Clueless people at work

You know those people at work who have no idea how annoying they are? Those that you try to gently shoo away from your workspace, but they just don’t get it?

Today a former co-worker hunted me down in my office while I was working. She was interested in applying to be my assistant. There is no way in hell this would ever happen, because she talks too damn much. She asks stupid questions. Yes, it IS possible to ask a stupid question. Like ‘Alice, what colour do you want me to make my file tabs?’ HUH? You stared at me like a lost puppy in my office for 20 minutes while I was on a call to ask me THAT? Why the ever loving hell would I give a shit what colour your file tabs are? You don’t work for me. You don’t report to me. I don’t look at your files. You’re some woman who happens to sit on my floor. I really don’t give a shit.

So she wants to apply to be my assistant. ‘Oh so sorry - the position has been filled.’ sez I. So she asks if I have an inside track on other positions in my Faculty. ‘Nope, sorry, no idea at all.’ because I actually kind of like my current coworkers and wouldn’t do that to them.

So she begins to talk. And talk. And talk. Asks how the job is. “Really, really busy.” She doesn’t twig. She talks, and talks, and talks. I’m tapping my foot. Glancing at my computer. Nothing. ‘It’s amazing how many extra hours I need to work every week because I’m SO BUSY!’ I say. Nothing. She goes on and on and on. I was praying for an interruption from ANYONE so I could escape. A phone call. An e-mail chime. A knock at the door. Of course nothing happens. I, who never get a moments peace, have no friggin’ interruptions.

What the hell are you supposed to do? I don’t want to be rude and tell her to piss off. I don’t want to tell her that I will dead, ice cold, in my grave before she has a job in this Faculty. I really, really don’t. However, if she corners me again, I may have to.

How about “Excuse me, but I have work to do and I don’t have time to talk now?”

What? So she can come back some other time when I DO have time to talk? No thank you.

This is the kind of person that you just have to will away and hope to god she doesn’t get it in her head to return. Ever.

So what you’re saying is that you want the situation to change, but you’re completely unwilling to actually DO SOMETHING about it?

Good luck with that. :rolleyes:

Erm, no. I don’t think that’s what I was saying. In fact I just re-read my OP and I’m sure that’s not what I was saying.

However, I’m envious of your world where there’s never a situation that your Assertiveness Training Class doesn’t come into play.

Honestly, have you never had an acquaintance where you marveled at how totally clued out they were? I don’t actually need advice - I’m quite sure this woman won’t be back. I actually thought other people might have stories to share. No worries if they don’t.

This will sound crazy, but I have a coworker that can be an extreme pain in the ass. The reason it makes me kinda mad is because she forces me to “get case of the ass” in military jargon when I shouldn’t have to. This is probably the easiest assignment in the ENTIRE armed forces. Hell, I was on 3 different types of blood pressure medicine when I got here. Now my BP is controlled to a level that I’m only one, well, two, but I’m not in the 172/118 range anymore.

This person is an E4, (Senior Airman in the Air Force, equivalent to an army specialist/corporal) and we both work for a civilian boss, and you’d think she’d have some common freakin’ sense. She’s not a bad person, and she sometimes hangs out with my wife. But she’s in her early 20’s and its obvious that she’s gotten away with stuff at former assignments playing the “I’m a girl” card. She hates to be alone, and constantly has to have someone to talk to. She used to call me in my office all of the time saying she needed help with a particular task and when I came to see what was up it was a one person job. So I had to explain in small words to not call me for stupid shit.

She honestly said to me once when I told her to do something “Ok, 'll do it. You kind of outrank me.”:eek:

I was so shocked I couldn’t help but yell. “Kind of? Airman I DO outrank you. I tell you do something the only thing I want to hear back is “Yes, sergeant”. Did you even GO to basic training?”.

And she’s suprised the first sergeant wrote on her evaluation 'has trouble following basic orders." Geez.

I thought she got the idea. So one day she calls me and says she has a problem in one department fixing a broken PC and needs help. I stop what I’m doing, go to the office she called from and she ain’t there. Theres a coffee shop in that bldg so I look in there. She’s drinking fuckin’ coffee with a friend of hers. Reigning in my temper, I ask her what the problem is. She says that the PC needs to be replaced and she’d have to make two trips to the storage room to carry both the monitor and the PC. Its a 2 minute trip to do so. Most anyone would have just taken the stuff and came back with a new one. It would take maybe 30 minutes tops. Less if she went and just got a cart from the store room. So I had to be all like “Step outside here with me” not wanting to explode in front of the people in the coffee shop. I thought were past that point, honestly, where she did this dumb shit.

