People suck.

Before Laura says it, let's get it out of the way -- "Nice people swallow." ;)

A new recruit joined up a couple of weeks ago, and he was extremely gung-ho, talking a mile a minute about every single new title and LAN parties galore. He was also completely rabid about the three Xbox 360s he'll be getting next week. He seemed personable enough, until the games that we sent him were "misplaced" by the post office and never arrived.

Of his own accord, he had picked up two brand-spanking-new and BIG titles, Quake IV and City of Villains. While we were waiting for the post office to get back to us about the status of the "misplaced" package, I asked him to review those BIG titles for us. We would send him the new, shrink-wrapped retail copies that we received, which he could sell/trade/whatever. He turned me down, saying that he didn't want to review the titles because they'd "ruin the enjoyment of the games." Oooookay.

The post office then declared that the package had officially gone "poof."

He proceeded to throw a hissy fit and went through many personality changes over the course of three days. He quit. He went out to purchase the titles but couldn't find them in stores anymore. He wasn't sure if his services were still needed. He quit again. I couldn't see him over IM, but I'm pretty certain that some degree of head-spinning was involved. I don't need to deal with temper tantrums so I let him stew for a few days.

The lost package means that I have to fill out paperwork, provide documentation about their value, get new product, ad nauseum. Luckily, we had review builds of the lost titles, so I offered to send them his way instead. In a shock to everyone involved, he agreed. He asked that I send the builds to his new work address instead, so that he would be around to sign for them. Perfectly logical request.

Except he didn't know the new address yet.

He was going to get back to me "soon," he said, and then disappeared off IM for five days. I sent him an email last night asking for the shipping address, and received this reply this morning:

I'm just not sure if I have the time right now. Things are busy, Holidays are coming up and I have a lot of more important things to do than review some code that's just gonna get tossed when I'm done. I'm not trying to build a writing portfolio or anything, I already have my career. I'm just bitter about the screwed up shipment. The post office pretty much ruined this experience for me.

Now, it's not as if three months have passed and the holidays just *crept* up on us. His wife didn't pop out three kids in the past two weeks -- they had three kids when he asked to join up. I think the real damper for him was when he realized that we treat this as a real job, and he hadn't uncovered a group of people with whom to play multiplayer deathmatch into the wee hours of the night. Also, the games would arrive about the same time as the X360 is scheduled to ship, and who wants to work when you can play?

All I'm saying is, I wasn't born yesterday. Save your lies for your kids, who might still believe them.