Obnoxious Coworkers

[silentknight]

So I felt like sharing.... I have a coworker who sits at the desk next to me. She's generally obnoxious overall. She does such things as eat at her desk all day, eating such things as boiled eggs and cottage cheese... chewing loudly on top of all that, or laughing out loud throughout the day as she listens to humorous podcasts on her headphones.

 

However, the worst part is when she gets talking. I don't think I've ever heard an intelligent thing come out of her mouth. Usually she's rambling about WWE wresting or Dave Navarro (nothing wrong with them per sey, but her obsession and comments are annoying).

 

However, recently she's been on a conspiracy theory kick. Some of them she's even late in coming to, such as believing that the 9.11 incident MUST have had a bomb (placed by the government) as well as the planes, or that if you have a smart phone the government can spy on you even when your phone is turned off. She said she learned all this on a "science" podcast, but that most of this podcast is "over her head".

 

I've avoided talking to her about religion, but I know she's catholic, because she was talking about going through the catholic counselling before she got married. I have the feeling she believes it all literally.

 

Anyway, just felt like venting. Anyone else work with annoying people?

[♦ ficino ♦]

Why is she listening to podcasts during work? Does she perform the duties of her job?

[silentknight]

Why is she listening to podcasts during work? Does she perform the duties of her job?

 

We both work in the graphic design department. It doesn't hurt to listen to music or podcasts while working on our design projects.

[Edie]

My boss is a pain on the backside sometimes too. A 19-year-old girl and her family keep buying him expensive gifts which he cannot reciprocate. She's all over him whenever they are together. It's really embarrassing to be out with them as everyone stares at the teenager and the bald 43-year-old. He's going to look very bad when she declares her undying love for him, as the feeling is n

[Edie]

My boss is a pain on the backside sometimes too. A 19-year-old girl and her family keep buying him expensive gifts which he cannot reciprocate. She's all over him whenever they are together. It's really embarrassing to be out with them as everyone stares at the teenager and the bald 43-year-old. He's going to look very bad when she declares her undying love for him, as the feeling is not mutual, yet he has accepted the gifts.

[Akheia]

That is bizarrely weird, Edie... no fool like an old fool, to be sure.

 

I think every workplace has at least one intolerable person. At one place I worked at, it was a mystery woman who marinated herself in really fake vanilla perfume. At another, it was a "prosperity gospel" Christian woman who screamed at maximum volume on personal calls about the most offensive topics possible in the middle of the night at an otherwise dead-quiet dispatch office (a bunch of the rest of us were debating yelling back "You crazy bitch, dump the motherfucker already! Oh, and treat your mother nicer than that!") but who, I shit you not, played the poor widdle persecuted Christian if anybody disagreed with her about ANYTHING or tried to get her to shut the fuck up. At another it was the "weird creepy staring guy." Conspiracy nuts are in a whole other awful category of their own, though. Poorly-educated but wanting to feel superior to others who aren't "in the know," gullible but wanting to feel shrewd, persecuted but wanting to feel powerful. Ugh.

[silentknight]

That reminds me, I have another coworker who lived in France for a while. She routinely takes personal calls at work and has loud animated conversations in french in the common office area.

[Chikirin]

The girl who sits next to me eats with her mouth wide open

The guy next to her is always congested but won't ever blow his nose

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

[silentknight]

The girl who sits next to me eats with her mouth wide open

The guy next to her is always congested but won't ever blow his nose

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

 

Gross at that last one. D:

[florduh]

Anyone else work with annoying people?

I have a lifetime of experience. Even when I had my own business, there were customers I could have lived without. The world is populated by assholes. We will deal with them on a daily basis no matter what we do.

[Akheia]

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

 

You just won, if you were curious. That's revolting.

[blackpudd1n]

Oh yeah, I've worked with a few obnoxious co-workers.