ME: Look, I don’t know what it was like wherever you came from, but you don’t call a senior NCO saying you need help carrying a fuckin’ PC…on a task that you could yourself in a half hour. Especially when I have to come from another building stopping what I was doing to get here. If you seriusly need help, its not a problem, but this isn’t one of those times. You especially don’t call me and then go drink coffee and yak to your friends when I get here. Thats unacceptable, Airman. I don’t work for you.**
HER**: *But if you carry the PC I can take the monitor and it only takes 15 minutes (first name). *
ME: *I don’t work for you, and I don’t take orders from you either. And cut the first name shit out, too. We’re on duty, you address me as “sergeant”…got it? I’m going back to my office and you’re gonna finish this job right now. By the time I get there you’d better be done, too…I will be checking the work log. Don’t talk, just get your ass in gear. * (And I’m toning it down here, I really did go nuclear when I said this with more…uh, colorful language.)

So she slinks off, does it. (even her friend who is an Air force NCO) told me she knew I was gonna go apeshit when she called me. Even my wife, who was a platoon sergeant when she was in the military told her that she had to cut this crap out as a friend. Its obvious that wherever she was posted last she got a lot the guys to do stuff for her “because she’s a girl”. I really don’t play that.

So fine…I’m really an easy going guy, so later I gave her another verbal counseling about it, because I know it was her need to have someone to constantly talk to that made her call me. Of course our civilian boss found out and chewed her ass some more, so she stopped doing that crap.

So monday rolls around again…in this place we don’t have medical facilities. If you’re sick you go to a civilian doctor in the village. So unlike a normal post, if you say, get the flu you don’t have to go to a doctor and produce asick call slip to not go to work. You can justy call and say “I’m not feeling well, I have a temperature…is it okay if I stay home.” Surprisingly no one milks this here. What does she do? She claims to be sick but instead of calling my boss or me, she calls my wife (who works in a different department but sees my boss several times during a work day…and my wife is a former servicemember) to tell my boss she’s sick. I almost went through the freaking roof. You don’t call through proxy. Our boss is a retired marine, so he was not happy. The next day he went ballistic when she came inand when she got all sad about it I reminded her you could have avoided that ass chewing by calling me, the boss or one of the other TEN people in this department and telling them you were sick. No one would have even questioned it. What are you stupid? You call MY wife, who doesn’t have anything to do with this department to tell our boss you were sick? Now every time you say you’re sick they’re going to make you prove it. You fucked this up yourself.

Its like she doesn’t realize she’s in the military. If this were god help her and army post, they’d have slammed her by now. This place is too easy to work in. She just doesn’t think before she does something. Hell, I wouldn’t have cared if she were sick or not. The first sergeant wouldn’t have cared…all she had to do was to have called me, the boss, or even one of the german soldiers in the office and say “I’m sick”. Even worse, she could have just asked for the day off if she was faking. Our boss is so tired of yelling at her he would have let her have it. I had one of the Air Force Senior NCO’s speak to her about this kinda stuff (technically, she’s their problem, so they can write her up)…its like she’s unable to get a fucking clue.

I have a co-worker that is like that. She is also a talker and feels the need to explain why she is so busy.

The worst is the first of the month. She has cycling/balancing to do and you would think the entire world must stop for this to happen. She can do nothing else but this and if you do happen to bring her anything else to do she has to tell you every single thing she is already doing in detail.

There is no simple “I will get to it but I am busy with this right now which takes priority”. She has to go into lengthy detail of what she is doing, what she has to do blah blah. God forbid there is an issue with a report. She will tell you all about that too and tell you all about what she needs to do to fix it.

If you are so fucking busy then how do find the time to take fifteen minutes or more telling me all about it. Just fucking do it and quit telling everybody about what you have to do. We don’t give a shit. Hell half of the time I don’t understand what she is talking about anyway. I don’t do her job so explaining to me about some problem is doing nothing but wasting my time and hers.

