• shane (unregistered)

    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

  • me (unregistered)

    James should have called out Lyle in public for that, and complained higher up. People like that only serve to corrode the office.

  • (cs)

    Are you kidding? Lyle is going to bring, by far, the best food to the picnic.

  • (cs)

    Wow, what an insecure loser. He must suffer from erectile dysfunction, or something.

  • (cs)

    It seems that Lyle enjoys reading the items on despair.com. Most notably:

    "The downside of being better than everyone else is that people tend to assume you're pretentious."

  • (cs)

    A picnic? Time to propose an eating contest with the most heinous food you can find.

  • throwing down the gauntlet (unregistered)

    The trick is to one-up Lyle at the company picnic unexpectedly... then he'll immediately have to hold another picnic so he can outdo you.

    I once got picked to be first to bring food to our weekly team meeting for a new project, at my expense. A poor recent graduate, I baked my own muffins for everyone rather than pay for catering. I unexpectedly started an escalating chain of home baking that resulted in one guy taking cooking night classes so that he look a fool in front of the rest of the team.

  • Don't Whine (unregistered) in reply to me
    me:
    James should have called out Lyle in public for that, and complained higher up. People like that only serve to corrode the office.

    I'm sure the office is well aware of how "corrosive" Lyle can be. I'm sure management is also aware of it. Complaining higher up makes you look like an even bigger loser, because management hates to play babysitter.

    Get along with others the best you can. If Lyle's not in your face, then stay out of his. When you go home, be thankful that you don't have the self-esteem issues he does.

  • (cs) in reply to throwing down the gauntlet
    throwing down the gauntlet:
    I once got picked to be first to bring food to our weekly team meeting for a new project, at my expense. A poor recent graduate, I baked my own muffins for everyone rather than pay for catering. I unexpectedly started an escalating chain of home baking that resulted in one guy taking cooking night classes so that he look a fool in front of the rest of the team.
    I hate this kind of nonsense where employees are forced to feed one another on their own dime. One way to handle this, is to bring something that nobody really wants, but nobody can reasonably object to. Like fruit. Bring a bag of apples.
  • (cs)

    There used to be a pair of guys like that here in architect roles, before they both had their responsibilities readjusted (read, made to write documentation every day until they went insane and eventually quit). It became a favoured pastime of the dev team here to play a game we liked to call architect-baiting, where we'd get one of them engaged in a topic – any topic would do since they were both resident experts in everything* - then someone would bring the other guy into the conversation and we would all sit back and watch them tell each other how blindingly stupid they were and even a myopic child could see that blah blah blah.

    You could tell how far progressed they were by the colour of their faces. A rich red was good, but bonus points were scored if they reached purple.

    • Actual expertise not guaranteed.
  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    A picnic? Time to propose an eating contest with the most heinous food you can find.
    My personal favorite is ex-lax chocolate cake.

    A while back, I worked in a place where we each took turns bringing in home-made snacks (muffins, cakes, cookies, ...). One guy would always grab the free munchies, but would never contribute. My wife decided that she'd had enough, and that this guy needed to be taken down. She put five boxes of ex-lax into a chocolate cake. I warned my co-workers, and made sure to take (and toss) a slice, so it looked like someone had already dipped into the cake. Mr. cheapo came along and took a large slice. Later that day, he had to keep excusing himself.

    I highly recommend such a cake for an eating contest with Lyle - just make it look like you're eating, while Lyle is beating you by scarfing the whole thing down!

  • Pedant (unregistered)

    This sort of person has already been done on dilbert (under the name of 'topper')

  • Man 987876980 (unregistered) in reply to shane
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?
    Good call!

    I terms of actually working with someone like this, one effective approach is to simply compliment him when he "wins". Not all the time, just every now and then. It might actually make him less annoying ... but many people find it impossible to act this way.

  • knocker (unregistered) in reply to throwing down the gauntlet

    We have a lyle where i work...

    We call him Matty twoshits. If you have a shit, Matty will declare he has had two.

    they are hard work.

  • Walleye (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    akatherder:
    A picnic? Time to propose an eating contest with the most heinous food you can find.
    My personal favorite is ex-lax chocolate cake.

    A while back, I worked in a place where we each took turns bringing in home-made snacks (muffins, cakes, cookies, ...). One guy would always grab the free munchies, but would never contribute. My wife decided that she'd had enough, and that this guy needed to be taken down. She put five boxes of ex-lax into a chocolate cake. I warned my co-workers, and made sure to take (and toss) a slice, so it looked like someone had already dipped into the cake. Mr. cheapo came along and took a large slice. Later that day, he had to keep excusing himself.

    I highly recommend such a cake for an eating contest with Lyle - just make it look like you're eating, while Lyle is beating you by scarfing the whole thing down!

    I'm not sure about where you live, but where I live that would be called "Administering a noxious substance" and would be a criminal offence.

