Insanity in the workplace.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have a pretty good job–I work in a bank. It’s air-conditioned, which is good, because summer days in Alabama are enough to make the devil faint. I have to dress up for my job, but that’s not so bad; I only work two days a week, Monday and Tuesday.
I was told when I began this job that I was hired because of my intelligence, which made me proud. However, certain events have left me doubting this.
For instance, do you know what my major job was today? Marking the 500-dollar figure off pamphlets and writing in 300 instead. I could’ve done this when I was four, provided that the people in charge would answer my four year old questions such as, Where is the 300 dollars? What is 300 dollars? When will I see 300 dollars? Who invented 300 dollars? Do YOU have 300 dollars? How do you know?..and then the clincher, Why is there 300 dollars? And after the people in charge gave me that answer, I would probably ask Why? again. And so on and so forth until the people in charge finally got tired of answering Why questions all the way back in time to Genghis Kahn and said, “Shut up little kid and do what we asked!” which I would do if and only if they appeased my hurt feelings with bubblegum FIRST.
In fact, why bother with me? Hire 300 monkeys and let them write 300 dollars 300 times and they wouldn’t even have to pay them $5.15 an hour!
Another thing that made me doubt my employees’ sanity happened on the first day. As I was walking to the back to file loans, one of my coworkers asked, “You know your alphabet, don’t you?” There was no smile in her eyes. “Are you serious?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Some of our employees in the past didn’t. Do you?”
I wanted to say No, I was valedictorian of my class and I never learned my alphabet. Hell, I never learned ENGLISH! I’ve been talking to you this whole time in Sanskrit! In fact, my true name is in Sanskrit. It means Dear-Krishna-did-you-really-just-ask-me-if-I-knew-the-alphabet?
I have learned many things from my cowokers. One thing is that there are certain types of sharks in the ocean that have legs, and that’s where the mermaid myth originated. I have also learned that tomatoes halfway between green and red are poisonous, that painkillers are the highway to hell, and that people who consume alcohol get what they deserve. (I considered telling them that I drink alcohol–RUBBING alcohol, and ask if that’s sinful.)
I think the money we handle must be laced with acid. That’s the only way I can explain these occurrences. That’s the only way I rationalize their tendency to shout “Praise God!” whenever a customer announces happy news. (I think marijuana is the reason they eat all the time.)
I think it’s getting to me. I can’t wait to go to work Monday. We’ll see around eating (hold the hardly-ripe tomatoes and the alcohol) and singing the alphabet song in Sanskrit while denouncing painkillers and debating the existence of mermaids. Praise God!

So, what unbelievable things do your coworkers believe/say/do?

2

Um, is there something important keeping you in Alabama? For example, does the state pay you some sort of stipend to remain and raise the average I.Q.?

Just checking…

3

I work in a hospital laboratory and a coworker… well… actually he doesn’t really work per se… Ok, this anthropoid in a lab coat who hangs around the place doesn’t seem to believe that microbes can cause illness.

However when I dared him to lick a bacterial culture he declined to do so.

I need a new job.

4

I have a guy that sits behind me at work and he scares me. He’s balding about fifty and looks emancipated. He’s admitted to heavy drug use previously in life and is extreamly parinoid and disgusting. Every once in a while he comes in to work and tells us about a new benchmark in his life. Why just the other day he came into work and proudly announced that he managed to squeeze 4 quarts up his ass the night before in one of his ritualistic enemas. Oh yes, he’s so much fun to work with. But it gets better! When he first started working here he turned to me one day and called me a little closer. He then asked me if I knew that “the telescreens out of George Orwells 1984 were real and that the government has been using them to spy on us since the fifties.” He really gives me the creeps…I’m always worried that one day he’ll show up to work with an assult weapon…
But the joy dosn’t end there!
On the other side of me is a neurotic 34 year old woman with the mental capacity of a 12 year old. She scares me because she’s a HR case waiting to happen.

For example:

The other day she turned to me and said “Can I have your child?”

She is slowly driving me insane…

5

I work in an alternative medicine school-clinic (no, I’m not a therapist), I’m the guy who does the pagesetting, word processing, data entry, translations and whatnots (I’ve even been shanghaied to be on the board), you want claptrap ? Here’s a small sample. Did you know that me must be doing something wrong, people used to live to be 140 and we just manage 70-80 years ? Or that if you put a fish in distilled water, he will die, but that if you expose that same water to the Sun, the fish will live ?

Of course, one of my boss doesn’t want to learn English, since she hasn’t forgave them what they did to Joan of Arc.

And dwyr, I hear that one a lot, also that vaccinations are harmful !

6

My fun doesn’t end there. My coworkers sit judge and jury over every case they hear on the news.
I am very anti-death penalty, but I understand why some people are for it. However, it makes me sick to hear the way my fellow workers can easily make snap judgements about a person’s character or psyche.
I just keep my mouth shut, though. It’s a lot easier…I wouldn’t accomplish anything by arguing with them.
One of my coworkers is very sensitive about racial issues because she is African-American, but she made a horrible remark regarding Native Americans. I should’ve mentioned to her that I have enough Cherokee heritage to claim the tribe, if I only had the proper documentation. But…I didn’t.

7

Does it have to be coworkers, or do people you encounter in the course of your job count, too?

I work in Family Court.

How about this one: a paternity case. He wants to be adjudicated the father of a woman’s baby. She says they never slept together. He says it is his baby because he is the angel of god.

How about this one: a paternity case. He was adjudicated the father of the child years ago. The kid is ten years old and this is the only father he has ever known. Now he wants the paternity order vacated. Why? He had the kid paternity tested. After ten years. On a syndicated TV show.

