The pain was excruciating and I white-knuckled the table. The only difference when he checked versus when she checked was he gave a narrative of medical terms that I can’t remember or can’t pronounce, or both. He also didn’t have a clue about the equipment or how it worked. But if you asked him, he was the world’s expert on all of it, going so far as to argue with the engineers when they would try to correct his misunderstandings. As a result, the engineers as well refused to be anywhere near him. Eventually, the company decided that a change was necessary. But rather than fire Duane, they moved him into the project planning department where he wasn’t in charge of anyone, wasn’t allowed to touch the equipment, and just worked alone in a cubicle. Fast forward a couple of years. I’m working on testing a new type of 138 kV breaker and we have a technical representative from the manufacturer on site. Duane shows up to ask the tech rep some questions he has. Duane’s smirk was long gone. It was replaced by an ever increasing reddening of his entire head that caused me to think that it might explode.