 

When I was 2IC of a cosmetics store, I got presented with a 30-odd-year-old woman as a new employee. She'd never worked before in her life; she'd married young as a trophy wife, and hubby had recently left her to upgrade to a younger model. The woman was stupid. Brain-dead. As in, the-lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home brain dead. Christ. It didn't matter how hard I tried to train her, or how many times I tried to show her, she just couldn't work out how to use the till. I'd tell her to clean the shelves, because you've got to really keep on top of the cleaning in a cosmetics store, or else the products look terrible and won't sell. So she'd give them a light dust. I said, no, you've got to take each item off, wipe it, wipe the shelf underneath, and then rearrange the items in the correct order. I went and served some customers at the till, having taken a short break from trying to teach her it, and when I turned around, she'd done as I asked, except she'd put all of the products back on the shelf upside down and back-to-front. I tell you, I was about ready to scream. A week later, things had not improved. My manager couldn't get any better results from her, either. This woman's idea of working was just standing around all day looking at herself in the mirror. And honestly, we just didn't have time for that. Selling cosmetics requires constant cleaning. When we weren't serving customers, we were cleaning, putting the products back in order (women are terrible about doing that, especially with lipsticks), and changing displays. We were selling high-end products like Dior and Chanel; presentation was really important. And cleaning the products helped with our knowledge of them.

 

Anyway, after a week, I rang the area manager, who did all the hiring, and told her that I couldn't deal with this woman. My manager said the same thing. We'd had no trouble training girls in the past, and we just didn't have the time for a woman who had no interest in working. When she got fired, she blamed me. What was I meant to do? Tell her to keep standing around admiring her reflection every day? Christ.

[Akheia]

I have a lifetime of experience. Even when I had my own business, there were customers I could have lived without. The world is populated by assholes. We will deal with them on a daily basis no matter what we do.

 

One of the few nice things about working in a call center is precisely this: yes, there are assholes everywhere, but your exposure to them is very minimal. Most callers you talk to are just fine--either nice or at least tolerable to work with. The few assholes you get are in your life at most about five minutes. As to the co-workers, chances are you won't be dealing with any of them on any kind of long-term basis either--turnaround at call centers is horrible--and it's not like you're talking to or working directly with the few asshole co-workers you'll have, making them "co-workers" only in the sense of "they happen to have a cubicle that's fairly close to your own and share a supervisor with you"; plus, if they're that bad to you, they're that bad to customers, so they'll be fired eventually, and if not, most centers switch up management teams every few months anyway. So there is that.

[silentknight]

I have a lifetime of experience. Even when I had my own business, there were customers I could have lived without. The world is populated by assholes. We will deal with them on a daily basis no matter what we do.

 

One of the few nice things about working in a call center is precisely this: yes, there are assholes everywhere, but your exposure to them is very minimal. Most callers you talk to are just fine--either nice or at least tolerable to work with. The few assholes you get are in your life at most about five minutes. As to the co-workers, chances are you won't be dealing with any of them on any kind of long-term basis either--turnaround at call centers is horrible--and it's not like you're talking to or working directly with the few asshole co-workers you'll have, making them "co-workers" only in the sense of "they happen to have a cubicle that's fairly close to your own and share a supervisor with you"; plus, if they're that bad to you, they're that bad to customers, so they'll be fired eventually, and if not, most centers switch up management teams every few months anyway. So there is that.

 

My first job was at a call-center. There's a pizza chain in cincinnati, oh. that uses a central number, rather than having people call their local store. The central number went to their call center where we'd take their order and send it to the closest restaurant to their address. I didn't work there long, as with most "first jobs" it was short lived.

 

When we were in training they told us to beware of a guy who'd call up and ask what color underwear you were wearing. Said he was harmless, but feel free to hang up.

 

I had one customer, a woman who sounded middle aged, call up. She told me that she thought my voice was sexy, and asked if she could meet me after work. I was pretty creeped out by it. Told her it was "against company policy".. lol.

[florduh]

My first job was at a call-center. There's a pizza chain in cincinnati, oh. that uses a central number.....

Being from Cincy myself, I can tell you that you got off lucky if you had no worse calls than the ones you mentioned. That pizza-eating population has some characters, for sure.

 

 

 

Q: How many Cincinnatians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

 

A: One. And please don't say "screw."

