The Sexy Talking Man is running a real risk of becoming the Sued For Sexual Harassment Man. Do you think he’s smart enough to realize that?
Apparently not.
There are a couple of people who work for me that sometimes really get on my nerves. It’s not their work performance, which generally meets with expectations (and exceeds expectations frequently enough that the occasional lapse is easily overlooked). It’s the “cute” things. “Cute” really gets on my nerves.
One of these people, for the first few months, constantly wanted to talk with me about her cat. She knows I have a dog, and I guess assumes that I want to hear about all of the inane thing her cat has gotten up to, and that I will share her emotional reactions to them all. Look, do I go around talking about all of the things my dog has done? No, you’ll only hear about my dog when I’m going to be out of the office on a Vet visit or something. But I acutally had to tell her, face-to-face that I don’t find the stories as emotionally involving as she does.
She’d bring in a picture of an animal (horse, dog, cat, hamster) from the local newspaper, bring it to me and state, “Isn’t it so cute?!? Doesn’t it make you want to cuddle with it?!?” Um, no. It’s a horse. “Oh, my kitty is so spoiled, every morning she mews at me say ‘time to get up’ and won’t leave me alone until I feed her.” Well, I hope you feed her in the mornings. And now, she is a first-time grandmother. Well, she got her honest “That’s wonderful!” from me, but I really won’t want to hear about it every day for as long as the kid wears diapers.
Another coworker has serious self-confidence problems. This is not good in a job where we need to be able to state our case and stand by it is paramount. (FYI, I’m the team lead in a software test team.) It does no good to the company to find what you think might be a bug, but when reporting it, include “but I don’t know I could have just done something wrong.” I need certainty! The fact that she speaks quietly with a very heavy accent does not help the matter. It REALLY gets on my nerves, and no matter how many times I tell her she’s doing a good job, she’s awlays assuming that I’m correcting her or I’m upset with her.
Ah, I feel so much better after venting! 
As I said, none of these behaviors strongly affects the job they are doing, so I’m not aiming to get rid of them simply for being annoying. But I do wish they’d stop being so annoying.
JOhn (party pooper?).
We have the Favor Mouse. She’s a timid little thing, who will oh so politely ask if you mind letting her use the fax “real quick” before you send your fax, or listen for her phone for just a moment because she has to go to the ladies room ,or make just one photocopy before you start your 500 page job … all the very normal things that happen in an office environment, except she refuses to do these favors for anyone else.
I have never in my professional life been so shocked as when I asked her to let me make one copy before she started some mammoth copying project, and she chirpily said “Nope!” as she pressed the copy button.
I think I repressed this incident, because a few weeks later she asked if I could keep an eye out for the Fed Ex guy while she ran down to the soda machine. “Ohhh,” I said, “Let me give you money to get me a soda too!” Again, she says “No, I’m sorry, I have a lot of things to carry.” I saw her come back up with a soda and a Snickers.
Currently, I enjoy plotting all sorts of ways to avoid doing her favors, but when it comes down to it, I just can’t bring myself to act so ridiculous as to refuse to carry an envelope to the mailbox when I am obviously carrying a whole bunch of mail.
In my office we have :
The Soon To Be Fired, Hopefully, Gossip Queen
The Loud Talker who sits down the aisle. Every freaking call, you would think she was talking to Helen Keller in a construction site.
The Mouse Banger who bangs her mouse on her desk when she gets pissed.
The Stud Boy who likes to make his rounds at every cube with a woman in it.
You know, I didn’t think humans and mice could get it on.
In my office we have Phlegm Boy. He has allergies, but refuses to take anything for them. In the morning he averages one appallingly disgusting snorting-throat clearing noise every 30 minutes or so.
Then he has lunch. This guy manages to slurp and smack his way through leftover pizza and a cup-o-noodles every day. Then we get to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to him snork his afternoon excretions. It is the most amazingly disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. Several times I’ve nearly puked just hearing him.
The topper? He has dried boogers all over the sides of his chair, and in the little v between his legs.
