Silence is Golden..or, cow-orkers shut up!

It would take me a book to write about my most annoying cow-orker. I call him Chuckles the Ass Clown.

He has disgusting personal habits. His shirts always bear yellow stains beneath his armpints that extend to his elbows and miscellaneous food type stains on the fronts. His ties also bear the food type stains. His front teeth are rotted black and broken off - oh wait, those aren’t even real teeth - it’s his dentures that are black and broken off. His hair is always greasy, his skin randomly flaking off. He has constantly got some kind of scabs on his ankles, which I can see because his pants are too short for him and he does not wear socks in his penny loafer shoes. He often forgets to zip his fly after using the restroom, and just as frequently bears wet marks on the front of his pants. He laughs like a weasel, and he laughs at absolutely everything with this nasal ‘Aa aa aa aa aa’ noise that he makes. He stares at the women’s asses and he stares at their breasts, whether they be young, old, skinny, fat, short, tall, gorgeous or ugly. He has, despite being older than my father and having kids older than me, asked me out on many occasions and been shocked that I would turn him down. He has emitted large volumes of bodily gas during important presentations (and while giving important presentations) because the thought of excusing himself to the restroom is apparently foreign to him. He also feels free to scratch his nuts no matter who is in the room, or what room he happens to be in, such as the employee kitchen. He has an annoying tendency to let himself into other people’s offices (because almost all the doors here have the same key) without knocking, and has no idea what is meant by ‘Oh, are you in here? I didn’t hear you knock.’ Nor does he understand such subtle-as-a-brick responses to his unwanted presence in mine and other people’s offices as ‘Next time, you can knock.’ He prompted the nicest, most demure, holy-shit-I-didn’t-think-she-knew-words-like-that person here to call him a ‘whiny little dickhead’ to his face.

Need I say that thought is also foreign to him? He firmly believes that DVD players will happily accept and play CD-Rs with PowerPoint presentations burned on to them, and he cannot comprehend that (no matter how many times he is told) an RCA jack is not the same as an S-video connector. He has suggested that ‘partially tripped breakers’ are the cause of getting 80 Volts from what should be a 120 Volt outlet. He has deleted entire volumes of other people’s work because he did not know what the .xls extension meant. He has told his students that pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del twice would cause a Windows 2000 Pro box to reboot itself. He has never heard of Unix, and believes that IBM makes Sparcs, yet he is supposely qualified to teach in an IT degree program. He has actually driven a student to standing up and screaming ‘Why don’t you fucking teach?’ in class. He does not understand that when writing a program that creates user accounts by reading a text file, that the program will read the text file, not the programmers, yet he is supposedly qualified to be a Network Administrator. He has belittled students and coworkers to the point that they have been reduced to crying over mistakes that they have made, yet is completely unable to own up to his ignorance. He is the perfect example of ‘Those who have the most confidence are typically those who are the most incompetent.’

And if that wasn’t enough, despite a lack of actual physical proof, there is strong evidence as to him being responsible for the Computer Poo Incident.

If I wrote up every stupid thing he has done in the three years I’ve worked here, I could easily fill a book. Now, I’m not the most socially skillful or clued person in the world, but the man is so impossibly stupid I am amazed he can breathe.

For a while I thought I was alone having a coworker this bad. Now I can see that I am not, and I am thankful that the rest of you in this thread exist.

**

I posted this quote in my office and in the lunchroom at my place of work.

Didn’t help.

But I do so love to point at it when people are chattering at me.

catsix wins.
And Jaade, is it possible that Pete has a mild form of Tourette Syndrome ?

