There are four weirdos in my primary job. I’m one of them. Of the others, the best is half Iraqi, half South African, and 100% tattooed. He’s even got ink on his face. Cool dude, fun to talk music with. We often amuse ourselves saying stupid crap and making up dirty jokes. Then there’s the guy who wears a ratty old blanket like a cape and mismatched shoes. He and I don’t interact much, but it seems like he only dresses weird. Then there’s the guy I call Bird Fcker. I don’t know his real name and I don’t want to. Bird Fcker shaves most of his head but leaves a round bit a little ways back form the top that he has in braids. Weird, but whatever. The reason I call him Bird F*cker, and the reason he pisses me off so damn much, is that he makes bird noises. Constantly. Whistles, kawkaw sounds, all day, every damn day. Now this is a warehouse with lots of noise, so it doesn’t carry all that far, but it’s bad. I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it.
He was a college graduate and rather intelligent in his own way.
The store I work at now has a manager who, when she’s in a bad mood, has a major meltdown about anything you are doing, right or wrong. She once told me that the store owner was going to fire me because he didn’t like the way I was sweeping the floor right before closing. Never mind that I doubt the owner was not watching me at the time and I know the only opinion he has about sweeping the floor is that someone does it.
I recall a lady who was a work colleague of mine in the 1980s / 90s. In dealings with colleagues, she was in a large measure very kind and helpful; but she had many eccentricities in behaviour and ideas / opinions, and particularly in what she told people about herself and her supposed present and past. (She’d spend hours on end “monologising” about all this stuff, instead of working.) Walter Mitty personified, only of the opposite sex.
Much of her life-story as recounted was so highly-coloured, and there was such a great deal of it, that it became over time, largely unbelievable – in one or two instances, there were outright impossible inconsistencies in her autobiographical stuff. Inevitably, we became uncertain whether anything she told us was true. According to her accounts of things, she was a devout and practising traditional-type Catholic; but we found ourselves wondering whether that was actually the case, or just one more fantasy element.
Among her recounted happenings in her life – (we were in the UK, and British citizens): she had been in Britain’s Women’s Royal Naval Service in World War II; during which time, she had married a man who died in a tragic accident on their wedding day. Afterward – following an episode in which she very nearly converted to Judaism – she became a missionary nun in China, where she was imprisoned and tortured under Mao’s regime. Earlier in her life: her father, a thoroughly villainous character, had hated her; just to make life difficult for her, he had engineered a situation by which her date of birth was on official record as ten years later than the true date (1928 instead of 1918). While we were working with her, she was in the toils of a traumatic second marriage (we were to take it, her nun status having been somehow revoked) to another total villain and “bad lot”, who among many other things, had cheated her out of almost all her money and possessions. She was in the course of getting divorced from this wretch – a problem-filled and complex process (one gathers that for conservative Catholics, divorce is out of the question; but no doubt there was some complicated way round that obstacle). She supposedly had a delinquent and endlessly troublesome teenaged daughter – not her biological daughter by either husband, or anyone else – how the “daughter” situation had come about in the first place, was never really clear (we learned by experience, to ask her as little as possible about the stuff she told us; asking, just produced a torrent of highly convoluted and unilluminating further stuff). She also supposedly suffered from a whole multitude of physical ailments and afflictions.
There was a great deal more “autobiography” that we heard from her, much of it just as hard to credit. There was no malice in this lady; she was in many respects a sweet and likeable soul – but I fear that we her colleagues came to regard her largely as a dreadful scourge, because of her way of “cornering” us and very time-consumingly bending our ears about “her life and times”; when we wished to be getting on with our workplace duties, or attending to our own personal doings.
My coworker does this exact same thing. He is always talking to himself. “Where’s my pen? Our computer system is useless. What the hell is that? This place is a joke. I need to take off early today. I can’t get this to work. Are we having a meeting today? I need to send an email. I need to take my dog to the vet. This computer is worthless.” And on. And on. And on.
He and I are in the same room, and this has been going on since 2006. It has gotten to the point where it no longer bothers me, as my brain has learned to filter it out.
I have a friend and co-worker that is like this: she is nearly always talking to herself in a very rapid stream of words. A few months after we met, I figured out what she was saying, and now it doesn’t bother me at all. See, what she’s doing is narrating her day to herself. I don’t know why she needs to do it, but it’s harmless and she’s a hard worker and a smart & competent person (as well as super-pleasant), so I like having her on my jobs despite the fact that she’s always muttering at hypersonic speed.