She is also one that can not seem to take the hint that you need to get back to work. She will start talking and you can nod and say “well you have to do what you have to do” and try to turn back to your computer and then she comes back with "ANYWAY…blah blah blah blah. She will not shut up unless she gets out everything she wants to say. There is no stopping the flow.

She is a really nice person but the talking makes me want to stab her eyes out.

You can hopefully talk to your supervisor and get some input.

Barring that, you are a good person. Sometimes being a good person means suffering the well-intentioned but annoying faults of others. I hope this isn’t the case, but if so, hang in there!

There are people who, for whatever reason, do not respond to subtle cues about their appearance/loudness/odor, etc, and a more direct approach must be taken. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no amount of watch glancing or nose holding that will do the slightest bit of good with these people, they’re oblivious. Direct and unsubtle messages are best, I’ve found. A simple “I have to go, bye” usually does the trick. You can kind of mask it a bit by checking a cellphone/pager, or even an ipod (yes this works), but it’s really not necessary. I’ve noticed these people are also kind of immune to the rudeness inherent in this approach, as it’s the only successful tactic and they see it a lot. The key with blabbers is, be firm but not rude; “Well, I’m bored. See Ya!” is probably not the best one to use in a work environment. And they’ll usually keep blabbing until they’re out of the range of hearing. But hold firm and if necessary, repeat “goodbye”, accompanied by the optional friendly wave. See, the way I look at babblers comes from Douglas Adams: if their mouths stop working, their brains will seize up. They’re not actually wanting to talk to you, they just need to keep blabbing so their brain doesn’t stop. :smiley:

Heh…I know a guy like that at work. He’s not in my department, but he is in the military. The problem is he’s one of those guys that if he wasn’t in the military he’d have nothing else. I always wonder about guys like that…I want to just ask them “Do you have ANY interests outside of the military…at all? God, your life must be boring!” I know I bring up the army a lot in my posts here, but if you were to actually meet me you’d find that I don’t talk about the military a lot in person. Especially if I’m off duty or if the subject has nothing to do with the business at hand. I don’t want to talk about some obscure crap in the Army Journal when it really doesn’t affect me or have anything to do with anything going on. But this guy doesn’t get the subtle cues that say the person you’re speaking to doesn’t give a rats ass about what you are saying.

But if I get cornered by this guy its always *“I hear that the new blah blah blah regulation means blah blah blah…” *and *" Did you know name some unit in some base that that is doing something that neither affects anything or has the slightest to do with anything we’re doing…" *It makes a boring conversation. He’s a good guy, I think, he just can’t tell when he’s boring people to death. (I’m not the only person that has this issue with him). I know people that don’t like sci-fi or horror or comics. So I don’t talk about that when I’m with them. I know they’ll be uninterested.

The person I spoke of earlier in the thread does the stuff you mentioned too. I’ve had times when I’m really in a hurry and have to go and she’ll stop me to say *“Wait, I have to tell you about what my cat did last night!” *(seriously she said this to me once when I just finished saying “I have to do something very important right now!”.) So once again she makes me be an asshole because I have to say ***“Didn’t you just hear me say I have something important to do RIGHT NOW?”. ***

Though both of these people aren’t the worst I’ve experienced. I once saw a colonel keep three people hostage once while he rambled on about a bike race he was in for 40 minutes. I was only in the room because he sent my department a request for installing some software on his computer. In 40 minutes he didn’t pause long enough for me to say “Sir, can you move away from the desk so I can get started on your request?”. When I did get the opening the other guys he was talking to broke the sound barrier getting out of there. I was fortunate. He went to get a cup of coffee while I installed the software. I did it fast too, because I didn’t want to be hear the bike race story when he got back. I found out later that my boss sent me on that job because he got caught talking to that guy for an hour about some bike stuff and didn’t want to experience the mind melting boredom again. I should have known, my boss once successfully deflected this colonel’s attention to me at a local bar while he beat feet out of the door. I had to listen to a long ass story about some flight crew he had ten years ago in a fucking BIKE RACE! while I chugged my beer trying to come up with a reason to haul ass myself. Well, at least my boss apologized for that one. :slight_smile:

I have an eavesdropping coworker. She’ll stop and freeze at her desk so that she can hear everything someone is saying to someone else.