I work with her too! Yesterday, I told her that my friend’s mother had suddenly died the night before (my cow-orker went to college with the dead woman’s son-in-law), and she chuckled and said “oh, really?” heh, heh. Yep, that was a good one. Basically she laughs with every word that comes out of her mouth.
Above-named cow-orker and another cow-orker of mine both do the singing thing. Well, one sings and one whispers the words. Really, you don’t have to prove to me that you know the words to all the songs on the radio by whispering them to yourself. One day I asked cow-orker #1 who sang the song she was whispering along to. She told me, and I gave her the priceless age-old remedy to annoying singers: “Well, let’s keep it that way.”
Another cow-orker of mine does this little sniffing thing all day long. Not quite a snort, I’d say it’s somewhere in-between a sniff and a snort.
Then there’s my boss, the ultimate mouth-breathing, sniffing, nasal freak. I seriously cannot tolerate him standing behind me. The heavy breathing really creeps me out.

catsix, how you continue working with that filthy “person”, I will never know. My question is, however, how in the world did he get the particular job, and also, HOW is he able to keep it?

I’ve worked in some weird places, but not one boss I’ve had would have put up with that guy for five minutes. And believe, me, I’ve had some bosses that would put up with anything. This guy know where any bodies are buried or something?

[sub]Excuse the highjack…I was just floored with this tale. [/sub]

Like Esprix, I’m lucky that we don’t have any really loud and obnoxious folks in our office. Oh, there are a few that can wear you out because they are incompetent and defensive about their work but, all in all, they are still good citizens.

The only thing that a couple of guys do, (actually don’t do) that irritates me, is they don’t wash their hands after they use the toilet. That’s nasty and offensive to me, but I just avoid contact with them. I don’t ever shake hands or eat any food they offer.

I’m not being a snarky bitch catsix but I swear, between the mommy abusers and the piggy person, I nominate you for the '“I Work with the Most Annoying specimens of Humanity Ever” award for 2004.
I assumed that it was going to Eve but I think you’ve topped her with that last post.

Surely this:

is enough to file a complaint with Human Resources?

I’ve been told by one of the other girls that has been here a long time that he is the youngest of quite a litter of children. My guess that he has a deep seated craving for ATTENTION. At the age of 50, you think one would grow out of this.

We had a meeting Monday morning. He was sitting in the chair beside mine, which had little gold decorative upholstery tacks on it. He took his pen and started running it back and forth over the tacks for about 10 minutes of the meeting. I was ready to kill him.

First of all, I am now the guy who shall sing “Josappy your bald headed pappy”.

Second of all, I’ve got an office mate who after lunch (and sometimes before) starts clearing his throat.

It’s like the phlegm olmpyics in there. uhnk-HUNNHH…Huh-HuNNHH! ungk-ungk-ungk-ungk-huh-HUH! It’s like there’s a big mucus ball halfway down and he aint’ gonna quit till its down or up or busted to bits in the middle. This all took a turn for the worse when I started visualization the inside.

It goes on for almost an hour after he eats sometimes. And, it’s like he’s totally oblivious to it. If its quiet in here sometimes it startles me.

Dayton University?! I’ve never heard it called that. And I, um, know the university pretty well. As far as I know it’s always been called the University of Dayton.

I worked with a co-worker for over a year who was always exhausted. ANYTHING exhausted her. She was not otherwise hindered in mobility, she was young - in her 30s - not obese, not elderly, not handicapped, seemingly healthy in every way. Yet she was ALWAYS huffing and sighing. Even sitting and typing took energy from her. Thusly, you would hear her sigh the phrase “whooooooooooCHILE” about 300 times a day.

She’d hang up the phone: “whoooCHILE”

She’d sit back down at her desk from getting her cup of coffee: “whooooooCHILE”

Shuffle some papers, type for about 15 seconds, then another: “whoooooooCHILE”

It wasnt said loudly, it was just above a whisper, but the volume was just enough so that you heard each one, and by 4 pm, it really really started to grate the nerves.

THEN if we ever had lunch brought in as a thank-you for a good month, or it was someone’s birthday, she’d be at the head of the line (or damn near), fill up TWO plates, and put foil on one and immediately put it in the fridge or store it at her cubicle. BEFORE everyone had been served. Several times the last one in line went without. If there was cake, she’d again be near the head of the line, and take 3 or 4 pieces.

