This IT shop has a programmer who’s very good at C and C++, but he’s got some nasty personality quirks, says an IT contractor pilot fish working there.

“If he didn’t like somebody — which was pretty much all of us — Fred would walk past that person’s cubicle and say something nasty out loud to himself, just within earshot,” fish says.

“He’d insult people based on the music they happened to be playing, or he’d make an unkind remark about their appearance.”

But the department has a larger problem: a big project with an artificial and aggressive deadline. The IT director wants everyone to work as many hours as they’re willing to, so fish and his fellow contractor Barney come in at 6:30 a.m., spend a few minutes chatting and discussing what they’ll work on that day, then get to work for another 12-hour shift.

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