This guy does it because he’s just FUCKING WEIRD. Most people around here use “son” or “daughter” but this guy refuses to. He makes his wife do all the paperwork for their kids because I’m sure he DOES NOT KNOW HIS CHILDREN’S NAMES.
Better than hearing “Oh, that’s Blackhobyah, she is on the list, she will pay, when the day of cleansing is at hand.”
I’m very much the odd one in our office. My immediate supervisor and the Office manager, are both openly, but quietly christian. I actually keep my social life and work pretty separate, but If you are going to casually mention your bible study or this or that church group, I will casually mention how much fun it was dancing skyclad around a bonfire at Beltane.
I forgot to mention something about the creepy guy at work: sometimes he wears his shirt like this. I know, who doesn’t find the Great Cornholio funny? But the thing is he’s not fooling around when he does it, just working. And it’s bright purple, which puts people in mind of the virgin Mary. He walks through the center of the room now, sometimes, so that’s an improvement anyway.
I worked (very briefly) in a small business where one of the clerks whistled all the time. Now, whistling can be very annoying, especially from those whistlers who think they are gifted musicians. But this guy whistled one note, holding it as long as he could. He would do this about twice an hour. Not terribly loud, but weird, nonetheless.
Oh, boy, I had a boss. What a boss. The employee manual, which was typed up 15 years prior and amended frequently, was curiously detailed on dress code. Specifically, use of “supportive undergarments” and “deodorant use.” It was readily obvious she’d burned her bra with the others in 1968. Unfortunately, she, being from eastern European stock, was a rather busty gal. Ugh. The icing on that cake was the sleeveless tops she wore. With huge armholes. AAAAAAaaaahhhh! I looked her in the eyes to prevent hysterical blindness.
I didn’t notice the reason for the other rule until after the old secretary quit. She, the secretary, always walked into work inside a cloud of perfume. Once she was gone, OH MY GAWD! The stench. I’ve worked in the Sahara Desert in July with oilfield roughnecks who showered every 28 days whether they needed it or not. This woman put them to shame. By the way, she’s the VP of the company, head of sales, the face of the company to customers.
She, in 2003, had the secretaries, before they quit, pull unpaid invoices from as far back as 1990 to try to bill customers for them. Sheah, right! Meanwhile, a customer kept begging for her to take their money to upgrade their service agreement. She’d been ignoring them for a while before I got there and continued the silent treatment until I left 6 months later.
Oh wait! Has anyone heard of this? She wouldn’t allow anyone to have a list of phone extensions visible. Why? She didn’t want visiting customers to wonder where all the people are who should be at the extensions. I guess the fact that there are 5 cars in the parking lot wouldn’t clue these visitors in that there’s not many people inside. This might be a concern if customers actually visited.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It was painful to live through but absolutely hilarious to remember.
I work in a factory and we seem a particularly attractive place to work for folks that can’t survive in the ‘real’ world. The odd coworkers outnumber the normal folks by a mile.
One oddly cheerful guy began hellooing and goodbying me; even following me on break to chat, sure that’s nice and polite but in a workplace of hundreds of people generally if you haven’t had reason to work together or be introduced you go with the polite head bob of recognition instead, eh? I responded with the politely distant and non-chatty type replies, just figuring poor social skills.
Oddly cheerful guy then corners my (male) work partner in an aisleway one day, asking partner to please let me know that he’s an okay fella, since he didn’t want to “scare” me and apparently sensed my reticence. Partner gleefully reports back to me, and I endure two or three days of teasing about oddly cheerful guy crushing on me.
One afternoon as I’m about to hit the exit door, I hear someone walking behind me and automatically hold the door for them. Of course it’s OCG, so I politely bid him a good evening and he geeks right out of his face, and I quote: “Hey, you too! Guess you decided I was good enough to talk to after all, that’s great! I’m so happy! I’m going to take you off the list now, have a wonderful night!”
While every afterschool special I ever watched growing up was screaming inside my head to run away from the crazy man, I just had to know. “What list?”