My boss likes to torture visiting staff that he doesn’t like by introducing them personally, just so they can shake his hand. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
A Pit thread dedicated to your annoying cow-orkers? It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven. ::Cracks knuckles::
<1> Throat-clearing guy I used to work with a guy that would, about every three minutes or so, say “EHHHHHH!” to clear his perpetual snotty throat. The kicker? He now works freelance in his own office in San Diego, so every time he’s in a videoconference meeting with our office and the Redmond office, his “EHHHHHHH!” is so loud that it will override whomever else is talking and activate the video monitor in his office, so every three minutes all monitors cut to him sitting there staring at us.
<2> Expression parrot guy. Every six months, this guy will latch on to a different annoying expression he’s heard somewhere, and use it until we are all driven mad. His current expression? “Get THAT fixed!!” As in: “We’re taking another build tonight.” “What??!! Get THAT fixed!!”
Some previous expressions:
What you say!!
But how will that create synergy? heh heh…
WASAAAAAABI!!!
Communications disruption can mean only one
thing: invasion.
<3> Play instigator guy. Spends all his time trying to scare up people to play a quick game of Foosball/Ping Pong/Nerf basketball/Paper triangle football/etc etc. Does no actual work.
<4> No TV guy. Straight out of the Onion. He does not miss an opportunity to inform us how long it’s been since he’s owned/watched/seen a TV. We even printed out the Onion article and taped it to his door. Didn’t help.
<5> New father. Ugh. Brings his new baby into work EVERY GODDAMN FREAKIN WEEK. The same people drop what they’re doing, (especially #3 above), and move as a crowd en masse to everyone else’s office so they can watch us look at the baby. This is hell for me, since I don’t have children, don’t really like children and don’t have any exposure to children, so I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to do or say. Especially after seeing the same damn baby five days ago, so I’ve used up what measely material I have. “Uh…he’s getting bigger…” “She’s a girl.” “Oh.”
<6> Door lingerer. The Queen of small talk who never, ever goes away when you want her to. Same M.O. every time. You’re working, suddenly you sense her presence so you glace up, there she is, with her coffee, leaning in your doorway, ready to chit-chat. Impossible to get rid of her. I’ve tried everything short of leaning forward and shutting the door in her face.
<7> “Funny” EMail forwarder. Not only are they never funny and / or you’ve seen them a gajillion times, but he oversells them. Subject: “HILARIOUS!!!” and it’s the throwing-up pumpkin you saw last year. Or worse, it’s something like “Top Ten Klingon Programmer Excuses” AAAAAAUUUUUGH!!! And since I have to actually work with this guy, I can’t use an Inbox Assistant tp delete all messages from him, and he never puts “Humor” in the title like he’s supposed to.
<8> Bake sale madwoman. Sends about 30 Emails a week like this: “Cookies in the kitchen!” “Cucumbers from my garden!” “Who wants muffins?”
Sorry about the tangent here, folks.
How exactly does one ork a cow?
Yep, hilarious. And thanks, I needed the smile.
Y’know, I’m not sure what I’d do if the Tech Support guy talked like Tweety Bird, but I think I’d fall out of my chair laughing.
We have the annoying Must Know Everything Lady. She eavesdrops on conversations then asks about them. She shows up at work hours before the rest of us to leave us little memos (and probably snoops through our offices). When we found out she was supposed to move to an office right in the middle of the action we DEMANDED she be moved to the main office. Unfortunately, she still drops in from time to time.
I was a secretary for 5 years; I don’t think you have intended to sound condescending towards lower-rung employees in your post, but it kinda sounded that way to me.
Oh, what a wonderful day to have found a thread like this! Please pardon me if I wind up ranting for a bit…
We have little Mrs. Busybody, who can never get her own work done because she’s always too busy trying to do everyone elses’. Despite her lack of experience, she is, (in her own opinion), the only person employed there who knows what they’re doing. While I have to give her credit for her willingness to “help” people out as much as she can, the rest of us on the staff wind up spending at least a quarter of our time cleaning up her mistakes.
For example, she insists on taking important orders from people, and then she promptly loses them. The personnel who are actually working in that department (namely me!) are left with irate clients, demanding to know when their materials are coming in. Any idea how embarrassing it is to admit that you have no clue what they are talking about?
She also spends the vast majority of her time telling annoying stories, over and over again. Not only do you have to hear the same stories repeatedly, but you also have to hear every detail of the history leading up to that story…so what could be a 30 second event winds up taking at least 10 minutes.
I suppose she’s not as bad as some people could be to work with; but I’ve just had a particularly bad day with her today, after having to spend a lot of time cleaning up another one of her brilliant messes.
