Of course not, only that…
You didn’t say she “had no life or interests”, but devoid of personality or likability sure isn’t a compliment. Maybe she has a severe case of the Mondays? Maybe she suffers from depression? Maybe all she wants to do is get her work done, and is likely a social butterfly around those she actually cares about outside of work?
Then there’s the dreaded:
RELAX! IT MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN!
To which I want to respond, “It fucken WILL HAPPEN, and to YOU, if you don’t get your fake cheeriness the fuck out of my face right now, arsehole!”
Perhaps you missed this
This not a case of the mondays, this person acts indifferent to even the most joyful event-> I give her the benefit of the doubt everyday, but it is very hard at times because she is such a downer. But everyday I walk in I still engage her and treat each day like a new day.
Note the part I put about my personal defect. I’m not slamming her P.A. I’m just pointing this behavior out.
Ahhhh…yes. Can think of some awful coworkers but not personalitness. But I can think of my “therapist” at college. I had a major breakdown my senior year. But I wanted to get though me classes anyway. So I looked to me university, that I was paying and obscene amout of of money to to give me me a little leg up.
Took me days to even find the therapist. Then he just sat like this have to imagine sitting back in his chair, crossed arms, cynical expression
In front on a crying depressed young girl.
I’ve never seen a less emapathatic human being, and it wants to be a therapist.
By the way, at our workplace, when someone leaves the company on good terms, it’s customary to have a going-away luncheon for them, in the boardroom. We didn’t have one for this fellow. He didn’t even say goodbye.
I had a manager that was one of the most serious people I’ve met. Work was literally her life. She never mentioned what she did in her free time- anything non-work related was some sort of crisis “I have to babysit my neice” or “My dog is sick!” but never something like, “I can’t wait to go camping this weekend”. She once had a vacation, which I was looking forward to because I had hoped it would loosen her up a bit when she got back. When I asked what she was going to do that week, she said ‘nothing’ 
She probably sees me as immature, since I bring up video games, movies, etc to kids in casual conversation (I’m a tutor) but its ironic because she’s two years younger than I am yet people guess she is older- like 30.
I feel awkward around people that are so serious all the time- I don’t mind having a boss that is a hardass as long as I can feel like I’m being told what to do from one human being to another.
I started a thread once about my supremely irritating co-worker “Al.” He had no personality except to be irritating; the consensus was that he had a touch of Asperger’s. Lots of Internet basement nerds blame their nerdliness on “ooh, I think I have Asperger’s” but this guy really did have it. He had no friends and wasn’t close to his family. He didn’t seem to like anything except file folders.
He was laid off in my company’s first giant round of layoffs (I was recently caught in Round 2; don’t cry for me, I’m happy) and I always worried about him. I hated him, but he’s a guy who needs to pay his bills and eat, and I couldn’t imagine him getting hired by anyone because he was so devoid of the normal traits of a human being.
When I was in school I had to spend a lot of time working with people on projects and this describes two young women perfectly. They were like cardboard cut-outs of people. The scarey thing was that they were both in elementary ed.
I felt sorry for any little kids that they’d be around. Maybe they were better with children than adults but I don’t think people have that much of a personality change. I had to spend a lot of time driving in the car with one of them and I felt like I was with an inflatable doll.
Thats old huh? :mad:
Am I the only person who wonders how personality-free people hook up, marry, have sex, and make babies? It seems like you’d have to have a personality to accomplish all of that.
Like meets like, perhaps?
anhedonia
I don’t know if it is as severe as anhedonia - it could be…
All right, I gotcha. My vote is depression of some sort, and/or a dislike for her work or something. She may seem devoid at work, and something of a wild girl outside of her work too though that isn’t easily transmitted at the water cooler. I mean, it’s possible.
Yep - you are right, it is possible. And I do hope that’s the case, I’ll still treat her with respect and dignity no matter what…Plus, I can get a rise out of her every once in a while… 
I’m an insurance actuary. Personalities are considered optional in my line of work.
I once worked with a woman like this (she worked in the records department). She was non-reactive to the point of catatonia. Whenever the head of records wasn’t there, I had to deal with her. If she hadn’t actually moved and gotten whatever file I requested, I would never have known she actually heard or registered what I said, or had died on the spot while I was talking to her.
Her expression and body language was just dead, dead, dead. How she got even that job, I will never know. I knew from office lore though that she did have husband and kids.
