Local Man Finds Job He Can Do

Local Man Finds Job He Can Do

Albany, NY - After ten years at his job, Capital District resident John Smart has finally been given a task he is able to accomplish.

"John has been given multiple types of duties throughout the years - but we've never found anything he can do without screwing it up," said his manager, Arron Groanan. "We're all very excited that he can finally do something correctly; it's been a long road."

This success story began after Mr. Smart completed a basic computer repair course he mistakenly stumbled into at a homeless shelter. Smart said, "I was looking for some new clothes and I thought it was a thrift-shop. When I'm not bothering people by talking to them endlessly, I typically spend my work hours walking around all day. I've lost a lot of weight and now my clothes don't fit. I'm pretty cheap and since I've never been promoted, I don't make much money. Now on my all-day walks I look for thrift-shops, church basements, flea markets or anywhere I can get a second or even third-hand shirt for a dollar. I mean where else can you get a deal like that? Sure, they're out of date, maybe wrinkled or just plain ugly but..."

After interrupting Smart, I was able to steer him back on topic.

"So I walk into this homeless shelter and I see a sign that says FREE on it. I thought it was free clothes, so naturally I ran right in." Once inside Smart says he was instructed to take a seat and be quiet. Six months later he walked out with an Official Computer Repair Technician Certificate along with two hoodies that had been left behind. "It was great, no test or nothing," Smart told this reporter. "They told us it looks better when everyone gets a certificate, then donations just come rolling in. Plus, both hoodies fit great!"

After receiving his certificate, Smart found employment as a computer technician by a local technology contractor who hires simpletons. "Yeah, as long as they got that certificate that's all we need. We get free attention for hiring them and we don't have to pay them as much."

While working as contracted help at a local hospital, Smart was offered a job by a kindhearted and equally simple I.T. Manager. Since then it's been failure after failure. Every duty, job, opportunity or task given to John Smart has been disastrous.

"He's lost data from hard drives, pried chips off motherboards, disposed of wrong equipment, deleted files, dropped screens, inventoried five thousand wrong devices and crashed the company van three times. These are just the biggies," his coworkers recall. "There are thousands of minor annoyances, idiocies and mistakes. Ask him about the time he got a colonoscopy. We didn’t, and he told us anyway. Now two-thirds of us have PTSD attacks whenever he starts talking. Which is always."

Over the ten years Smart has been with his employer it seemed he'd reached a dead end. Then it happened, as suddenly as one of Smart's rambling stories. One day, between walks and after almost everyone had scattered, leaving him no one to hold hostage by his inane chatter, Smart grabbed a broom and began to sweep. He's never looked back.

"It just felt right," Smart told me. "I knew, I mean I really knew that I'd found my purpose."

His manager and coworkers agree. "I'm so glad that after giving up on John ever doing something correctly and doing it well, it's a real success story for us all. We tried so many times. We looked at his skill set, we brain-stormed and the things we came up with just didn't seem to work out. Throwing away the old computers was one idea we had high hopes for him to handle but it not only interrupted his walking schedule, he just sucked at it. He tried to ram the cart filled with computers through a glass door without opening it, you can guess how that turned out. So, we gave him a clipboard and a portable scanner and told him to walk around and inventory equipment. You know, nothing hard, scan the little bar codes. It seemed perfect - just don't point it at your eyes. Plus, it ties in with his walking and his need to bother everyone he encounters by talking to them. But we didn't give him enough credit and he managed to input everything wrong, nullifying a year's work. Seeing John go to town on that floor with that broom filled us all with pride. Pride for John and the pride that comes with enduring incompetence."