  • jmo21 (unregistered) in reply to shane
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

  • Migala (unregistered)

    Tell Lyle the story about how you once were in a car accident and /almost died/. I'm sure he'll tell the story about how he completely, totally ... wait, never mind.

  • Mumbly Joe (unregistered) in reply to knocker

    We also have a Lyle, and he's so much better than your Lyle, or the Lyle in the article.

  • SomeCoder (unregistered)

    I just don't see the IT related WTF here. You can replace the IT industry with any industry in the story and get the same result.

    Luckily, I have never had to work with a Lyle. At least not yet....

  • Tom Woolf (unregistered)

    Years back when I worked for a Grande Entity, the center manager decided that the company picnic would become a intra-company competition. He split the 600+ employees into 2 teams (Red vs Blue) by last name (A-L, M-Z ?), came up with a half-dozen games, and got us all rolling on the inter-team snarking a couple of weeks prior to the picnic.

    All the snarking had the fun and light-hearted feeling of a good "less filling - great taste" debate, until some unknown soul (ahem), with the approval of the Blue team leader, hacked all the PCs so that when they booted up they either said "GO BLUE" or "DOWN WITH RED". No other changes were made - "GO BLUE" or "DOWN WITH RED" popped up, and then the computers went on their merry DOS ways.

    Apparently, the Red team leader, pissed because she did not think of it herself, complained to the center manager, demanding that the responsible soul (ahem) be fired! Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, an anonymous note with a quick fix was filtered through the Blue team leader, and the PCs were un-hacked.

  • Justice (unregistered)

    Roughly as annoying as these jerks are the Ignorant Know-It-Alls who will spout off a 20-minute lecture on anything, even stuff that they know nothing about (and anyone with a bit of knowledge can spot this immediately).

    Thanks for imparting that bit of knowledge on Eastern philosophy/medicine/computer programming/the adult film industry. Now watch as I disprove it by simply asking a Buddhist/a doctor/a programmer/your mom.

  • Lyle (unregistered) in reply to jmo21
    jmo21:
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

    I was thinking it twice!

  • (cs)

    My comment is better than yours!

  • ClaudeSuck.de (unregistered) in reply to me
    me:
    James should have called out Lyle in public for that, and complained higher up. People like that only serve to corrode the office.

    Indeed! For me, this is THE reason not to participate in company events.

    But I don't think it's a good idea to complain about somebody higher up in the hierarchy.

  • BobB (unregistered)

    I had the experience of having a Lyle on my team a while back. Thankfully, at this point he had already been recognized as a 'Lyle' by my team and other teams actually, so little of what he said was taken seriously.

    I think what got me and another nerd a great laugh was we were talking about tornadoes and air flow (we live in Oklahoma) and our Lyle broke in to talk about his expertise on this, which was none. He was basically stating jibberish but what got our attention was his assertion of the "fact" that warm air ALWAYS falls and cool air ALWAYS rises.... Even someone in another team who overheard this was like ,"WTF?" and our Lyle would NOT change his opinion. Even when we showed him otherwise (thanks Wikipedia!). He claimed we edited Wiki to prove him wrong.

  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to Valacosa
    Valacosa:
    Wow, what an insecure loser. He must suffer from erectile dysfunction, or something.

    Unfortunately, his spam filter is better than anyone else's, so he doesn't get offers of Viagra to help him get over it.

  • matt (unregistered)
    When you go home, be thankful that you don't have the self-esteem issues he does.

    Are you kidding?

    I have DOUBLE the self-esteem issues he does. His issues are nothing!

  • Dekker3D (unregistered) in reply to Lyle
    Lyle:
    jmo21:
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

    I was thinking it twice!

    you actually need to rethink these things? i know it's right when i think of it!

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Pedant
    Pedant:
    This sort of person has already been done on dilbert (under the name of 'topper')
    I knew that! I was just waiting to see how long it would take someone else to post it. :-)
  • Roger (unregistered) in reply to Lyle
    Lyle:
    jmo21:
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

    I was thinking it twice!

    You stole my thinking!

  • (cs)

    I think this article is missing the REAL ending, where Lyle fired James on the spot (he was his manager's manager, right?) for calling his bluff, and then trash-talked him to everyone else on the team, saying he wasn't a team player.

    Addendum (2008-05-21 11:58): Sadly, I've met a lot of people like "Lyle" here - arrogant fucktards who think that their the best at everything... "My code is perfect because I wrote the first version of this software 10 years ago in Foxpro 2.6". And, unfortunately, this person nearly always is in some position of power that they go on to abuse the hell out of and fire anyone who is better than they are.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    My personal favorite is ex-lax chocolate cake.

    . . . Mr. cheapo came along and took a large slice. Later that day, he had to keep excusing himself.

    Amusing in concept, perhaps, but a good way to get fired or sued, and that's if you're lucky.