I volunteered with a lady who had a child the same age as mine. She was constantly trying to tell me his life story. I knew more about that kids bowel habits than my own kid. He was also like the dweebiest geek in the whole school. He smelled bad and was rude. On occasion we had kids working with us and she was pressing me to let her son help. She could get him outta class and he was strong. (We were moving library shelves.) I consented and she went and got him and another boy. They wouldn’t work. I talked to the Mom and she stirred them up for about 10 min., and they sat down again. I went and sent them back to class. That Lady was furious at me, she was screaming curse words in the hall of a highschool, children present. The principal came and walked her out the front door. OMG, she started a hate campaign against me. No one paid her any attention, but still. It was childish. Never spoke to her again. I often wonder if the kids constipation cleared up.
I quit a job when I was a teenager because the manager would scream at me every single day about how I mopped the floor and would show me a completely different way to mop it (different patterns, like that makes a difference) every damned day.
Same here. Kinda my own little stress related Tourette Syndrome.
Gad, years and years ago there was a guy in my department (who was not in my work group, thank you, Jesus) with the worst personal hygiene. I think the final straw was when he was teaching a class, and he plopped his foot up on a table, pulled off his shoe and sock on one foot, and started clipping his toenails. With the clipped bits flying all over the classroom. Urgh.
I had a coworker who would talk to himself, which wasn’t a big deal, but then he would seamlessly transition into not talking to himself, but talking to other people, which was annoying.
Where’s that document?
Why do they think I can answer this email?
What did I do with my pen?
Is the meeting at 2?
Is the meeting at 2?
HEY, IS THE MEETING AT 2?
He also would ask for help, but not at “a good time.”
Coworker: Can you help me with this problem?
Me: Yeah, I can do that.
Coworker: Now’s not a good time though.
I quickly learned to always respond with, “Yes, come find me when you’re ready,” and then I never had to do anything.
Heh, that reminds me of a former co worker of mine. The man simply could not keep his story straight. One week his oldest kid was a seventeen year old boy who was acting tough, trying to “challenge” his old man. The next week that kid was sixteen and he’s been in California for a few months trying to break into pro skateboarding. One time it was a girl who was grown up and moved out and how he missed her “but not any of her boyfriends, haha!” Sometimes he’s moan and groan about the unsung pains of home ownership, sometimes he was a life long renter. It got to be so bad if he told me that the freezer was cold I wouldn’t believe him.
He also had a habit of taking pictures of people while they were working. He looked like he trying to be sneaky about it, but he couldn’t have been more conspicuous. That probably had something to do with him getting shitcanned.
I can think of a bunch that were odd. Probably the strangest guy used to lick himself clean like a cat. He would eat something, then lick his fingers and hands clean. If he got something on his arm, he’d lick it off. I saw him at lunch one day, cleaning himself for about 5 minutes. He always ate alone. I don’t think he minded that, as he very seldom talked to anyone. He was in his 40’s when I knew him, and still lived with mom.
Perhaps he considered himself a cat, trapped in a human body?
A guy I worked with told me he was in Vietnam and when talking about his experience there basically repeated the Vietnam scene from Forrest Gump. He sounded serious, but I can’t help thinking he was trolling me.:dubious:
I can think of some pretty strange people I worked with, but honestly most people probably think I’m the weird one.
The key words are: “night shift.” My guy also worked night shift. Anyone can work any shift, but some people PREFER to work nights. It provides a cushion between them and the real world.
The strangest co-worker I ever had was when I shared an office with four other women back in the 90s. This woman had been married a few years but was seriously disappointed that her husband did not make enough money to keep her in the style she wanted to be accustomed to. We had met him. Obviously, his prospects had been better when they married because he was her opposite, meek and mild while she was wild and crazy. I couldn’t believe love ever had anything to do with it on her side. She often told us about “going out” with other men but that it was hard to meet them. Then she found out about the personal ads in a local paper someone had left in the break room.
She put in an ad and started getting results. She would call these men during work, flirting and making arrangements to meet them for lunch. Sometimes the rest of us would go to watch from another table. I know we shouldn’t have encouraged her but she was going to do it anyway and it was fascinating. She didn’t “go out” with all of them but at least one a week. Her “price” was a new dress. At least that’s what she told us. Some of them she kept around for a while so who knows what else she charged.
She also had a teenage daughter from a previous relationship who was pretty much out of control (go figure). With all the time she spent on the phone with her and all these men, she didn’t get much work done and was fired after about a year. She always said her greatest dream was to meet a drug lord from South America. I often wonder what happened to her.