Ron posts another entry in the continuing saga of Bert . . . See Lai: A Tale Of Two Girls . . . evidently Bert’s been dating two girls and was recently “almost caught” when his fiancee spotted the other girl’s hair on his jacket to which he panicked and spun a tangled web of lies that made no sense whatsoever. It seems Bert’s friends ended up lying to the girl to bolster Bert’s story . . . getting him off the hook so to speak and avoiding immediate disaster . . . but the whole thing is a train wreck waiting to happen.

Readers of Ron’s blog know Bert from many of the stories there and see him both as a bit of a loveable doofus and as a kid cousin who needs taking care of. However, he’s also a young man with responsibility and power who needs to grow up . . . big time.

From the description of the context, Bert is on the road to losing more than his balls . . . by playing around with multiple women at work, he is endangering his job, particularly if he is in a senior position to both women as companies have become even more sensitive to “sexual harrassment” issues and are all too happy to have a scapegoat to fire and unless he’s much more competent at his job than he is dealing with women he seems to be a pretty good candidate . . . getting one of the girls fired is pretty shitty just because he doesn’t know how to be honest with women he is dating and doesn’t have the balls to be clear that he wants to be in non-exclusive relationships . . . he needs to break clean and grow up . . . if he wants to play around, fine, but if he doesn’t have sense enough to clean up his own messes any better than what Ron’s described, then no amount of helping him will set him straight . . . if the sort of lies described in the latest missive is the best he could think of in a crunch then I am doubtful he can perform under pressure in business either . . . personally, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near a senior or even mid-level management position as he can’t think under pressure and panics when things need to get done. I am a surprised Ron’s wife and neighbor would lie for him . . . unless they were misguided into thinking they were comforting the fiancee by pulling the wool over her eyes. If he gets away with it this time, again, he will only create a worse situation later. If he wants to learn to manage his love life . . . and his life . . . then he needs to crash and burn to be taught the lessons that will put him right . . . otherwise, he will continue repeating the same mistakes – only at a larger scale – as that’s what he’s been doing. Ron may not actually be helping him by saving him each time. It only encourages him to not be careful and to mess up worse the next time. IMO. If he is a “good man” and really “loves” his fiancee as has been implied, then he needs to do some heart searching about what the hell he’s doing. If he doesn’t want to jeopardize his relationship with Apple then he needs to learn to work within the context of that relationship. He sounds like he doesn’t know what he wants . . . but he wants others to behave as if he does. He needs to do some growing up and get some sense. If he wishes to play with fire then he needs to understand how to build a firewall and how to handle the stuff safely. He’s like some kid playing with matches in a gasoline soaked room of old newspapers. Something’s going to go up in flames and when it happens it’s going to spread through all aspects of his life and when that happens no white lies are going to do any good.

However . . . the stories of Bert’s misadventures are pretty compelling . . . and . . . like everyone else . . . I find myself checking back every once in awhile to see what sort of mess Bert’s gotten himself into this time . . . and there’s always a new mess.