Not secret, but I nicknamed one The Giggler. She knows about it and likes it. I was trying to describe her by name to a new hire once and finally said “she’s a restaurant server and she giggles a lot.” “Oh!!!” immediately. “I know who you mean!!”
At a previous job there was a manager at a sister store who was a pain. Would never help you out, but was always asking for help. I nicknamed him Phil the Weasel and it was used so frequently at my store that my store manager was on the phone once to a different store, discussing who was going to go with whom to a meeting with their bosses. He said something like “who is going to carpool with Phil the- Phil. Who is going to carpool with Phil?”
Phil, if you’re out there, I am responsible for nicknaming you Phil the Weasel. And you deserved it.
Worked with a woman we named “Aunt Clara,” like Samantha’s relative on “Bewitched.” She was a nice woman and not addle-headed, but she was sometimes easily flustered and physically resembled Aunt Clara, so…
Worked with another guy we named “Costanza” because of his uncanny resemblance to George Costanza. Unbeknown to us, everyone in his department called him Costanza too, and he himself thought he looked like George Costanza and was a big “Seinfeld” fan.
Worked with another guy, named Aaron, who we quickly dubbed “Airhead,” for obvious reasons.
Many years ago I worked at a place were some of the employees had nicknames. One
guy who worked for us for just a short time was given the nickname “Lurch” due to his
resemblance to the Addam’s Family character. The some of the Spanish speaking employees
gave each other nicknames. One guy who had a bad case of acne became “Granoso”
(“grano” is the spanish word for zit). Another guy was “Narizón” due to his having a large nariz (nose). Me? I was “Chaparro” which translates into “shorty”.
We had a guy who was still in college, but was trying SO hard to be a forty-year-old snob.
And he dressed the part. So he ended up with a dozen nicknames: Hipster Vest, Hipster Trilby, Hipster Pointy Italian Shoes, Hipster 'Stache, Hipster Sideburns.
The challenge was to come up with a new name on the spot, that accurately echoed one of his current ‘sartorial endeavors’.
Yes. Chiquita Banana, Tinker Bell, Steam, The Colonel. Too long to explain, and I don’t even remember what Steam meant and why we came up with that nickname.
Out of a team of 20, we had a Ronald and a Roland, and it seemed most people would switch their names. The current Roland joined after the previous Roland moved to another department. So you were never certain if someone was talking about Ronald, original Roland or the newer Roland.
Ronald retired, so that confusion is gone.
We have two men named Carlos, and the one eats a lot of garlic. So some people would say Carlos and then wave their hand over their mouth, to indicate the garlic-eating one.
I have had coworker friends ask me to stop using particular nicknames for others, because they were so on point that my friends were afraid they’d start using the nicknames in the wrong company and get in trouble.
Not that my nicknames were particularly witty - they weren’t - just apt. One was “Boy Wonder” (he looked about 12 and was utterly convinced of his ability to save the world) and the other was actually a new boyfriend of a co-worker, who looked exactly like the previous boyfriend but much smaller, so I called him “Short Leo.”
There was also SWT (short for Sweet Young Thing). It may have been a tad sexist, but oh my was she ever nauseatingly into an “I-am-so-young-and-adorable” schtick, so I couldn’t think of her any other way.
ETA: just thought of a couple more (not my inventions, we all used the terms). There were two women named Lucy in our group. One was Crazy Lucy and the other was Nearly Normal Lucy.
Nearly Normal knew of and enjoyed her nickname. Crazy Lucy we never told.
We had one guy who was incredibly lazy and hard to motivate and also a lady whose last name was Hyde who was pretty worthless. So we called them Doctor Jackoff and Mrs. Hyde.
My co-worker and me have code names for people in the office all revolving around characters from the TV series MAS*H. One individual is a particularly vindictive and bullying guy full of his own self importance so naturally he is Frank Burns. There is also a glorified blonde rather arrogant person who is Hotlips. We worked out a table of all the MASH characters against the staff members based on personality traits. It’s particularly useful to use these terms to talk about people without them knowing.
We had a pair of financial analyst both a couple years out of college who were assigned to support the same area of the business. Both were stout pompous chaps.
They had names similar like Jeff Peterson and John Parkinson. They were so tight finished each others sentences. Ironically they both had the quote in their email signature “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking”.
They worked in a remote office from the rest of the team long before the use of chat and video meetings. But somehow they still found out that we called them Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Or so they thought. We actually called them Tweedle-DIM & Tweedle-Dum.
Remembered a couple of others: Referring to my post above, you’ll see that we called the supervisors Bobs. One young girl was hired because she was a family friend of the boss, and was in training to become a supervisor. We called her Baby Bob. That actually wasn’t a great idea, as we were constantly in danger of slipping up and calling her Baby to her face. That wouldn’t have been fun to explain to HR.
There is another young lady here, tall and dark-haired, who I think of as Cher.
I work with a guy I call “Big Hair” because he has a huge, unruly 'fro.
He’s fucking useless.
Another coworker is fine when it’s just him, but when Big Hair is on the same shift he pulls the other guy down to his level. So when they’re both on the clock together, they’re TweedleDee and TweedleDumber.
At the grocery store I work at we have a customer we refer to as “The Liar”. She owns the only store on a nearby island and she comes in once a week to buy anywhere from $2000-$5000 worth of groceries that she resells at her store.
Back at the beginning of covid when the panic-shopping started and people started acting like the police were going to shoot anyone caught outdoors at any time in the next six months, we had to put quantity limits on a lot of items so that we could provide some stuff to everyone rather than letting hoarders strip us bare. The Liar wanted us to give her an exemption from the limits. The store manager told her he couldn’t do that, and her response was that she wouldn’t be shopping with us anymore.
She’s been back every single week since, thus the name.