[silentknight]

My first job was at a call-center. There's a pizza chain in cincinnati, oh. that uses a central number.....

Being from Cincy myself, I can tell you that you got off lucky if you had no worse calls than the ones you mentioned. That pizza-eating population has some characters, for sure.

 

 

 

Q: How many Cincinnatians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

 

A: One. And please don't say "screw."

 

Like I said, I didn't work there very long. I had a friend who worked there 5 years! I'm sure he could tell some stories.

 

Did you work at the LaRosa's call center?

[florduh]

Did you work at the LaRosa's call center?

 

I lived there before "call centers" became the rage. I grew up eating LaRosa's food back when you could just call the location and some guy there would take your order. Simpler times.

[Thought2Much]

I once worked near a woman that had a nervous laugh. This can be annoying enough, but this woman's nervous laugh sounded kind of like she was... uh... having an orgasm. I kid you not. And she made that sound dozens of times every damn day. What made this even worse is that she never left her desk. No, that would be having mercy on the people sitting near her. Instead of leaving her desk to talk to other people, everyone always stopped by her desk to talk, and she would inevitably make that goddamn noise.

 

There was another woman who worked at the same company that would shred documents for days on end. However, she didn't do this the way that most intelligent people would. You see, most smart people would go through a big stack of documents, and put together a "Shred This" pile and a "Keep This" pile, then do a bunch of shredding all at once in order to be more efficient and also to prevent driving your coworkers nuts. Not this woman. No, efficiency was not for her. She would look over a document, then decide it needed to be shredded. WHRRRRRRRRRHN. Then she would look at the next document, and decide it needed to be shredded. WHRRRRRRRRRHN. Then she would look at the next document, and decide it didn't need to be shredded. Then she would look at the next document, and decide it needed to be shredded. WHRRRRRRRRRHN. Then she would look at the next document... FOR DAYS AT A TIME.

 

And people wonder why I'm so cranky and jaded.

[Vigile]

Hell exists:

 

[Sybaris]

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

 

We have one of those at work. He's morbidly obese. How/if he can even wipe his ass is probably not happening. And how he gets shit on the underside of the rim is bizarre.

[Sybaris]

I once worked near a woman that had a nervous laugh.

 

I sit near a woman who laughs through her teeth, sounds like a cat hissing. I thought about asking her out but that laugh would get pretty annoying before we even got out of the driveway.

[WMDKitty]

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

 

We have one of those at work. He's morbidly obese. How/if he can even wipe his ass is probably not happening. And how he gets shit on the underside of the rim is bizarre.

 

@Chikirin -- Take up a collection and buy him a belt?

 

@Sybaris -- If it's liquid shit, it's splashback, and it happens if stuff is expelled with enough force. If it's solid... I can't help you, I've never seen that happen with normal, healthy poop. Either way, it's turd terrorism when it's done deliberately and/or deliberately left for others to find/clean up.

[Akheia]

I had an acquaintance in college who left the splashback shitstains on the bottom of toilet seats. He was a weird, weird guy, just part of the group I hung out with; I hated it when he used my bathroom because he was such a priggish, observant person that he *had* to know how filthy he left the toilet but he *never* cleaned up after himself. When I learned he'd gotten married, I felt so awful for his wife, because I can easily bet who got stuck with a lifetime ticket for the Poop Patrol. He was evangelical, like me and most of my friends, but now that I think of it, I can't remember Jesus saying "you won't always have me, but you will always have the shit-smeared toilet I leave behind." Part of the glory and joy of being an apostate is being able to refuse entry to my home to weird, un-housebroken people without feeling guilty

[Will02]

Hell exists:

 

 

I looked and looked and sure enough, one computer is slightly different than the others. (It's the same basic model but it's centered instead of being pushed over to the right)

[Will02]

Another guy can't get his shirts to stay tucked in so his ass always hangs out, and he always leaves feces on the toilet seat every morning

 

Next worst thing to find on a seat is ass hair.

 

I’ve always despised public toilets. Even urinals have those goddamn rubber mats that splash you if you hit them.