(He could have been professionally interesting if there were any jobs in it. Oh, he might go off a bit too long on some esoteric subject, but nothing to keep him from some degree of promotion in the company. )
His height was there entirely to emphasize the unusual boldness of his manner. Not quite rude nor intrusive, he yet bordered those places and always seems on the edge of falling in to one or the other. He was of the breed that has no natural ability to understand the meek, shy, or uncommunicative. This is not to say there was endless vocalization from him, but if he engaged in quiet meditation it must have been in his private moments. If there was speech to be had, there he would be, if only as an audience for some jack's chords or another. Surprisingly good at the passive end of conversation, he was still not entirely able to avoid interruptions occasionally, something which seemed to gall him each time it occurred. Likewise, his straightforwardness and lack of that sensitivity that lets one realize the discomfort of the shy was often a source of some dissonance. It was not so much that he put himself where he was not welcome, but that some types of unwelcome did not register, primarily those of the shy or brooding. Regardless of his intermittent lapses, his conversation was often one worth having, should one be open to a much wider world of topics than that usually approached. His interests were many and diverse and often had some odd fact to match those interests of whatever companions were around. It was obvious that in some topics he was no more than a dabbler, though in these cases he tended instead to encourage those around him to expound on their hobbies and proud knowledges. This worked, for the most part, if only because he seemed always genuinely, sincerely quite interested, managing even reasonable questions with which to keep the whole mass of the conversation moving forward.
His memory, he claimed to various degrees of belief, was quite spotty and unreliable. To remedy this, he kept huge albums of photographs, great file-folders of notes, none in any particular sort of easily identified order though this never seemed to much slow him down. It was looking through one marked on its cover with what seemed to be tacked on bits of fish-skin, that his long list of past romances was displayed. The variety was not unexpected. Blue-haired pixie girls shared pages with looming, wide-smiling Maori gigantesses. Bikers, nudists, chrome-heads, nerds, earthies, painted girls, hairless dolphin-women with brilliant teeth and twinkling pupils all shared the album haphazardly. It wasn't them that stood out, in that everpresent irony that he seemed to have spread over his life, instead the scattering of women and girls who looked in every way normal: Suits, t-shirts, jeans, dresses. Some were pretty, some even gorgeous, but most were nothing to stand out. He never would talk about his ex-girlfriends, one of the few topics he really avoided, though every so often some feminine name would come up in his recounting of one of the innumerable adventures in his anecdotal life.
He died alone. Some small town in Iowa found him in his bed, not sleeping, not really doing much of anything. He'd had a night out planned with some friends. That's how they found him. Buried him the next week. They tried to contact his old mates and acquaintances and family, if he had any family at least, but his notes were so beyond linear that the whole attempt was quickly given up. And so, he was buried with a small service and a quiet reception afterward. A small, grey little slab was put up with his name on it and the grass grew over him and that was that.
We never really could get over it.

The betting pool hadn't really covered that particular possibility, him dying quietly.

My money was on the polar-bears.