Hermes Conrad

(Born July 15, 2959)

Hermes Conrad is the hexagonist of Futurama, is a Grade 34 Jamaican bureaucrat and the accountant at Planet Express. He is afraid to make mistakes, as this may demote him to a lower grade.

Limbo career

Before working for Planet Express, Hermes represented Jamaica at the Olympics as, "a world-class limboer," (as his wife, LaBarbara, describes Hermes' early career as an athlete). His main rival, in limbo competitions, as well as in wooing LaBarbara, was Barbados Slim, the Olympic representative of Barbados. Slim is said to be, "the only man to win Gold Medals in both limbo, and sex," (a casual, humourous suggestion, that in the 3000s CE, "sex," is included among official Olympic sports). Hermes stopped limboing, for what is implied to be many years, after a young boy spectator at the Olympics, was inspired by Hermes' physics-defying limbo skills, to be "just like Hermes." Shown through a flashback in Hermes' memory, the child jumped into the competition area and sprinted toward an extremely low-set limbo bar, as Hermes protested,

"No, child! Your back bone can't take it!"

The young boy broke his back (and presumably died) trying to limbo under a tiny gap and Hermes was long haunted by guilt and a sense of personal responsibility for the boy's fate, despite not being at fault.

Bureaucracy

As a young man, Hermes was employed as a robot inspector at a robot factory in Tijuana, Mexico. Several years before the start of the series he chose to mark a newly built Bender Bending Rodríguez as fully functional, despite the newborn robot lacking a wireless backup module. He then resigned from Mom's Robot Company and moved to New New York, where he joined the Central Bureaucracy, eventually being assigned to Planet Express.

Hermes started as a Grade 36 bureaucrat when his grade was first revealed. He is the accountant for Planet Express and a long time friend of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. He is proud to be a bureaucrat and has even organized Spa 5, a forced labor camp, to be worked on by one Australian Man. He sorted out the Master In-Pile in less than 4 minutes, but he was demoted to grade 38 for being two seconds early. He was then promoted to grade 37 for pointing out that Morgan Proctor had only stamped a form 4 times, not 5. According to Hermes in "Bender's Big Score" he is now a bureaucrat grade 34 though in "Lethal Inspection", he is shown to be back at grade 36 for unknown reasons. It is also shown in this episode he was once a robot inspector for one of Carol Miller's (Mom) robot factories in Tijuana as inspector 5. He is also the inspector who approved Bender as he came off the assembly line even though Bender had a defect in which he had no backup unit installed. Bender's cuteness won over Hermes sense of duty and he approved him. He then resigned from the factory a short time after.

Family

Hermes has a wife, LaBarbara Conrad, and a son, Dwight Conrad. His wife left him a couple of times, twice for Barbados Slim when Hermes lost his body. He stopped his son from smoking one of his cigars, which was probably marijuana and has also set up an organization, Fathers Against Rude Television to protect his son from Bender's bad habits on All My Circuits. Hermes mentioned his grandmother is deceased in "The Farnsworth Parabox". Later on he mentions his mother is deceased in "Time Keeps on Slippin'" causing Professor Farnsworth to comment on her being promiscuous. In "The Beast with a Billion Backs", Hermes stated his mother and father told him how he would never get attacked by a tentacle monster.