Nicknames you've given to strangers

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ll share a few that my walking partner and I have come up with. We’ve walked around our neighborhood streets so many times that we were bound to find a few people we had to nickname.

Cell Phone Girl: You never see her without it.

Unfriendly Baby, Now Known as Unfriendly Toddler: his dad is nice, his mom is stand-offish, and Baby takes after mom. He’d glare at us from his stroller but would never smile, and he still doesn’t.

Pointy Stick Guy: Nice fellow–we know where he lives but not his name. He carries a pointy stick in case of hostile dogs.

Street-Cleaning Lady: This woman methodically cleans the city tree’s nasty, sharp little seed pod things out of the street twice a day. It’s a losing battle.

Squatter: Actually, he’s a homeowner. It’s just that he’s always squatting in his yard like a little frog when he’s using the hose.

Jammie Man: This one is truly a mystery. He’s an elderly fellow who is often seen standing on the front porch of a house–we don’t know if he lives there–in his jammies, or sometimes in a t-shirt and jeans. He’s always talking to a guy we can see who stands just inside the screen door. We cannot figure out if the older guy lives there and why he goes outside to talk, or if he’s coming from somewhere around the cul-de-sac and doesn’t mind who sees him in his jammies.

Please share with the group if you’ve got some nicknames to contribute from your neck of the woods.

2

Bucket Guy: I don’t see him anymore. I didn’t name him. As far as I could tell, everyone in South St. Louis knew who you were talking about when you mentioned bucket guy. He was there as long as I could remember, walking along Gravois. I’d see him anywhere along the section from Chippewa to Cherokee, walking with these great strides, carrying the bucket. I’d swear he wore the same clothes till they wore off of him; you’d see him with pants that had the legs eroded halfway up his calves, and a shirt in equivalent disrepair. He was a big, rangy guy with a buzzjob haircut and the kind of tan you get from being outside all the time for decades.

3

**Water Bottle Guy:**Always run across him on the bike path: In-line skates, shorts, no shirt, water bottle in his right hand.

4

Snot-nosed Girl: A young woman in her early twenties who either has allergies or sinus problems and apparently doesn’t know what Kleenex is. She sat next to me on the bus a couple of times and constantly snorted up snot the whole ride in. I tried to work up the courage to pointedly hand her a tissue, but decided that if someone don’t know how to blow their nose by that age, they’re a lost cause. Took care never to sit next to her again.

Farting Man: This guy stepped square on my foot when he got off the bus (without noticing or apologizing). Then he farted in my face. I avoid him too.

Snake-eyed Frankenstein Guy: So named because he sleeps with his eyes open (snakes don’t have eyelids). It’s very creepy to see someone sitting on the bus, eyes rolled up into their head and twitching. I’m sure he’s a very nice, normal person, and I realize he has no control over this, but he kind of creeps me out. Even when he’s awake, he has sort of a vacant expression on his face.

Panda Guy: I have no idea why he’s Panda Guy. Maybe because he’s got black hair and white, pasty skin and he’s round like a panda bear? He’s always wearing a purple jacket.

Mean Selfish Woman: She sits in the aisle seat so she doesn’t have to share a seat unless the bus fills up. Nobody else does this, even though everybody hopes they don’t have to share.

Really Mean Selfish Woman: She does the same thing, except when the bus fills up and someone has to say “excuse me” to get her to move over so they can sit, she looks up and glares at them like they have typhoid, and how dare they ask her to move over? Then she makes a big huffing fuss about sliding over. Her only saving grace is that she doesn’t work for my company. Can you imagine having to work with such a nasty, bitter person?

I can only imagine the nicknames my fellow bus-riders have for me.

5

Had a similar guy here that I called Walkman because you’d see him walking all over the place, in various parts of the city. He wore a ratty old nylon parka until it was really hot. Longish hair that looked like it was cut by someone with no clue as to how to cut hair. Tall thin and I think maybe autistic based on his reaction the one time I tried to say hello. No idea what happened to him, haven’t seen him in years.
No bucket though.

6

My Bucket Guy is frequently to be seen sitting on an overturned bucket thingie and pulling weeds out of his lawn, and throwing them into another bucket thingie.