    As with all medicines, there are known and sometimes serious side effects with docusate-based drugs, including allergic reactions, rectal bleeding, and abdominal pain, and, of course, it can interact unpredictably with other prescription medicines that the victim may be taking.

  • jimi (unregistered)

    Classic example of TCC (as defined by Tycho Penny Arcade):

    You have probably been to LAN parties where - when relating some marvelous thing you had done - there is always somebody who has to say they did what you did, only way better and it was super cool. That person suffers from TCC, the condition known as Two Clown Complex. It is derived thusly: imagine that you will have a clown at your birthday party. Should this joyous event be overheard by a person in the throes of TCC, they must declare that they will have not one but two clowns, in addition to a bouncy castle.
  • Storme (unregistered) in reply to Lyle
    Lyle:
    jmo21:
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

    I was thinking it twice!

    I don't think

  • TlalocW - aka The James in the Article (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    This also happened in Oklahoma. Was your "Lyle" actually named Lyle? :)

    What the rewrite by Jake took out of the story is that his explanation of not wanting his team to feel bad for losing twice is that they would have lost twice (if the second game had been fair) because his team had, "all the middle-aged Asian women who go hide in a corner and giggle while waiting for someone to shoot." Actual quote.

  • Anonymous User (unregistered)

    This...

    http://xkcd.com/151/

  • some guy (unregistered) in reply to Lyle

    I was thinking it before I even got up this morning!

  • Robert (unregistered) in reply to Lyle
    Lyle:
    jmo21:
    shane:
    are you sure this isn't a stolen script from an upcoming episode of "the office"?

    exactly what i was thinking!! :-)

    I was thinking it twice!

    I thought that before I read the article.

  • Rookierookie (unregistered) in reply to gabba
    gabba:
    Are you kidding? Lyle is going to bring, by far, the best food to the picnic.
    Do you want your Lyle rare, medium or well done?
  • (cs) in reply to Ken B.
    Ken B.:
    Pedant:
    This sort of person has already been done on dilbert (under the name of 'topper')
    I knew that! I was just waiting to see how long it would take someone else to post it. :-)
    I'm the first one who sent the Topper idea to Scott Adams. He personally thanked me for it.
  • (cs)

    Hey, psst, WTF Admin: Can you disable other people's comments? Cool! Thanks, bud.
    Tee hee hee.

  • James' colleague from The Lyle Story (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    I think this article is missing the REAL ending, where Lyle fired James on the spot (he was his manager's manager, right?) for calling his bluff, and then trash-talked him to everyone else on the team, saying he wasn't a team player.

    I think the best day of my 5 years at that company was the day I was golfing and James paged me that Lyle had been fired. I tore up that back 9, for sure. I'll bet a good 30% of you can even guess -why- he was fired, based on his personality and position in the company.

  • (cs)

    I am posting the last comment in this thread. Any further comments will be taken as a personal affront and I will have to post again to have the last comment.

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to Lyle

    I thought it first!

  • (cs)

    So whose vest on his team did Lyle leave turned on?

    And if his team was made up of people who giggled in a corner, why is that the group he chose to join?

  • (cs) in reply to Kivi
    Kivi:
    So whose vest on his team did Lyle leave turned on?

    And if his team was made up of people who giggled in a corner, why is that the group he chose to join?

    Probably so it would be much sweeter when his team "won", since his team didn't seem to know how to play. Getting beaten by a team of "losers" and all that.

  • mauhiz (unregistered)

    This comment is better than any other. And to ensure it will be I'll have Alex disable posting.

  • (cs)

    Absolutely true, and offtopic comment:

    I used to play nationally competitive laser tag. That's right, I've flown to Texas and Las Vegas (from Ohio) for 6 8-minute games of lasertag. >_>

    ...that is all.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous User

    We started doing something similar to this a few years ago to a friend. We make video game sounds and put our hands out like we are using a controller whenever our one buddy comes in with his one-up story.

  • BlueCollarAstronaut (unregistered)

    I've had "Lyle" experiences as well. I worked with this one guy who was a total doofus. He had his hands in as much stuff as he could, but he also managed to break everything he laid his hands on. In spite of being such a screwup, he had a massive ego.

    We got new business cards one day, and his had misprinted his title on it. He assumed he had received some sort of mystery promotion, and started strutting around making ridiculous demands of us lowly "peons."

    Sometime later, he then took credit for a promotion I actually did receive:

    "You know why you got promoted, don't you?" He asked with his characteristic smugness.

    "why?" I asked bracing myself for a long-winded spiel of insanity.

    "Because I mentioned that I was looking for another job, and the company wanted to make sure you didn't do the same"

    I wasn't sure which news was better: my recent promotion or the prospect of his leaving.

    (Of course, the real reason I got promoted was because I am so awesome. Why am I so awesome? Well, I don't know...I just can't help it I guess)

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