“Now, Milton…”

And here is a classic story about her that I repeat to family and friends:

We worked in a large open area with about 20 cubicles. One day, another Cow-orker exclaims: “Who has taken my box of candy form my desk?” - Wait, what the hell, its the Pit right? - she exclaimed “Who the FUCK stole my box of Boston Baked Beans?” Now it was the tiny box, probably 35cents or so at the local gas station. But it had suddenly come up missing. She was quite vocal about the theft for about 20 minutes, when all of a sudden, here comes WhooChile shuffling up the hallway back to her cube. BBB walks to her cube and asks her: “Do you know what happened to my candy?” There’s WhooChile, holding the box of candy, with a few stuffed in one cheek.

And what does she have to say in her defense?

“So what, I left you a quarter on your desk! What’s the problem?”

:eek: :rolleyes:

Hey, I’m just glad to know I’m not alone in cow-orker hell.

He got the job because after being fired from every other job he ever had, his wife (who used to work here, but doesn’t anymore) begged the boss to hire him and the boss liked her, so he did. Should I mention that she is also no longer his wife?

The rest of us who work in my department believe he has some tiny bit of knowledge regarding the boss that the boss really does not want to become public knowledge. Whatever minute piece of information that is, it must be extremely important to the boss. Either the boss, Mr. Uber Christian with the Perfect Picture Family is secretly gay and wants no one in his WHAM neighborhood to know it, or yes, CtAC knows where the bodies are buried.

Today’s CtAC greatness was in our department meeting telling another department member in front of me(I hold the Department Head designation) that this is not ‘her department.’ I don’t complain to my boss often, but I did about that one. I don’t care about the snotty attitude, but I do care about a refusal to give me information I need to conduct my job. Five minutes later, I got the information from him that I wanted. It chaps his ass royally that I am younger, less seniority, and a woman and I’m department head over him. However, I’m more qualified, hands-down, and everyone else in my department has said so to my boss when they have gone to her to complain about him.

The guy is phenomonal.

I’ll take 100000 mommy abusers if I could just get rid of CtAC.

Being a small company, we don’t have an HR department. We have complained to our boss about it, and since then CtAC still looks but at least he tries to hide it now.

One day I’m going to write a book about this fucker. I think I’ll call it ‘Anatomy of an Ass Clown’. Think I could make money on it?

This thread is evidence for what I have known all along.

Cubicles are evil.

If everyone had a real office with a door that closed, the workplace would be so much better.

Ok, I have to go. Someone’s cellphone is ringing to the tune of “ding dong the witch is dead,” while I hear someone else coughing up phlegm and spitting it into her trashcan. It reminded me that I need to make a phonecall to home so I can get in a very loud argument with my wife – but not until after I’ve picked my nose for a few minutes.

CUBICLES? You have CUBICLES?

~sighs~ How nice. We all sit in one room with our monitors turned towards our boss so that he can make sure we aren’t playing solitare all day. He’s completely against us having individual offices or cubicles. He likes to monitor our conversations with customers and our daily activities.
I can’t wait 'til I finish college…

Is ‘cow-orker’ a joke name for annoying workmates or am I just being dense today?

Yes, it was started in another thread (around the time this thread was written)…perhaps by Eve, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

Speaking of cubicles, I’m currently on assignment at a very large, international company. When I was showed around the building, I was on the verge of breaking out into laughter multiple times because there I was, in a living, breathing hybrid of “Office Space” and a Dilbert cartoon. When my supervisor showed me the TC160 reports, complete with cover sheets, I thought I was going to lose it. This has been a very valuable learning experience for me - I can’t work at a huge company. I would go stark staring mad.

And yes, you sure can hear everything going on in the cubicle next to yours. I hope all my cubby neighbours enjoyed me fighting with my pimp agency for a couple of hours on Monday when I got a (fingers crossed) fantastic semi-permanent job and told them Thursday would be my last day working for them. Pricks.

Hmm, maybe it should be ‘cow-irker’ instead.

The first place I saw it was in a Scott Adams’ book–probably The Dilbert Principle. Or maybe it was in the DNRC newsletter. The newsletter is where the term “Induhvidual” was coined.