7

For a moment, I was thinking, “man, I don’t want to ride on *that *bus!”. Then I realized, at least you don’t have Knife-Wielding Decapitating Cannibal Guy on your bus. As far as we know.

8

Dog-Woman - a classic case of owners looking like their pets. In this case, big floppy-jowled overweight ones.

Crossword Man - back from my days on the bus to school, one passenger seemed to be unable to face to world until he’d finished the Telegraph crossword. I wondered what terrible fate might befall him if I took the paper from him and ran away, laughing manically.

Old Stringfellow - a man who looks like an older, poorer version of, errrrm, Peter Stringfellow, funnily enough. Edit: seems to spend his whole life waiting for buses.

9

While I was waiting in a hospital in Berlin to see if my ex had dengue fever, a doctor walked through the waiting room. He had a long pony tail, a good smile, and moved with cool grace as he talked to the nurses and checked charts. As he disappeared through the swinging doors into another part of the hospital, I realized that I had just been in the presence of Dr. Awesome.

10

There is a woman at work that comes by our work area all the time but I don’t know who she is. I dubbed her** Too Tight Clothes Girl** because that was all I had noticed about her. Now everyone calls her TTCG.

Some years ago I was involved in a project which was conducted in partnership with another organisation. We met every week with the executives from this firm and the CEO would turn up each week with this fantastic wooden briefcase. It was a thing of great beauty. So we started calling him Wooden Briefcase.

One day in a meeting I was giving my opinion on some subject and said, “Well as W…we heard from Colin earlier…blah blah.” I had of course been about to say, “Well as Wooden Briefcase said…” I banned the use of the name after the meeting and have been wary about such names since.

11

Oh man, I hope I never have one of those on my bus.

99% of the people on my bus are fine. It’s the exceptions who aren’t that stand out enough to get names. Most people are just a sea of un-named humanity, and then there are a few friendly people I occasionally say hi to. I don’t tend to give them interesting names though. There’s “Friendly woman who sometimes wears makeup that makes her look bruised,” and “friendly guy who always says bye to me when I exit the bus,” for example. Not nearly as entertaining as the others!

12

Tits McGee - Basically any conspicuously big-breasted girl who is trying to be taken seriously. (usage “Oh great…Tits McGee is about to give a presentation.”)

Blueshirts - Typically low to mid level male consultants, attorneys, business analysts, and other professionals identified by a blue Brooks Brothers dress shirt, black dress pants, laptop bag, Blackberry and possibly a rollar suitcase if they are in the airport.

Alley McBeals - Attractive female professionals in business suits that somehow look more like they are on their way to a bachelor party than a boardroom.

Princess Fiona - My boss. Because she looks like Shreks fucking ogre wife but not nearly half as pleasent.

13

Perhaps these should go in the current "customer service horror stories threads, but seeing as they are nicknames we (the staff where I used to work (Home Depot) made up and used for various customers, they fit better here:

Mrs Shriek : As she was remodelling an older house we saw a lot of her. She was fine, polite and easy to work with… until something didn’t go “her way” Then a HUGE terrifying shriek… raw primal scream type stuff, would explode from her.

Rod Stewart: Not really rod the mod bod, but an incredible likeness… about 25 yrs ago. This fellow looked exactly like Rod Stewart, circa 1975. And Although the “real” Rod’s looks have developed over the years, in terms of fashion, haior and general appearance, our customer , well, had NOT. He would come in in badly patched mid 70’s vintage Glam rock styles (he seemed to have a large wardrobe), platform boots and such. He was at least 50. Here is the truely odd bit. He was quite well off, based on the types of items he purchased, and the adress we sent them too.

Mr Shit. Contractor. Smelled of… excretement. Always.

Oscar the Grouch: A regular customer, female so named because of the hideous bright green faux fur coat she always wore. And her attitude. Walk up to her and ask if she needs any help, and the response would be a sneer and something growled along the lines of “Leave me alone!”. Two minutes later she would be yelling “Can’t I get a simple question answered? I have been waiting for help for 20 minutes!”

Cheapo Joe": He really was named “Joe”, and he was a contractor that could NEVER accept the price. He was famous for making us check 4 other retailers by phone for price comparisons on a 79 cent bag of washers. No matter what price he was given on an item, he would ask for a discount, even insiting to see a manager to get 1 or 2% off.