“Oh, nothing really, just a list I keep of who’s not polite. No big deal, I was about to add you to it, I’ve said good morning to you in the parking lot three times this week and you just grunted at me, but now you’re okay!”
“I certainly never intended any offense, please accept my apology. At 5:30 am, I’m afraid a grunt is about all I can manage, y’know?”
“Sure, sure, I understand, it’s all good, you’re totally off the list!”
“You’re not being literal right? You don’t actually keep a list, what could you possibly need it for?”
Eyes suddenly shifty, “Well, y’know, it’s just a hobby. It’s like, if I see someone broke down on the road and they’re on the list, I’d just wave and not stop to help, see? That’s all, yeah.”
“Of course, sure, I getcha. Well, have a great night, buhbye now!”
Haven’t seen him much lately, actually. He’s taken medical leaves before for mental stress issues, so perhaps he’s doing that again. Good to know at least I’m not on the list, at least.
Wow, most of these put our guy to shame.
My office weirdo works in shipping, not all that far from my desk actually. He likes collecting pictures of people that have been shot in the head. Once he really likes you, he’ll offer to show you his collection. Yes, he’s offered to show it to me.
He also screams at his family on the telephone some afternoons. Add to all this the fact that he has a large heavy dufflebag that he brings to work every day and you have the makings of an office tragedy one night on the news.
I have two coworkers who, when we go on business trips, will not eat anywhere but national chain restaurants that we also have at home.
They would be thrilled to eat three meals a day at McDonald’s.
I’m pretty sure if you asked most people that I work with **I ** am the odd guy at work. I like a joke and will go to great lengths to amuse myself. My latest attempt was to make fun of the “I have a Blackberry” culture at work. I bought a little $10 Fisher Price Doodle Pro, fitted it with a little clip and started wearing it on my belt at work.
I would be talking to someone, make the sound “beep, beep,beep” and excuse myself to check “my blackberry.” I had a string of similarly mindless gags.
I stopped wearing it around but people still insist that I show so-and-so “the blackberry.” Now it sits on my desk as a kind of permanent post-it-note and that’s how my staff leave me messages.
OK, that is the funniest thing ever. EVER.
don’t ask, that’s hilarious. YEARS ago, before cell phones were common and only rich douchebags had car phones, my dad’s best friend had an expensive-looking Jaguar. It wasn’t actually expensive because he’d got it at the junk yard, and his hobby was going back there to scavenge parts to make it run better (or just run at all at times). Anyway, if he saw someone talking on the phone in their car, he’d pull out an obviously plastic toy phone and pretend to talk on it, too.
I am definitely the weirdo at my workplace…because I’m the crazy foreigner who needs to have customs explained all the time.
Okay, most of my coworkers also believe that drafts cause illness. You can open the windows. You can open the door. But if you open the windows AND the door, well, that way lies madness.
my weirdo is nothing compared to some of these nutbags…
she’s a very short, quite rotund 29-year-old who’s just socially awkward. she doesn’t acknowledge basic social mores, such as don’t tell your newly-hired superiors what to do, don’t continue talking to someone when they are walking away, and don’t insist that you can’t eat the pizza your boss is going to pick up as a reward for the team because you’re on a diet and could they please just stop somewhere else to pick you up a salad instead. she still wears scrunchies, as well.
she also spends countless hours a day on MuggleNet, a message board for Harry Potter fans. work will be piling up right next to her and she’ll be clacking away at the keyboard about Harry Potter. she’ll lean around the huge pile of work in order to see the coworker next to her and tell them what very important detail of Harry Potter she’s currently discussing. she matter-of-factly refers to characters, places, and events in the Harry Potter universe as if they are real, actual things that everyone should know about, like dogs, or Alaska. if you have to ask her what in the hell she is talking about, she’ll literally look at you like you just asked her who the President of the United States is, and then treat you oddly for several minutes afterwards.
Fucker.