How about this one: a paternity case. This guy, too, wants a belated paternity test to prove that he is not the biological father, and thus not required to pay child support. But he doesn’t see any reason why the mother shouldn’t be forced to let him see the child anyway, because he “loves” her like a daughter.

Or this: An girl who isn’t even in her teens gives birth to the baby of a man in his mid 20s. He takes the baby and refuses to give it back. He says she is an unfit mother because she is “immature.”

Or this: A guy claims he can’t pay child support because he is self employed and is losing money. In fact, he has never made any money. He loses money every year. How long has he been in business? FIVE YEARS. Has he ever thought of changing jobs? “No. Why?”

Or this: A guy thinks he shouldn’t have to pay child support for the three children he had with his wife before he left her. Why? “I got remarried and I have a family to support.” Quite the little ego boost for the older kids, no?

Or this: Girlfriend number four breaks up with man. He has 3 kids with girlfriend number one, two kids with girlfriend number 2, one kid with girlfriend number three, one kid with girlfriend number four and another paternity case pending with some woman he picked up in a bar one night. Big Daddy never graduated high school, spent most of the time he wasn’t busy procreating behind bars, has never had an on the books job, and has child support orders for all the previous children, none of which he has ever paid. Girlfriend number four has even come to court with the guy to offer him moral support all the times his previous girlfriends have come after him for the money. Girlfriend number four espresses her profound disappointment and feels the court doesn’t give a damn about single mothers because the court can’t give the guy a $175 a week child support order for her kid out of his $250 a week (gross) on the books salary and make him pay it.

Or this: Father is supposed to be paying a percentage of college expenses for his daughter. College expenses generally means tuition, books, fees, and room and board, if applicable. Mom says dad is in violation of the order. To prove it, she provides receipts for items including Tampax and the restaurant meal she shared with the daughter on Parents’ Weekend.

Or this: Non custodial parent wants credit against child support for having bought his child a Christmas present.

Or this: Mom thinks dad shouldn’t be allowed to have visitation with his three kids because he’s a drug addict, a liar, a thief, abusive and mentally ill. What makes her so sure he is all of these things? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s always been like that. She has always known that he was like that. Even before she decided to have his three children!

Or this: Dad says the court can’t make him pay child support for religious reasons, because he belongs to an Islamic sect that says that the man makes all the decisions about his children, and he has basically decided not to feed this batch.

Or this: Dad says he can no longer pay child support for his children because he has decided to express his love of God by joining a religious order dedicated to acts of charity.

Or this: People often make dates with people they meet in the hallways of Family Court.

Just the tip of the iceberg, folks. And if you tell anyone I told you this, I’ll deny it.

8

Tenar,

It sounds like your job is never boring, though they might be days where you’d welcome a little boredom. I just had one question about the multitude of examples you listed:

Shouldn’t this guy be in jail for statutory rape? Wouldn’t this kinda hurt his chances at gaining custodity?

Of course now I’m fearful that you are about to raise my dislike for our legal system to a new level.

9

???

What’s the record for youngest pregnancy?

originally posted by Tyklfe:

He looks like an ex-slave? Wouldn’t he have to be a lot older than fifty, then?

10

He only looks emancipated; with all the spying Big Brother does on him, he’s really a slave to the system. it’s only a matter of time before the black helicopters come get him. He obviously knows too much.

Tyk, we know you meant emaciated; we’re just having fun with ya!

11

Eleven, so far. (That I know of, anyway.)

[QUOTE]
He’s balding about fifty and looks emancipated.

Actually, in my state, emancipation is at age 21. :slight_smile:

12

*Originally posted by Blackclaw *

Shouldn’t this guy be in jail for statutory rape? Wouldn’t this kinda hurt his chances at gaining custody?**
[/QUOTE]

I certainly think he should be in jail, but statutory rape cases often are not brought because the family of the victim never brings it to anyone’s attention. In this case, yes, the DA was tipped off by a court employee. I do not know what the outcome was, as I spend 99% of my time in Child Support. Also, the rape charge would be handled in District Court, not Family Court.

13

I heard about a six-year-old, though I can’t give a cite now. I’ll try to when I get back from class.

14

Thanks, Iampunha. Actually, I thought the question referred to the youngest pregnancy I had heard of in my court. I know the youngest recorded pregnancy is in the single digits, although I had thought it was eight years, not six. It’s probably lower than it once was due to girls maturing faster. I heard something on the radio yesterday about a town in either Central or South America where there was an epidemic of early puberty in girls due to excessive antibiotics (yes, I’m pretty sure they said antibiotics, not hormones) in the local chickens. No matter how you slice it, though, the guys who get these little girls pregnant (or just rape them without getting them pregnant) would be much improved by a little, “surgically assisted streamlining.”

Enough of this already. So – how about more co-worker horror stories?

15

I once worked with a guy who wore his light tan pants for so long you could see the yellow stains where he, um, errr… leaked on them. In the winter he rotated between two shirts, both company give-aways, and showered once a week. He had a bottle of salad dressing on his desk (the same one) for the first year and seven months of my employ there, and it would still be there if he wasn’t ordered to clean his desk by the dept manager.

The smell that occurred whenever he walked into a room was odd, disturbing and rather unpleasant.

He kept COBOL punch cards around for some reason, though we did not have anything that could punch them, or use them once they were punched. We also had reel-to-reel computer tapes dating back to 1985 (this was in 2000). You could tell if he was in the area by smell, sometimes before he was seen (he was very quiet).

16

:eek: Noooooooooo, my poor post! :eek:

(Pssst, BunnyGirl, thanks for the save)