There was an old man at my job when I first started, 9 years ago. He was, appropriately enough, named Dick and he was mean old man.

He had one of those cancer voice boxes, you know the kind where they put this little mechanism up against their throat and speak through it- I've also heard them referred to as cancer kazoos- although I suspect that this is less than politically correct. The sound of that drone would make me cringe. His main complaint was that he couldn't express emotions with the kazoo although the only emotion I could ever get from him was annoyance. He once explained to me that "you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground" I would, of course, beg to differ. Dick would slam his open hand on my desk and proceed to insult me- I usually ended the converstion by telling him to "get the f* out of my office". He stopped speaking to me after I refused to call him anything but Little Mary Sunshine.

He went into a coma and was put on life support- two days after that his family made the decision to pull the plug. I always thought it was interesting that they only took two days to make that call. I think you are supposed to re-evaluate your opinion of people out of respect after they die- I didn't- Dick was a mean old man.