Fred Jablonski’s water bottle, a blue one liter Nalgene bottle, sat on his desk long after Fred Jablonski was gone. He only lasted a day. Showed up and decided that the job wasn’t for him or something, we never knew. In fact, no one ever introduced him to anyone in the the department and no one told us he was gone. But his desk was still his desk months later, the water bottle gathering dust along with the standard office supplies, pen, pencil, stapler and notebook. Fred Jablonski was The Dead Man in Yossarian’s tent. No one could be assigned to that desk the water bottle gathered dust until we moved offices seven months later. But the myth of Fred Jablonski long after the desk and dusty water bottle were left behind.
Fred Jablonski lived on because he became a kind of Spartacus for the software development department. Everyone was Fred Jablonski. See, when we changed offices we also got we one of those phone conferencing systems which asked you to record your names and then announced you when you joined the call. This annoyed everyone. So when you attended a conference call you would be met with a roll call of “Fred Jablonski”, “Freeeed Jablonski”, “Fred Jaaablonski”, “Jablonski, Fred Jablonski” every time a developer joined. The rest of the company had no idea who Fred Jablonski was which only encouraged us for a time. Eventually the company grew and many people even in the software engineering department had no idea who Fred Jablonski was. And so, eventually Fred Jablonski faded…