And she wonders why she was fired from nearly every other job she has ever held!
Fanger
Hell fucking no. I’m a paralegal, and have worked have a dozen truly bottom of the barrel jobs. Including being lower on the pecking order than secretaries. There are some marveously competent secretaries at my firm, and I sure has hell am not going to bitch about them.
I am only condescending towards the ones that either play stupid in order to avoid work or are so truly stupid that they can’t be responsible for anything.
So sue me.
MR
I used to share a two-person office with her, and now I am in an office directly opposite her. She’s 34 or so, but still triumphantly Yelling Woman - The College Gal!!
Best years of her life were when she was a uni student, and she’s damned if she’s going to let a child and a career get in the way of a way of life she treasures.
Everything that happens to her MUST be shared, loudly and at length with any of her three close intimate friends in the office. The undiscussed life is not worth living apparently. There are no middling bits of life for her either. it’s a Roller Caoster!
If it’s funny it’s HILARIOUS! (She actually says that people “crack her up”) If it’s bad news it’s a [lowered voice] TRAGEDY!! Her loud, coarse, humourless laugh ricochets around this end of the building whenever she’s at work. Her “I am very busy and grumpy” manner ensures the entire office knows How Hard She Is Working.
She screams her vapid small talk into the air when making phone calls, feels no conversation is worth the effort unless she has impressed the other person with how busy and overworked she is, and to avoid actually having to listen to what the other party is saying she fills the intervals between her speeches with “yeah… yeah… yeah…”
She hates to end anything. Phone conversations must linger on through repeated semi-goodbyes that segue into a new conversation, more laughter, a renewed expression of the fact that she must leave and then another conversational by-way.
Okay then, well must go… So you’ll phone her for me? Good. yeah…yeah…Oh by the way, did you have a date for that meeting… okay well, must go…yeah… yeah… thank you so must go…And you’ll call her? Is that okay? …yeah …yeah… well I could call her if you think I should…? well… yeah…
When new, and sharing an office with her, I asked courteously if she could talk more quietly into the phone. “You’ll just have to get used to that” she said flatly. I paid for my rudeness immediately (secretive tears in the boss’s office) and in the long term as she recruited all the younger staff in the office in a kind of campaign of non-cooperation. It’s over now and we act like friends, but oinly becasuse I, like everyone else in the office have just put up with her demanding selfish behaviour.
A moment ago she started yet another yelled phone conversation, and I got up and shut my door. I CAN STILL HEAR HER!!
I cannot tell you how much I hate this self-obsessed, shallow, group-hug-demanding, stupid, vain woman, eternally giggling through her eternal campus life.
Thank you for this thread, and for your patience. A life may have been saved.
Redboss
Of course he’s not. I’d send you a link to his rap sheet–which shows precisely how stupid he is–if I didn’t have this fear it would get me in trouble. What really kills me about the situation is that the closet case supervisor was apparently never informed about the phrase “hostile work environment.” He seems to have no clue whatsoever the level of liability he’s opening up the company to and for that matter himself. I still have friends in the department and I have fond fantasies on occassion of emailing them to suggest they sue the company and take early retirement.
We have the rumormonger.
This is a woman with nothing better to do than pump people for information almost acting like a spy about it (whispering and nodding even) and then confront the person she was just asking about and tell them that “You know I could start a rumor about that”
I swear, I took a Saturday night off and came back Sunday pregnant. I had five people ask me if I was expecting!
Then we had the always up in your face smile chick. Also the department tramp.
She is the one who is constantly asking me if I am in a bad mood, and why don’t I ever smile. Uh, cause I don’t like you? Pretty funny to see the smile slide right off her face over that one.
But when she is not around it is a safe bet that she is in the mechanics office or following one around somewhere not doing her job. Lines have actually went down because she wandered off somewhere to chase a mechanic!
Next up, the joiner.
This man will join in any conversation. No matter if it involves him or not. Even if you turn your back to him to make it clear he is not part of the conversation.
This man is just off anyway.
On of those insecure people who thinks they are always messing up. The problem is that most of the time he is.
He will pick up a package stuff it an inch from your face and then just stand there. It’s his job to inspect and pull bad packages, and my guess is he is asking for an oppinion. Irritating!
