In which Tom gives karma a helping hand and kills two birds with one stone

We used to have a marketing manager who was a real horror. Not particularly competent at her job, and she’d do nothing without considering the internal politics of it. In the 18 months or so that she was here, she bullied two good members of her team into quitting, in one case refusing someone compassionate leave after the death of a parent.

But she’s been gone for over a year.

More recently, we had a temp whose job was to edit and proof copy for our website. He was deeply inept at this, yet had a preposterously inflated sense of his own ability. A couple of us had to spend a fair amount of time sorting out his serial blunders. He was also pretty weird personally, being given to excavating his ear during meetings and (despite being married) borderline creepy semi-flirting with female colleagues a decade or two younger than him and a light year or two out of his league.

But he’s been gone for a couple of months.

So: today, the ex-marketing harridan gets in touch to ask whether I know anyone who might want some freelance proofreading work.

Well, maybe I do. Maybe I do…