We get fresh flowers for our lobby every week and we take turns taking them home on Fridays. (they usually last for another 4 or 5 days).

I set her up. I winked and told another coworker that evesdropper was getting the flowers last Friday. (it was my turn)

On Friday evening, she watched me take the arrangement and she actually pouted and said, “I thought they were mine”.

She sent another coworker over to tell me how sad she was and how much she really loved the arrangement.

I didn’t budge.

I hate rude cubicle people. I mean, not enough to run screaming to HR. Just enough to wonder how some people can be so RUDE. People who eat at their desks like PIGS…with their mouths hanging open and getting food all over. Or those who consistently leave their mobile phone ringers on SUPER LOUD just so we can all enjoy their phone calls with them.

It just makes me wonder why they don’t think of other people.

If they won’t respond to the polite but firm and unsubtle verbal request to disengae, you have no choice but to back away while repeating “I have to go”. Maintain eye contact throughout, but don’t hesitate or move too slowly else they’ll attempt to follow you in order to continue the conversation. A wave will usually help in this situation, it establishes closure. They are not going to stop talking. Seriously, I’ve had people keep talking after I got in the car and started to drive away. Get a closed door (but not a bathroom) between yourself and them as soon as possible, this will usually break the spell and cause them to look for someone else to latch onto.

Another tactic I am currently using on my boss at work is to completely ignore him unless he addresses me by name. In that situation I just mumble some gibberish, then stare off into space for a few minutes. When I first started doing this I felt a little guilty about it. Then I realized I have no obligation to listen to people drone on and on and on about the same thing he droned on about yesterday and the day before, and he just wanted to keep his brain from seizing up. So if I just ignore 95% of what he says, we’re both happy.

If they won’t leave your desk/workspace, you have to use the brute force ignore. Say at least 5 times “I have to work on this ___”, and stare intently at your computer screen or whatever work you’re doing. Address any attempt to get your attention by repeating “I have to work on this ___”, and continue to ignore them. The amount of time this takes varies by person, but most people can be brute force ignored in about 10-15 minutes.

Its not always the boring or talkative people at work that can be clueless. Sometimes its the people that should have just plain known better.

Theres a UK Air Force officer in our command group. (its NATO, so there are all kinds of folks here) He’s a Wing Commander or something, I don’t know what the equivalent rank in the US is, but its gotta be Lt. Colonel or Colonel. This guy is a buffoon. The other UK folks here even say that. He doesn’t really have much to do so he comes up with dumb shit all of the time, I guess to make it look like he actually has a position of worth.

For some reason it was decided that we have too many printers in the organization that aren’t needed. They wanted to take some out and streamline it a bit. Fine, thats not a big deal. I knew me and my department would be moving the stuff, but hell, no biggie. Now what would you do if you were this guy?

Would you

A.) Come to my boss and do a a walkthrough of each department and inventory. You need to know who uses this printer here and this printer there in order to see if it is essential. Keep in mind, we had to reposition printers also. Wouldn’t it be smart to know if there was a hot port in the room to hook it into our network first? Also some of these machines were printers/copier/faxes all in one.

or

B.) just pick at RANDOM which ones to take out, put in storage and move during the academic break. Then go on leave. Y know, so no one can call you or anything about it.

This dipshit picked B. Now this is a training facility so during the break in august there are no students and most of the staff isn’t here. When we moved those printers…especially the big giant really heavy ones that we had to carry down flights of stairs(!) I knew there was going to be a problem. I told my boss “We’re gonna end up putting this behemoth back when classes start again” and “Such and such is going to go bananas when they come back and find their printer/fax is in storage!”. He agreed, but we had our orders and we can’t contact this guy.

All hell broke loose when business resumed. We’re still dealing with aftershocks from that today and this happened a month and a half ago. Sure we had to move some things back, but I knew that was gonna happen when we did the job. You know, I’m not supposed to say bad stuff about officers but when the Chief of Staff here pulled me aside and asked the status of the “Great Printer Fiasco of 2008” I told him “Sir, it would have been common sense to inventory and assess which printers get moved and which don’t before assigning this job tro the IT department. I thought of that and I’m just an NCO. You tell me to do something, I go and make it happen. But I would have at least made sure of what I was ordering. This guy is supposed to be a senior officer. What are you paying him to do? Fuck up my day? Because he did. Mission accomplished.”

