I have a co-worker in the next cubicle who is a bit of an odd duck. He sort of mutters to himself, which isn’t that unusual; I talk to my computer when it misbehaves. But he says the same thing over and over.
“We got a problem. What’re we gonna do?”
He will repeat this several times, and then do it several times a day. Sometimes he says other things, but I can never make out the words when that happens. He also giggles. Not laughs. Giggles. There is nothing on his computer screen but work stuff and he has no ear buds in, so he’s not listening to something funny. He just giggles. I had another co-worker who did not believe me on this until she heard him.
I’ve found that as I get older, my anxiety and stress manifests itself in some really weird ways. One of which is verbalizing phrases over and over again. I try to only do it when I’m alone, but sometimes I slip, and someone will hear me.
I have no doubt I probably look like a loon to them. Lol
I had a co-worker that would randomly laugh. Somebody once asked him what was he laughing about and he replied “I wasn’t laughing” with a serious face. My favorite one is when he asked me “Can you hear the stuff that I’m thinking”? Once again, he wasn’t joking.
One guy has an odd mannerism: What seems like a clearing of the throat, but it’s softer and less raspy than a common throat clearing, but it’s longer trails off into a long humming that lasts for 4 or 5 seconds.
I find that I vocalize in small ways when I am frustrated, or receive an urgent email that raises my blood pressure. My go-to is a Marge Simpson-like soft “Mmmrr”. I have apologized to my office mates about this.
Otherwise, I’m not odd at all!
My project manager focuses on being liked so he is always “Hey buddy!” “Awesome!” and ends every statement with a upbeat chuckle-giggle-chortle. DRIVES ME UP A WALL, it does.
My company was recently sold off to an asset management firm and we were told to get rid of anything with the old company’s logo.
Now, my co-worker always wore shirts with the old company’s logo–every single day. Since the change-over has taken to wearing the same shirts with the company logo covered with masking tape. He also started wearing a vest to cover up the logo on the pocket.
I had a co-worker who would eat paper while talking to someone. Sort of a nervous fellow, if he was holding a piece of paper (which he often was, we worked in a newsroom), he would stealthily tear off little bits of the corner and slip them into his mouth while talking.
He would also, while walking by someone’s office or desk, say, “Right?” for no particular reason. For the most part, people would politely either ignore him or reply with “Yep.” But then a co-worker and I decided to answer with a variety of other things, like “Nope,” “I’ll let you know,” and “Wrong!” When we started doing this, it would make him titter.
I’ll try to keep this short, because I could write a book about this guy.
Back when I lived in NYC, I had a coworker who was the strangest person I’d ever known. He was a middle-aged guy, and everything about him was odd. His body was egg-shaped, like Tweedle-Dee and Treedle-Dum, and he wore his pants up high, so his belt was right across the middle of his body. He wore a cheap toupee which never faced the same direction twice. Like sometimes the part of his hair went from side to side. He had hairy arms on the bottom, not on the top.
He said he had never been inside a store in his life, because he didn’t know what to say, to get what he wanted. He bought everything mail-order (this was pre-internet). He had cut off the ends of his shoes, because the company had sent the wrong size. He had never been inside a restaurant or supermarket, so his elderly mother had to bring him food once a week, by subway.
Not only was he a virgin, but had never been on a date.
I worked with a guy who went out for a walk Every. Hour. for 15-20 minutes. If he had been amazing at his job, or been willing to forego the walk when things got busy, it would have been one thing, but no–he was rude, lazy, incompetent, and MIA a great deal of the time. It wasn’t within my power to do anything but complain upwards about the guy, and he was finally let go…after I had moved on to another job.
I have a co-worker with a very frustrating case of calendar dyslexia. She’ll agree to meetings that happen on her day off, beg off of meetings on days she’s free because she’s “off,” and has been repeatedly in trouble for filling out her time sheet wrong in blatant and obvious ways. The problem usually boils down to some variation of she’s looking at (say) January 24 when the date in question is February 24, or vice versa.
It becomes a big problem when she’s supposed to be presenting a program at another location and they call to ask if we know when she’ll be there but she hasn’t even left yet because “that’s not until next week.”
Almost 40 years ago I worked the night shift in the composing room of a very well-known daily paper. It was a real assortment of oddballs. If you relied on this paper for your info, you wouldn’t have wanted to know about the guys who put it together.
One guy who stands out in my mind claimed that he had been in the Navy and when his ship was sunk, he rode into shore on the back of a whale. He was dead serious. The other thing I remember about him is that he recommended blackberry brandy as a cure for diarrhea.
I mutter to myself barely audibly all the time. Bad habit I picked up as a kid.
I will also occasionally think of a joke I heard and let out a giggle.
I could probably be your coworker.
Now, there’s a woman at walmart who’s primary job seems to be folding clothes. EVERY time I see her she has a HUGE grin plastered on her face constantly. I have never not seen her in this state.
My nearby co-worker keeps a running commentary of everything she is doing.
“OK, where is that note? Ah, there it is…did I call this guy back? I’d better call him, but after lunch. What is this? WHAT IS THIS? Oh, boy. This is ridiculous. Where is my stapler?..”
Yeah, it was entertaining for about zero seconds.
mmm
I worked with a guy that could’ve been a distant cousin of panache’s. It was at a cutlery store, back in the early 90’s. He was in his early 50’s, also egg shaped, but no toupee. Just a very bad combover made up of very baby fine pale blonde hair. He was always moist. He owned four pairs of pants, all polyester highwaters in olive green, poop brown, watery navy, and concrete grey. His coordinating shirts were seafoam green, pale yellow, baby blue, and not-white-anymore. Always worn with white athletic socks and black Velcro tennis shoes. Lived with his elderly mother, who packed his lunch for every shift.
So, beyond looking like a german cherub gone bad, he was also a pip on the job. We sold all kinds of cutlery - pocket knives, hunting knives, big ol’ knives, kitchen cutlery, scissors, and lots of random gifts. If we were working together, I was “allowed” to sell kitchen cutlery, scissors, and gifts only. If a customer dared approach me about something as simple as a Swiss Army Knife, he would literally “tuttut” the customer and interject his body between us. When changing signs, everything had to be perfectly centered on the sign and on the product, otherwise he’d mutter about how lazy people were, no one will buy whatever if it’s not displayed properly, etc. Inventory with him was hell. He double counted everything, even after it was already counted by a few of us. Try that with 250 SAK toothpicks or tweezers.
After the store (sadly) closed, he moved to the warehouse where he was able to count everything to his moist hearts content.
