Inspired by Eve and this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=255678, I was thinking about some of the nicknames I’ve made up for the folks I work with…both the ones I like and those that are in the “not so much” category.
Directly across from me is the Whining Dowager. She’s just far enough from retirement to be change-resistant, yet terrified of being let go. The resulting complaints are killing us off one by one. I swear. She reminds me of the Whiners from SNL, but not nearly as funny.
**Ms. Dropsy ** sits next to her. If she dropped acid like she drops names, she’d be tripping into the next millenium. They’re never *movie stars * or anyone cool…it’s always some fourth level IT geek who I’ve never heard of, yet I’m supposed to be impressed. Well I ain’t.
Then there’s Mr. Hot-yet-Not. He’s the best looking guy in the whole department, but has the personality of a single-celled life form. Always has that constipated look on his face…short, two-word exchanges. I hate when that happens.
Probably like anyother company, I work with a Milton. She mumbles at her screen, stammers, smiles broadly at the raisin she is about to eat, clips her toenails at her desk. Yes, once in a while we call her Milton to her face.
At the company I used to work for, we had a DQ. Not Dairy Queen, silly! Drama Queen! She was so named because every time her boss wanted something, she turned into this crazy fishwife who got really upset and started haranguing (sp?) people until they either told her to go away or got whatever it was her boss wanted.
Well, there’s this one guy at the office who was unfortunate enough to get the song “Camptown Races” stuck in his head. After he was overheard whistling it softly to himself, he was dubbed Doo-Dah and the name has stuck.
A worker on the factory floor is large and a little…uh…dim. He’s been called Grape Ape ever since he wore a purple T-shirt to work.
The retail store I work at has a company structure of “hubs and spokes.” Even though there are only two stores in my section, the one I work at is considered a “spoke” of the “hub” an hour west of here, so that store’s manager is technically our manager’s boss. This only went into effect in the past six months - before that we were two completely separate entities and our managers were equal. Since that happened the other store’s manager has let his power go completely to his head, and he likes to issue petty edicts (fifteen different forms to fill out in triplicate that were never necessary before, stipulations as to sock color, etc)… combine that with the fact that he is ridiculously short, and you see why the nickname I gave him caught on: Napoleon.
It’s caught on to the point that I can’t remember the guy’s real name without stopping to think for a second.
Our newest hire is Miss Thang because she has a major attitude problem. No idea how she got the job.
We have a pain-in-the-ass old fuck partner whom I have privately named Inspector Luger, after the character in Barney Miller. This is because he closely resembles said character, but in addition, he’s the most obnoxious jerk I’ve seen in a long time.
He thinks he’s quite the card, and maybe he was, in 1953. His schtick is very suburban cocktail party/loudmouth/lampshade-wearing/gum chomping/racetrack tout. He behaves in a borderline sexual harassment manner towards all women in the office. Here’s an example of what he thinks is hysterical:
Inspector Luger, leaning on my desk ledge and looking at my boss:
Hey, pugluvr, what d’ya think of this grey-haired old FART ya work for, eh? Har har har! How do you endure him? Har har har!
Another example:
IL: (talking to some secretaries down the hall) Hey, ya shoulda seen this old BROAD I saw today! She was wearin’ a skirt up to here and a see-through blouse! Some people are just livin’ in the past! Har har har!
I work with Crazy. It works nicely because her real name begins with a C too. I know, a lot of people think that their coworkers are crazy. Hell, half the people I work with are to some extent. But she’s queen of the crazies.
Why you ask? Through strange, mostly one-sided conversations, I learned that she thinks that having read books, but plain old-fashioned books, somehow stole her real life. And her old life still exists somewhere, but she can’t find a way to get back to her real family and life. That seemed pretty strange to me, but then she kept asking me odd questions and had strange gaps in her knowledge. She thought that sarcophagus was a nonsense word. Didn’t know what a lot of other seventh-grad vocab words meant. Never heard of Kafka story" The Metamorphosis" Maybe a lot of people haven’t but you HAVE to have a college degree to work where I do. . Never heard of Michael Crichton. Had no idea who Ozzy Osborne or the Doors were. This, someone in her 40s, how can she never have heard of the Doors? So, I don’t know. Maybe she is from another world where there are no mummies and no classic rock. Really, I hope she finds her way back to her home planet.
I used to work with a husband-and wife couple. The wife had a weird, projecting-lower-jaw thing going, so we called her “Zira”, from the female ape in Planet of the Apes. Of course, her husband then became “Cornelius”, because Zira’s husband was Cornelius in the movie. At some point, Cornelius finally became Yukon Cornelius after the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” character.