There were others, but these characters have etched themselves into my memory.

FML

14

For the longest time, there was the Fort Street Monk, here in Victoria. Paging Rodd Hill? Manduck? Anyone?

I would see him walking along Fort Street, dressed in a brown monk’s robe. He was a monk; he had to be. He always walked. I always saw him walking on Fort Street. So he was, naturally, the Fort Street Monk.

I now must Google to see if anyone else in Victoria remembers him and remembers him under the same term.

…no. Only me.

15

Missed the edit window.

Oh–I tend to do this with tenants a lot. For example, we have one tenant that’s The Bedbug Guy. (His previous apartment became infested with bedbugs, which he went on and on and on and on and on about in great detail during the application progress to rent from us and escape the bedbugs.) I cannot recall for the life of me his name, he’s The Bedbug Guy. It gets embarrassing when I mention to a property manager something that a tenant has mentioned and the name is gone, but I refer to them as the Princesses (entitled young misses with helicopter mothers) or The Lonely, Lonely Man (he came in to pay his rent in person, I swear, because that involvement with our office was his only personal interaction with other human beings for the month. Maybe. I wonder if he was as challenging to the cashiers at the grocery store? He had to buy groceries, right? Just not fresh ones–the property manager did an inspection of his rental condo, and he said the fridge wasn’t working properly so he wasn’t using it. This was about four months before her inspection. Why didn’t he call us to have it repaired or replaced? It is a mystery. He never did. He just went on, fridgeless, until he died. Really. He died.)

Annie X-Mas, etc. – we could do a thread on Weird Tenants.

16

Crazy Screaming Lady, who rented across the street. I think we’ve all had one of her in our neighborhood at least once in our lives. Thank og she’s gone. I pity her poor offspring (no apparent husband around - big surprise!)

Radio Car - another neighbor, living most of the time across the street. When she has her car radio on, even with her windows closed and my windows closed, the bass is so loud I can’t hear my TV. I complained to the police once, but she turned it down before they got here. Maybe someone else complained, I haven’t heard her lately.

Mr. Lotus. A skinny, apparently homeless guy who used to sit on the streets of downtown San Francisco, in lotus position, with a begging bowl in front of him. He was usually (apparently) meditating. Haven’t seen him in a few years.
Roddy

17

There was a kid who would ride his bike up and down the street, up and down, up and down, making a WoooooooOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOooooo
sound like a siren. We called him

Siren Boy.

You weren’t expecting that, were you?

18

She may have moved in next to my walking partner. I’ve heard her enough times to know. They get to wake up to the shrill bitch every morning.

**We did indeed spot Jammie Man again this evening, except he was in daytime clothing, not sleepwear. I am going to do a stakeout in my car one of these days just to see which house he’s coming out of.

19

**Maintain **- tweeker guy across the street that manages to hold down a job, i.e., he maintains. He flies off the handle once in a while but is generally pretty quiet.

Annie Acres - tweeker lady across the street who fancies herself some sort of renegade; she actually named herself this (after Annie Oakley and the place where we live).

**Carnie **- odd lady down the street that lives with her parents in between gigs at the carnival.

**Cock Ring **- Carnie’s husband, he earned this nick after his enthusiastic advocacy of titular item.

Jack! - a guy down the street whose dog likes to chase me when I’m jogging. A little yappy thing, if I had to guess I’d say a min-pin. Rather than actually fencing his yard correctly, Jack! just sits in his lawnchair and yells at his dog as the little bastard tries to take chunks out of my ankle. He just yells “JACK!” at his POS dog, so I decided that was his name, too.

20

Chocolate Guy - There used to be a guy on my regular train home (the chances of seeing the same person in the same carriage of the same train regularly around here is next to zero, but he turned up a lot). He was a portly and quiet fellow in glasses, but what made him interesting was that he’d always be eating a bar of chocolate, of which he’d carefully unwrap the silver foil, snap off one square, consume it while carefully wrapping up the silver foil again, then a few minutes later carefully unwrap the foil once more, snap off another square, etc, etc.

It was very particular behaviour that I always found disconcerting, even though he was probably a perfectly nice guy.