I also think if you asked the others, I’m the odd one. I wear sandals 10 months out of the year in upstate NY, I do go barefoot (but I have nice feet), I have my nose pierced, I’m the only one into any kind of geekery or reading books, I have been (occasionally) late to work because I couldn’t put a brand new book down (thankfully our office is understanding about this - we just work late), I keep a Mr. Potato Head on my desk (ostensibly it’s for the kids that come in, but I just like Mr. Potato Head), etc.
But my boss is odd, too. He wears a scarf around his neck every day. I mean, he comes into the office and takes off his coat or in the summer just comes in, and has a scarf looped loosely around his neck. He wears it all day. He has a heavy winter scarf and a lighter summer scarf. And the weirdest thing his he keeps a spare scarf in the car, in case he ever loses one.
Oh, and nevermore, I still wear scrunchies. Was there something wrong with them? Cause you see, they just work best with curly hair without tangling. 
Wow. How do you manage 10 months? I try (in Central NJ) but I can only manage it from May to October.
All of my quirky co-workers are gone. We’ve downsized so many times we gotten rid of most of them and many of the non-quirky people too. We did have the guy who used to order very large knives to keep in his cubicle. Eventually, he and his very large collection of killing instruments were walked out the door by security. Then there was the guy who ran a prostitution ring out of the executive suite after hours (most of us didn’t even know we had an executive suite, until the guy got arrested).
My old boss, who I liked a lot, was a stereotypical NY gay Broadway musical fanatic. You never knew when he’d break into song. He was a shopaholic and spent all his spare time at Century 21. But what made him a bit quirky was that he loved to wear funky ties, especially with pictures of naked or topless women on them. He must have a dozen different ones. I didn’t mind at all (although, since I’m female, that would probably be considered sexual harassment today), but I can’t imagine what our boss thought about it. I can just see her desperately trying not to look at his tie.
My favorite was the space alien. She was very open about being from another planet–she kept drawings of her home world in her cubicle. She would often tell us how she was sent to observe humans and how she wished she could go back home, but she had a job to do. She single-handedly kept the employee art show going (we had one every year and the company had tried to end it during a period of reorganizing) so that she could show off drawings of her home world to the rest of the company.
The company is soooo boring now.
We have the tortoise and the hare in the office.
One walks around the halls in a super fast step and you just jump out of his way or he will blow you right over. He enters and exits doors really quickly and will let a door slam in your face if you are right behind him
And then there is slow man. He walks in a long slow stride. You would think being tall and having longer legs would get him where he needs to go faster but that is not the case. He sort of glides down the hall at a snails pace.
Oh and there is scary Mary. She stinks and looks unwashed most of the time. She brings one large Rubbermaid container to work once a week and eats the same thing out of it all week long. Her van is also a disaster area. We noticed she got it new last Labor day and we have slowly watched it fill with garbage. At this point you can no longer see the van floor. There is rotten food all over the inside and we are not sure how she manages to drive as there is so much garbage down by the pedals. She is really friendly though and even if you try to avoid her she will say hi to you.
I love scrunchies. I have a large collection of 'em that keeps growing. I swear when I’m asleep they’re in their box in the bathroom, reproducing.
That’s it, a new movie—“Night of the Scruchies”!!!
:eek: That’s it! I have just figured out where all my scrunchies go! Mine have the exact opposite problem - I buy like 10, and then a month later I have 3, one of which looks like it’s been through a war. I have no cats and no kids, so it’s obvious to me that they must have all been traveling to be with YOU.
Give them back! :mad:
Not my co-worker, but there’s a young woman at the copier outside my office right now who must be a visiting intern or something. She is wearing a black trenchcoat, cinched at the waist, and a plaid fedora. And no shoes. She came in with shoes, but the 3" heels probably get old after half an hour of Xeroxing.
It might help to know that the usual dress code around here is “I’m not a grad student anymore, but I still dress like one.”
Wait a minute.
Boss wears scarf all year 'round?
Has a quirky female assistant?
Seems particularly flexible about time?
Does you office happen to resemble a London police box?
Sailboat