John S

John was my line manager at OEG.

I remember the day he started and I was asked to set him up with a computer. We had terrible computers back then so I may have intentionally given him one of the worst performing computers in the fleet. That year I managed to push through a proposal for a complete network upgrade and disposal of the old computers including his.

John had a massively hairy beard and big thick Italian spectacles. He was tall with a bit of a stooped walk and he loved to hang shit on Chrissi in reception, daily.

He was a notorious mumbler. You had to listen hard sometimes.

He was a workaholic which had a lot of appeal to the CEO, of a similar vein, and they did some amazing projects together, long nights building offices in NSW as well as all the things he was employed to do as a business manager which included sacking people. John was unfortunately the hatchet man and he had to dispatch of some popular but underperforming managers at OEG. He's never lost that stigma.

He also made his own tokay with friends. He would go up to Rutherglen with them and select the best ones and then put them in an oak cask back at his home at Taylor's Bay.

I remember going up the winding drive to his house in Taylor Bay and talking to him out on the deck. He had a whole flock of magpies on the barricade and he was handfeeding them bits of steak.

I think John got played by a female colleague who had an auto-immune disease. They ended up in a relationship together; he would have been a good 20 years older than her. They went overseas so she could have special treatment for her condition. They didn't continue seeing each other after that.