemed to be, well maybe not hard working, but certainly dedicated.  He was always the last person to leave of an evening, and yet always seemed to be the first person in on any given morning.  Then someone else commented on the fact that this guy's car was absolutely packed to the roof with crap.. and we're talking clothes, household items, even parts of a bike(!?) here.  There barely seemed enough free space in the car to actually be able to drive it.  And then there were other things.. how he always seemed to be wearing completely crumpled and unironed shirts (quite often with the collar half down and half up), how he came in only half shaved some mornings, the basic dishevelled look he had going on.  Then, it wasn't long before stories started filtering through from the security guys who worked the night-shift that they'd seen this guy popping out to the chippy about half nine at night (and coming back) and a couple of reports of having spotted this guy sleeping overnight in his car in the company car park.

If it wasn't so potentially tragic, it'd be comedy genius (as the aforementioned Mr Sayle realised when creating the Bobby Chariot character), but at least I don't have to have a meeting with the guy later to ask him all about it.  I mean the poor bloke could be so potentially embarrassed.  But that's the disadvantage of selling out, taking the pay increase and suckling at the company teat as all team leaders and managers do.  As I say, all of a sudden, the role of lowly developer ain't so bad after all.