Bob Griffiths

Bob was another unforgettable character stitched forever onto my tapestry of stressmen. In later years at Dowty I would have many, many moments involving Bob and as I dropped the last picture onto the blog it seems right to fast forward a little to talk about this entertaining guy.

The thing about Bob was that he loved to tell a story, or three, and most of the time would not respond to visual or physical cues that the victim/listener had become saturated and needed to move on with his day. The stress office was full of people who would back away from Bob, which was not a successful tactic as he would follow until any form of escape route was blocked, he had a story and once initiated, completion was the only viable option.

You could feel your eyes glaze over, you could see Bob, his coffee cup at three degrees off the azimuth and drips of the beverage around his feet, you knew that whatever topic triggered the anecdote, the story had a life of it's own, usually an unrelated subject completely.

"I told them, and you know, they wouldn't listen"

Bob had an arsenal of stories relating to every aspect of stress analysis, usually involving his disagreements with accepted procedures and methods, almost always punctuated with that line.

I miss the man because he was a character, perhaps somewhat of a nuisance at times, but nevertheless an office oddity that made the day interesting, not necessarily because of his stories, but because of the opportunities to "attach" him to an unwilling victim, or occasionally, applying the mercy rule and saving a victim by ringing the communal office telephone and saying "it's for you".

Or sit back and watch them dangle..