I think I’ve mentioned my crazed Australian boss before. It’s not that he’s a bad person, it’s just that everything he’s involved with just has to be an overwhelming crisis, fraught with drama and emotional turmoil. In all fairness, the situation is exacerbated by my own personality; I couldn’t be any more laid-back and still have a pulse.
There’s a thing been going on with emails in the past few days, which I’ve found particularly annoying. The sequence of events goes something like:-
Email from client to our team: “(Urgent problem) has happened, please fix it at once.”
Me: Hmm. (Goes away and fixes it.)
Email from me to client and team: “(Urgent problem) is now fixed.”
(Crazed Australian boss returns to desk, starts reading emails.)
Crazed Australian boss to me: “STEVESTEVESTEVE we have a CRISIS!!! (Urgent problem) has happened!!!FIX IT!!! FIX IT!!! FIX IT NOW!!!”
Me (gritting teeth until they fracture): “Please read your next email…”
If I ever get the chance, I will put Prozac in his water supply.
I started feeling downright affectionate toward poor Pwincess Pwecious after reading here about The Sexy Talking Man, Favor Mouse, Phlegm Boy, Must Know Everything Lady . . . Don’t they sound like particularly annoying Super-Heroes?
But then, Her Iddy-Bitty Highness came in and started ootsy-pootsying over the phone, and now I just want to cut off her arms and legs and throw her off a cliff . . .
I present to you:
The Martyr (from my former job): She is just SO MUCH busier than you. She is SO BUSY. She is OVERWHELMED WITH WORK. She stays later than you, she comes in earlier than you, she has to be the center of every proposal, every project, she has to let everyone know how BUSY she is while simultaneously volunteering for every new assignment that comes down the road. She makes sure to send emails at 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. so you know that she is WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK. She whines about work constantly. She one-ups you about work constantly. You do the work of 5 people? She does the work of 10. You were here til 9 working on the Bolivia proposal? She was here till 1:00 a.m. working on 6 proposals.
YET SHE NEVER BRINGS A FUCKING PROJECT TO COMPLETION! Everything she does has to be thrown together at the last minute and requires help from other people. Half the time she can’t even get herself organized enough to tell you what help she needs. Yet she walks away with all the credit for being the hardest worker in the department, because the boss rewards people with the least work/life balance.
Right now I am working with…
The Constant Reviser With No Sense of Other People’s Time. I’m on a temp assignment that involves a lot of proposal writing and production, including graphics. There are also many “can you type this up in a table for me” little jobs here and there.
Every piece of paper I hand this woman comes back to me with a ton of edits and changes. In the beginning of a proposal effort, changes, edits, and back-and-forth makes sense. But she changes stuff just to change it - “Could you make this bold? Oh, and could you move this photo over here? And put a line around everything?”
20 minutes later
“I don’t like this line around everything. And this photo should go on the next page.”
20 minutes later
“Where did that line go? Maybe we could add it back in and make it yellow? Oh, and by the way, I need you to scan all this in and make it look like the final report from 1998. You can find that in the files somewhere. Oh, and my plane leaves this afternoon.”
She is in NY right now, the presentation is scheduled for this afternoon, she’s had the completed proposal for 2 days, and she is STILL calling me to see if I can design new layouts for it and email them to her. “We forgot that one graphic from the 1999 program - do you think you can find it?”
People, she had my type up a to-do list for her and she keeps faxing me FORMATTING EDITS ON THAT!
Uh, oh, looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays…
[sub]HEY! Why are you throwing things… OW! Okay, sorry![/sub]
My particular favorite was our ex-office manager, Miss Stinkypants. On her lunch hour, would go down to the restaurant on the ground floor of our building, eat lunch, smoke a half-dozen cigarettes, drink (company policy says no alcohol on company time), and then come back to work around two hours later. Notwithstanding the personality effects of the drinking, just the odor alone made me want to woof my cookies. Take an individual with a strong distaste for showering, add a half-day’s worth of sweating (because she kept a space heater in her office), mix in half a pack of cigarettes, and marinate. I could literally smell her thirty to forty feet away.
And not the most stable individual in the world. Upon being fired from the company, she returned the case for her laptop computer, which is when we found out she’d been using it as a suitcase for weekday bootycalls – the laptop case was full of worn, apparently unlaundered bras and panties.
We just took the entire laptop case with contents and burned it. 