There was also a fat guy we called Cheeseburger and a smelly guy we called Stinky Joe.
The chief engineer of our department had a very large head, so of course we called him The Big-Headed One. He had to have his motorcycle helmets custom-made.
Me too, but she spells her name with a “K”. We call her “The Krazy One”. Everything in her life is a major “need to call lawyers, police, media” disaster.
Daughter has a bad lunch at school. “AHHHH! Get me an attoney! I’m taking the entire school board to court!”
Any minor traffic infraction. “OH MY GOD!! SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL ME! CALL 9-11!”
This person has had more interaction with the local constabulatory in her 26 years as a nut then I have had in nearly 40 as a criminal.
We also have “Fat-Ass”. He weighs about 460lbs and rolls around the work area in a chair. He tells all us married guys how stupid we are and how he “gets all the pussy he wants”.
Which means, he doesn’t want ANY pussy. Oh, yeah. He’s bald with a comb-over, too. :rolleyes:
(before you all lasbast me for being sexist and “weight-ist”, I defy you to actually spend 5 minutes with either of these people (of for that matter, ME!) and not want to “bust a cap in thier ass”)
Loquatious of Borg. I fits him perferctly - he’s loquaitious, likes startrek, and really does tend to convert people to his current opinions.
However, we’ve very few others. I know 7 Daves doing my subject in my year, but none of them ever do anything distinctive enough to be awarded a nick-name, except “Everything Dave” almost every aspect of whom is so. We eventually resorted to either using a venn diagram (“Blond haired and bridge-playing Dave”, “bridge- and chess- playing Dave”, “Communist Dave C.”) or using full surnames.
Guacamole: He was the district manager for a record store chain I worked for. His nickname was derived from the fact that his real name sounded much like the nickname, and he was about as intelligent as and had the personality of a bowl of mashed avocado. This guy was a jackass. It seemed his sole motivation was to piss everyone off and make working in a job that should be/was fun, not. Nearly everyone at every store in the district called him by this nickname.
Pepsi-can: At the last place I worked we had a girl that was none too bright. Absolutely no common sense. I have no idea how she graduated from college. Anyways, she’d often come to us asking questions about the product that she absolutely should have known given her job. Real simple stuff, too. After one session with her, a friend came over to by cube to bitch about her. After some ranting, he gets to “She’s about as smart as…”, and, looking around for something to compare this dim-wit too, picks up an empty Pepsi-can sitting on my desk. “This,” he says. “She’s about as smart as this can.” Among a few people in my department, she was forever known as “Pepsi-can” after that.
Assnugget is the new guy. He act like he knows his shit but he doesn’t. He throws out buzzwords and asks dumb questions like “What version is that?” out of context trying to sound smarter than he is. We’re tolerant of people who are still learning but not of people who pretend they aren’t.
Iguana is a little Russian(?) girl who is an intern. Very sweet and smart but her name is very similar to Iguana. Not a derogatory nic.
Miss Management The boss’s useless ass wife. We’re not sure why she’s here but she is and gets her nose into everyone’s business. (Get it? mismanagement?! :snort:)
One of the bosses secretaries is quite a catch. Red-neck, trailer trash, schizo who periodically has nasty divorces and goes off her meds. And I’m not being mean; she will come up and tell you she’s all better and doesn’t need the meds. And within days she’s screaming and crying and we’re praying she starts them up again real soon. She doesn’t have an “inside” voice and swears like a sailor. When on the phone with her children, latest victim or lawyer, she screams profanity and death threats at the top of her lungs. When medicated, she dresses like a hooker. When not, she dresses like a crack 'ho. But she’s the boss secretary and he likes the free show so she stays.
Bossie – Not only did this secretary think that she had power that she very clearly didn’t, she chomped on gum constantly. And loudly. And obnoxiously, in the manner of a cow chewing cud. She was fired when her boss took some slides to a presentation and found two of them stuck together with a wad of Doublemint. (Maybe it was Juicy Fruit, she alternated.)
Squiggy – Like the character on Laverne & Shirley, this guy’s real name was Andrew, he was short, wore a shiny satin jacket (!!!) slicked his hair and had a terribly nasal voice.
The Cossack – He was large, loud and Russian, and left destruction in his wake. I’ve never seen an adult make such a mess doing something as simple as getting a cup of coffee, heating up lunch in a microwave or even when making photocopies. I started timing my morning arrivals so that I could get into the kitchen and get my morning beverage and bagel before he arrived and spilled milk, sugar, and coffee everywhere and left his spoon or plastic stirrer lying haphazardly on the counter. :rolleyes:
