I recently moved to a new desk (temporarily, thank goodness), and the guy on the other side of the barrier to my right seems to have a negative comment about everything. “Beautiful day today, isn’t it, Bob?” “Oohhh, it won’t last. Winter still has a surprise in store, I’m sure.”
He has a low, droning voice that he tends to raise when he gets worked up, which is often and over very small things. “I have to include a special character in my password? Can you belieeeeve that? A special character! Unbelievable!!" Many, many things are “unbelievable,” or rather "uhhhnbelieeeeee*vable.”
This isn’t in the Pit because he amuses me more than he annoys me, and I know this seating assignment is temporary anyway. And he’s not a bad guy, really. He just has this, um, interesting manner about him. Just thought I’d share.
*This is a true example, and actually went on for much longer than this and included other random sounds. “A special character. snort Can’t believe that. huff Special character, geez louise.” …and so forth.
There’s a guy that shops at my store like that. Really nice, just has this really glum tone of voice. It’s kind of odd. To make it stranger, he’s about 6 feet and change and a pretty big guy (strong not fat) and pretty good looking. He looks like he should have a presence in a room, but then he opens his mouth and has this “Thanks for noticing” quality to his voice. One of my cashiers nicknamed him “Jimmy sad eyes” (Jimmy isn’t even his real name, she just liked the way it sounds). The funny thing is, he says ‘happy’ things just in a glum way. For example, if he asks how you’re doing and you tell him that you’re great he’ll say “That’s awesome, I’m feeling great today too!” but he’ll say it like Eeyore. When he leaves, instead of saying ‘bye’ he’ll say “Rock n Roll”…like Eeyore. Sometimes it’s almost surreal.
The other day he came in and wasn’t feeling good…then he was acting like Eeyore with a tummy ache.
I used to sit near a lady I called (in my head) Dolores Umbridge.
Like that character from Harry Potter, she is a dumpy looking middle aged woman who dresses in pastels and has a high, squeaky, annoying voice… and she’ll rip you a new one if you cross her. She is also quite loud - both when she speaks and when she eats (eww).
Luckily I do not sit near her anymore - it got so bad I had to resort to putting in earphones to drown her out. Now I sit somewhere that is very very quiet… too quiet for me, actually, but that can be solved by said earphones and some music.
There’s an Eeyore woman in the next row over from me. She never has anything positive to say about anything. EVER. She talks a lot, and it is just a constant stream of negative bullshit (and it’s all first-world unhappily-employed whining, no less). She doesn’t have Eeyore’s voice though. That would be funny.
I have to wonder if an Eeyore would be more or less annoying than a coworker who sees conspiracy in everything? Who knew the choices of drinks available in a soda machine had sinister undertones?? :rolleyes:
Anyway we were working overseas and I shared an office with Ingmar. Her boyfriend had set up a webcam so she could “look” out of her bedroom window at home in Sweden. She showed it to me, and on the screen we could see her garden snaking down to a river, weeping willows, and a cathedral in the distance.
“That’s beautiful, and so romantic of him,” I said.
Eeyore always reminds me of The Cranberries song Zombie. I like to imagine a guy in a grey suit and a full-head Eeyore mask. /Eeyore head! Eeyore head! What’s Eeyore head?’
We had a VP that, when I read Harry Potter years later, was Dolores Umbridge. Looked like her, dressed like her, and she was a condescending bitch.
In the '80s I had a boss whose mannerisms reminded me of Marvin the Paranoid Android. And his name was Marvin.
This reminds me of when I was in Uppsala. We were on the bus and a drunk guy got on. He would approach a passenger and jovially greet the person, extending his hand for a shake. Everyone ignored him when he approached. He’d get a plaintive/questioning tone to his voice, and then start crying and talking in a distressed tone. Then he’d become happy again and repeat the process.
Excessively negative people are fun to mess with - they make me turn up the chipper to 11. I mean, the happy-go-lucky chipper, not the one out back that goes, “WRAAAWRRRRRRR!”
My elderly mother leaves Eeyore-type voice mails, in the same voice and all.
“Guess you aren’t home. Just as I expected. I’ll call back later. Maybe you’ll be home then. Or maybe not.”
