An Idiot at work

I have been having a problem at work. This is not any small problem nor is it a problem with an easy solution. It is definitely a problem that one doesn’t just learn how to deal with in school.
I am dealing with a mentally ill fool. I am not a psychiatrist so I can not even begin to make a diagnosis for him, although I can suspect there are some inadequacy issues such as probably “Napoleon Complex” (height inferiority), possibly sexual frustration issues (given the amounts of times he keeps talking about men doing each other in the rear end but yet is married to a woman and comes from a very macho Eastern European culture), and there is the fact that he wishes he were a boss, liking nothing better than to tell people what to do when his job is merely to run the elevator and make sure that cars are parked properly in front of the loading dock.
He has worked for the company for sixteen years, originally dealing with the garbage and then moving on to running the elevator. His name is Ion. Since I started working for the company many years ago, I have been witness to many of Ion’s various tirades, from his bragging about how he was a Nazi to his hatred and contempt for people of black and Latin American descent. There were his tirades about how Americans were weak and soft. He has been punched out and beaten up many times. I can count at least three times that I’ve seen him beaten up badly and have no idea how many more times that’s happened to him in the past. Oh, and did I mention, he is a nasty drunk? He has come to work drunk on multiple occasions and even used his mechanical jack to hit the wall once, putting a hole in the wall. One may ask, how has he kept his job all these years?
Good question, and it’s one that I have only part of the answers for. He knows how to kiss the rear ends of many of the people in higher positions. He runs and helps those people that he feels he may need when he gets into problems at some point. That should not be enough to make up for the negative aspects to him but it is. For the record, he has been fired twice (that I am aware of) but both times was saved by someone in a higher position with power to save him. That has merely served to send the message to him that he can get away with anything and that his job is secure.
I had some clashes with him when I first started working there, once even almost coming to blows but then I learned not to pay him any mind, that something was wrong with him in the head and in my limited dealings with him, had no major problems after awhile. I wasn’t perceived by him as a threat and I was a white male so he left me alone, except when he dropped off pallets of work for me and then was civil enough to me. For a long time, he calmed down with the racial comments and the tirades over stupid things. As I am in charge of receiving, it was eventually decided to move me down to the actual loading dock of the company and have me receive down there. That makes sense as receiving should be down in the area where merchandise is received rather than up on the sixth floor. Ion didn’t like this, as his main base is down in the loading dock and I suppose he perceived me being down there as a threat to him. Rather than have a break with me, though, he continued to be civil to me, showing displeasure more in the form of jokes and “friendly” advice that I should be upstairs. He was even more displeased when I was assigned an assistant who happened to be female. If there’s one passion that Ion has more than his racism, it’s his sexism. He took it fairly well, covering up his annoyance with jokes and “friendly” criticism.
Perhaps it was problems at home, perhaps it was anger over the pay cut he received like just about everyone within the company received last year or perhaps it was the combinations of blows to the head and alcohol abuse catching up with him but Ion turned more hostile, harking back to when I first encountered him. His comments to my female coworker became much more menacing, crossing the line into clear sexual harassment. He started making it clear that, in his view, he didn’t feel a woman should be doing a “man’s work” and she should be gone. Then he said that getting rid of her was going to be his project. He also started bad mouthing me. Behind my back, of course as to my face he was still friendly.
Friday, June 26th, Ion came in very drunk to work and grew more drunk as the day went on. This day stuck out as it was the last day before the annual vacation shut down where the company closes completely for a week and partly for two weeks. The people who could have controlled the situation and gotten rid of him were not around and by the end of the day, he had sexually come on to one of the (male) drivers who was there to do a pickup, touched my coworker’s cheek and told her in the elevator how she was the only woman for him, and vented to me with tears in his eyes, how no one likes him and he is “going to get even one day”. Not to mention that when he drove home, someone witnessed him driving his car on the wrong side of the street.
This was brought to HR’s attention and they felt that he should be gone but there were still forces within the company who felt that he was enough of asset as to warrant saving. By this time he and my coworker didn’t even have the pretense of being civil and I was straining to keep civil with him. I had to endure his stupid tirades and warned him over and over again (maybe 50 times) to get over things. It never worked. Finally this came to a blow between him and me and we were no longer on good terms. Ion’s own boss, the Shipping Manager, had enough of him and washed his hands of him but couldn’t get him fired so the corporate solution was to move Ion under my control. I was made Loading Dock Manager and was now his boss but I don’t have the authority to fire him so the gesture is meaningless. I am in the process of learning the various tasks that make up his job to get ready for possibly removing him in the future and have to endure his mocking attitude, which resembles the actions of a third-grade girl. Obviously I view him as beneath contempt at this point and pay him little mind but still one should not have to deal with this crap. If a fight broke out between us, I know I could finish him very quickly but we have to settle our issues in a more mature way and he is so far off the deep end of the pool mentally that there cannot be a “settlement” to this issue. He needs to go and that’s the bottom line. My coworker certainly has more than enough material for a lawsuit but her husband also works for the company and once the entanglement of court cases come to fruition, one never knows where they might end. I could leave but then he is still around and can make life hell for other people and would even view the fact that I am gone as a victory of sorts. No, the only solution is to get rid of this nut job and only time will tell when that is going to happen. As of this post, the issue becomes a matter of public record.