Its only funny because the CoS laughed and told me “Yeah, he’s an idiot.”

"Hi, tdn, I was wondering if you could, if I’m not disturbing you, because I’d really hate to disturb you because I know you’re really busy, and I’d hate to do that, but gee, I really need a favor, and it’s super important that I get this from you, but if I’m disturbing you I could come back later, because I don’t want to interrupt you when you’re working, I know your time is important, but if it’s not too much trouble, I really need this favor from you, it’s crucial that I get this, and it probably won’t take you long, but I can see that you’re busy, and I hate to be a pain, but if you could…

pretty please…

with sugar on it…

if it’s not too much trouble…

I was wondering if you could, if I’m not disturbing you, because I’d really hate to disturb you because I know you’re really busy, and I’d hate to do that, but gee, I really need a favor, and it’s super important that I get this from you, but if I’m disturbing you I could come back later, because I don’t want to interrupt you when you’re working, I know your time is important, but if it’s not too much trouble, I really need this favor from you, it’s crucial that I get this, and it probably won’t take you long, but I can see that you’re busy, and I hate to be a pain, but if you could…

pretty please…

with sugar on it…

if it’s not too much trouble…

I was wondering if you could, if I’m not disturbing you, because I’d really hate to disturb you because I know you’re really busy, and I’d hate to do that, but gee, I really need a favor, and it’s super important that I get this from you, but if I’m disturbing you I could come back later, because I don’t want to interrupt you when you’re working, I know your time is important, but if it’s not too much trouble, I really need this favor from you, it’s crucial that I get this, and it probably won’t take you long, but I can see that you’re busy, and I hate to be a pain, but if you could…

pretty please…

with sugar on it…

if it’s not too much trouble…

I was wondering if you could, if I’m not disturbing you, because I’d really hate to disturb you because I know you’re really busy, and I’d hate to do that, but gee, I really need a favor, and it’s super important that I get this from you, but if I’m disturbing you I could come back later, because I don’t want to interrupt you when you’re working, I know your time is important, but if it’s not too much trouble, I really need this favor from you, it’s crucial that I get this, and it probably won’t take you long, but I can see that you’re busy, and I hate to be a pain, but if you could…

pretty please…

with sugar on it…

if it’s not too much trouble…"

Thank Og for IM.

I don’t have an office, but I have some co-workers that do. So when someone stands in the door chatting, they can IM me quick (monitor faces inward, so chatter cannot see what’s going on) and ask me to call them. That usually breaks up the gabfest.

Or, I will see someone trapped in a cube with a major chatter, and give them a call. I have yet to have someone say, “Oh, you didn’t have to call me. I was having a nice conversation with so and so.” Usually, it’s “Oh, thank God you called!”

Ah, the class murmurer. This person is slightly socially clueless, so I’ve held back on saying something. They won’t understand and I’ll just end up feeling like a jerk.

But for the love of og! The questions are rhetorical. R-H-E-T-O-R-I-C-A-L. You do not need to answer them. Not even in a little soft mousey murmur. STOP.

Also, just because the prof says something in a happy tone it doesn’t mean it was in fact, a joke. You do not need to laugh, and no one else does. Please stop.

Oddly, all the seats farthest away from this person are taken.

Nearly as annoying is the person who thinks she is *so *clever and everything she says is *so *funny. This psycho works on one of my teams. She can’t make a simple declarative statement. She has to add parentheticals, or “amusing” :rolleyes: asides, or her personal wry observations. And no one laughs louder than she. In fact, many times, no one laughs but she.

The other day, she was talking to our team lead (who sits next to me) trying to get him to relate an anecdote to another coworker. Except she kept adding her own flourishes and reminding him of what happened to him last week. It took all my self control not to turn around and hurt her.

She’s probably also clueless as to why her marriage broke up…

yeah, that was snark, but she deserves it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Make a phone call. Say “I really have to touch base with X on Y”, look away and start dialing numbers. Pray to Og that there’s a warm body at the other end of the line…

I do the brute force ignore. Look, I’m at work, and after a reasonable length of chatting time, I’m going back to work, with or without you talking (I really prefer without you talking, though).

For the record, Douglas Adams posited that if people’s lips stop working, their brains start, not stop. :slight_smile: