Our office accountant, Stompy, has been in a viciously bad mood since the 1990s. Lucy Van Pelt with a mean case of PMS and jonesin’ for her morning coffee can not hold a candle to this guy when it comes to being generally pissy.
My co-workers often pay for stuff out of pocket. Like me. I could get reimbursed the $20 for an ink cartridge I bought for an office printer, but then I have to ask myself, “How much is it worth to me to not have to go deal with that guy?” I’ll kiss $50 goodbye easily, if it means I don’t have to deal with the 30 minute rant about how wasteful we all are for using the printer, what a scam the cartridge industry is, how we’re being ripped off by Staples, and so on and so on.
But anyway, as most angry people do, Stompy stomps. My office used to be next to his, but I had to move to a cube because he can never put a binder on his desk, he has to throw it angrily from across his office. So stuff was hitting the wall so hard, he was knocking our whiteboard off the wall.
His door gets repaired weekly because he kicks it open and slams it closed. Forget about the hinges, the frame of the door is what they’re working on now. There were some empty boxes that used to hold blank checks. Those had to be flattened before being sent out to be recycled. My colleague had to leave the office to work from home because he had to makes a series of phone calls, but all you could hear was STOMP!stompstompstompstomp! because Stompy was stomping loudly on the boxes to flatten them.
He just doesn’t stack binders on his desk, he slams them one on top of each other.
I once worked (for a state agency!) with a guy who kept a row of bullets on his desk, each scribed with the name of a co-worker who had pissed him off.
:eek:
He was eventually fired, and thankfully, he was all talk.
We don’t have a Stompy like yours, thank heavens, but we do have a lady who’s in a perpetually bad mood and letting the world know about it. She talks very loudly and has an abrasive personality, so she’s always running afoul of someone. She’ll then let the office know, for instance, “Well, I guess I’m keeping all these big important doctors from getting any work done! Guess I should lower my voice, or maybe I’m just not allowed to talk anymore!” She’s actually been fired, re-hired, and is even now skating on thin ice. It’s too bad, but she’s not going to change.
We had a boss that triggered near fistfights with his colleagues, caused our controller to walk out of a job he had for twenty years in the middle of this economic collapse. (And he hasn’t found a job yet, but he doesn’t regret leaving.) He caused underlings to vomit in fear of having to work alongside him.
He personally gutted the company, but he had the big boss wrapped around his finger.
Our VP’s admin is a tiny little bundle of evil. She is just slightly shorter than our cubicle walls so I’m guessing about 3’11". She controls everything from office supplies (ONE PEN, ONE PEN) to room bookings (Why aren’t you in your meeting room - you have it booked for another 12 minutes) and everyone on the floor is terrified of her. The irony is her boss is one of the best I’ve ever worked for. Remembers everyone’s name, knows exactly what’s going on and is generous with his praise when things go well and his support when there are struggles.
I will say however there is nothing funnier than watching from across the room as she berates some guy who looms over her (while hanging his head of course) Also she’s very nice when you haven’t, in her mind, screwed up. Kissing up however has no advantage as she’ll berate her best friend as quickly as her most hated enemy. No prejudice there.
We most definately do not have one. If we did he’d be let go immediately if he was a contractor and either never hired past probationary status or ‘downsized’ if an employee. Anyone with an attitude here simply doesn’t last.
No Stompy here, but I did work with a Punchy CEO…had a black belt in some martial art I don’t recall which I guess provided the mental state to put his fist clear through an office wall.
Still had to let a surgeon rebuild his hand though!
We have a Stompy, but not in a bad way. She just always wears shoes or boots with a 2 inch heel and always walks very fast with long strides so you can hear her distinctive “stomp stomp stomp” long before she appears.
We also have a Shouty. She doesn’t actually shout, she’s just a bit deaf and talks louder that needed.
Two jobs ago I was in an office with a “Quaker”. She was so heavy you could feel the floor vibrate before you heard her steps.
We have a Slammy. He walks around with his lip permanently curled in disgust so that he looks like Billy Idol. Like the OP’s Stompy, he is seemingly incapable of moving objects without using a minimum force of 2000 p.s.i. He spilled some coffee, got a paper towel, and SLAMMED it down and I think wasn’t trying to wipe up the coffee as much as rub off the entire counter. Our office is open concept. I have to wear earplugs at work because all the slamming is so disruptive. Particularly the clipboards, or big ledger books he works with. SLAM! In all honestly, for YEARS I thought he had a rubber stamp and had to stamp a bunch of documents “paid” or “past due” or something. I only found out recently that Slammy has no such stamp. The pounding I hear is just him organizing his papers by slamming them around.
I have never met anyone so angry and generally dissatisfied with life. My co-worker and I hear him on the phone all the time. He spends probably 15% of his working week arguing with complaints departments and filing formal complaints about various incompetencies and ineptitudes that apparently surround him. There must be no joy in his world.
That makes me laugh. Hey, I wonder what would happen if you guys started being a secret friend to Slammy? Leave sweets on his desk, happy face post-its.
It will either melt his slammy little heart or turn him into Super Slammy.
The guy in our large building who buys chairs. As far as I can tell his job emailing everyone whenever there is a opportunity to get a new chair then telling people individually why they can’t actually have one. Every now and then, through a mysterious process, someone actually gets a new chair, like our new secretary who had been sitting on the edge of her desk. The day after she got it, the secretary couldn’t find her chair so she called the chair guy, to see if it had been taken back. Chair guy comes down and finds the chair in the cubical next door and promptly, and loudly, accuses the next door neighbor of thief, complete with calls to security. Lots of shouting, finger pointing and admonitions to our boss to do something about the crime. Turns out the neighbor was out of the county that day and the custodian had just moved the chair for cleaning.
I have a Burpy, in the next office (I’ve posted about him before). He has no inside voice, so all of his discussions with students or on the phone are held at Spinal Tap levels. He’s rarely in his office, though - he comes to work to teach a class or two, and then wander the halls popping in and out of our offices to talk CONSTANTLY about inane things while the rest of us are actually trying to work.
After we all collectively boot him out on his ass because, you know, we are actually trying to get shit done, he sits in his office, playing youtube videos at Spinal Tap levels, and…burping. Like junior high school boys do, all open-mouthed and loud and wet.
At the previous building, I had the Brayer. Randomly through the day, something would tickle this donkey’s funnybone, and she’d start laughing HAW! HAW! Loud enough to be heard six aisles away.
Then there was Betty HiWhoJustJoined? All day long, she’s leading systems status meetings at her desk and as people dial into the meeting - boo-beep - HiWhoJustJoined? natter, natter, natter… boo-beep. Hi,WhoJustJoined?
Remember “CORporate Accounts Payable” from Office Space? Yeah, that chirpy, perky voice. All. Day. Long.
We have a Snippy who is our receptionist. No request is too minor to earn a sigh or a groan when answering the phone or a raised eyebrow when in her presence.
This really sucks because she is the gatekeeper for all of our out of state tech support calls so the customer is already put in a worse mood than they probably already are.
No chance she will be fired either because our companies Mr. Wizard happens to be her son. Sigh.
Uh-oh. Someone has antagonized the Stompy. I just walked past his office and he was bouncing up and down in his chair, going: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!..”