Like most inebriates, Drunk John is a moron. He's alternately affectionate and loutish. He thinks people are endlessly interesting, most especially himself. And the f-bomb becomes his every other word instead of every third. When post-mortems hinge on the nuances of urination prepositions ("Did I pee on the parking garage, or in it?"), you are a moronic drunk.
For this reason, I do not often drink.
When still at Microsoft, for reasons that seemed important at the time but that elude me now, I had to take a 350 page document and hand-tag it into HTML. I arrived at 9pm and would work until my 5am handoff. "If I'm spending all night inserting p tags, I'm sure as hell not doing it sober," I said to the woman whose fault it was. She gave me a bottle of rum, and I started drinking and tagging.
I got blind drunk. Yet astoundingly, I didn't make a single mistake. I couldn't do that sober if you gave me 10 tries. What the..?
It was then that I learned, with great alarm, that moronic Drunk John is a better performer at work than, well, me. I'm crushed by a guy who pees in parking garages.
And I didn't think I could hate him more.
This phenomenon last manifested when I was working for Flo. I was in Redmond resolving some crisis, and my work was done, and I wanted to see my friends. "Are you absolutely certain that I'm done?" I asked. "Because I'm going to go drinking." She told me to go. 90 minutes and maybe eight bourbons later, my phone rang.
"GETBACKHEREOHMYFUCKTHEBUILDISONFIRE!" she shrieked, or words to that effect.
I wobbled back to Microsoft, and I fixed that problem. Then I fixed several more, quickly and creatively, smiling and agreeable. I effervesced with great ideas.
"I want Drunk John to work for me forever," a bewildered Flo said afterward. "You, not so much."