Brown Nose
I suppose I’ve been lucky, most of the people I have worked with have been OK, but I recall one incident from the late 1970s. I worked in a coal testing and research laboratory in one of Australia’s larger provincial towns. It was supposedly the branch lab but it was three or four times the size of the older “chief” laboratory which had been built in the early 1950s. The older lab, about 700 kilometres away was where the chief scientist worked.

I’d been there about four years when Brownie turned up. He’d worked a few weeks at the chief lab after graduating B. App Science as he learned some coal lab work. Accommodation was a bit scarce so for a few months he became my flatmate. They put him in charge of sample preparation and bulk testing after a while. The lab assistants called him Brown Nose within weeks as he used to follow the lab manager about like a duckling.

As a flatmate he was OK, tidy, cooked a bit, paid rent but he was a bit monosyllabic.

I worked in the “new building” with three or four other people. We mostly didn't do coal work, the lab had other contracts. So we didn’t hear everything that was going on in the main laboratory, not while it was happening anyway.

There was a large job on and a few clients to visit. The senior scientist came up from the older laboratory and stayed a week helping out and going round the mines. He was a lovely bloke, a Jersey man, formerly a ship’s engineer who’d studied metallurgy on voyages. He liked a cool beer or two. Let’s call him “Arthur”.

Late on the Thursday afternoon Brownie had his usual shower and retired to his room. He came out in his best bib and tucker and said he was going out. OK, said I, see you tomorrow morning.

The following day Arthur was returning to the older laboratory and came over to the new building before leaving. He said that he was sorry I had not been able to make it to the dinner party he’d thrown in the hotel the previous evening, maybe the next time.

I had suspected something of the kind so wasn’t entirely surprised.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Mon 28 Jan 2008, 0:19, Reply)