I personally never saw her engage in any conversation with anyone that wasn’t work related. Even if I observed her sitting with this one woman from the same department in the lunch room, nothing. No conversation at all. The fellow department worker was similarly quiet but would at least respond if you said hello, and even occasionally smile and act marginally animated.
This one, nothing.
Once, I saw her on the bus in my neighborhood. In my surprise to see her there, I looked her right in the face and enthusiastically exclaimed, “Hi, Brenda, how are you?” Nothing. No, she didn’t seem like I had broken into her deep thoughts and no, she didn’t seem like she just didn’t want to speak to me. She just wasn’t there.
At the time, I became convinced that she was severely depressed. Later I ran across a quote that described her exactly, which I will paraphrase:
*That just was no there there.
Virginia Wolff*At the moment (until I can afford to run screaming away), I’m working for a family-owned company. Mom, Dad, and two adult sons. The boys, let’s call them the Wonder Twins, are both almost totaly devoid of personality and social skills, as well as business acumen, elementary office procedure, knowledge of labor laws, etc. Rumor has it they both went to college, but it clearly made no impression on them. Mom and Dad are a whisker away from retirement, which will leave these captains of industry in charge of a moderately successful $20m company. They’ve made sure to shield their little boys from any of the ugly responsibilites of life and turned out a couple total voids.
The older one is VP of Sales and is supposedly very hands on, but I’ve scarcely ever heard him speak to anyone. I sit right outside his open office (which he rarely leaves, having apparently no outside life at all) and I’ve never heard him on the phone to anyone but family or seen him meet with anyone outside his family or assistant.
The younger son (might be 30, might be 40) makes the older one look larger than life. I swear, you can stare right at him at not notice he is there. Like a mildy annoying ghost. Apparently there is a daughter as well, but she moved to the coast and rarely visits. She probably forgets they exist.
Alcohol. There’s a cute girl in my office that got drunk at a work party and had sex with The Guy That Never Speaks. I take that back, though. It’s not that he doesn’t speak, he’s just not really into extracurricular speech.
It’s sad, and I don’t even drink, but I think these people really do “need drinks to loosen up”. I hate that term, too. It’s such an implication that you can’t be who you are or who you want to be without it.
I’ve posted at-length about things like this on my own board; I’ll post a summarized and sanitized version for this place.
I work with a large group of engineers, lawyers, and miscellaneous scientists and support staff (accountants, secretaries, etc.), every one of which has a 4-year degree or better, about half have a master’s degree or better. Educated folks. Well-to-do folks too, generally speaking.
Their office talk and interests can easily be summarized - the top-5, broken by gender, is:
Females
Jesus
Kids
Their damn kid’s school
Their damn kid’s out-of-control antics at home, fussy eating habits, etc.
How their husband doesn’t understand them and all men are eeeeeeeevil
Males
Football
College basketball
Baseball
Beer
Jesus
Looking over this list, I can see that there is absolutely butt-fucking-nothing I have in common with these people. Thankfully, there is one single person, a junior manager who is semi-ostracized as the “weird flaming liberal” in the office, because she is the sole and only person who can and will hold a very intelligent conversation about:
World events and politics
Cool science topics and engineering topics
Social issues
Literature and film
Cooking, art, and creative writing
Without her to talk to, I’d be even more isolated than I already am.
A big hoot is to ask people what they did on the weekend. Here’s how it ranks:
Females
Something with the damn kid
Something church-related
Something garden-related
Laundry, cleaning up after the damn kid, etc.
Shopped for something for the damn kid
Males
“Watched da game”
“Mowed da lawn”
Men only get two items, because if they do anything else, they never talk about it.
Even their vacations are mundane. So cue up “Dancing across the USA”, and read how their vacation time is typically spent:
What Una’s Co-workers did for Vacation
“Worked on da house (or lawn)”
“Did sometin’ with da damn kids”
Went on a cruise to somewhere relatively “safe” where they spent 90% of their time drinking and eating. (they only go in the Caribbean - suggestions that they go on a cruise in the Mediterranean or elsewhere are met with horrified looks and expressions of “no way, that’s where all the terrorists are” or “um, Europe isn’t any different than Mexico, and I’ve been to Mexico”)
“Went to (another city) to see a (football/basketball/whatever) game”
“CA-bo, BAY-BE!”, where they spent 90% of their time drinking and eating.
When they ask me about my vacations, and I say I went touring ruins and museums in Greece, the first thing they ask is “Yeah, but how was the food? And do they have any beers I’d recognize, or do you have to bring your own?”
So yeah, I work with people devoid of personality and likable characteristics.