Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-workers

this could be a new ILX thread - "people who bring hard candy to work are the most irredeemable scoundrels"

Ugh I ate some Hersheys milk chocolate yesterday because it was the only thing in the office kitchen cupboard (a huge cupboard filled with mainly terrible snacks). Now I get why my fellow britishers say it takes like sick because IT REALLY DOES.

That guy who videoed his asst's search queries was Jeffery Katzenberg who is head of Dreamworks and generally considered to maybe perhaps be a bit of an ass.

Shit like this is all too common; a few years ago our letting agents took ages to respond to our email telling them that we wanted to give notice to leave our rented flat, so we went into the office and the asst was like "Oh, I printed out your email but they probably haven't gotten to it in the pile yet".

oh i thought it was katzenberg! but i also thought i saw it on gawker, which is apparently why i couldn't find it.

Ugh I ate some Hersheys milk chocolate yesterday because it was the only thing in the office kitchen cupboard (a huge cupboard filled with mainly terrible snacks). Now I get why my fellow britishers say it takes like sick because IT REALLY DOES.

Somewhere there is a brilliant ILX thread on which I learnt that Hersheys tastes of sick because iirc it is made with off milk!

(You can't get fresh milk to mix with cocoa powder properly; Nestlé found the way round this by using condensed milk, and Hershey, not wanting to be left out on the new chocolate craze, improvised)

FYI I bought some cakes and biscuits to take into work tomorrow, and if anyone calls me stupid and annoying because none of the 6 varieties I've brought in suit them, they're getting a punch bleak look. Especially if they are the guy in my office who eats whatever's going round but never brings any in, never puts money in leaving cards, etc. He is "saving for a holiday" but fuck that, he's just bought a brand new smartphone for the third time in 18 months.

hersheys is the bomb.

if you bring in donuts, the ratio of glazed to filled should be like 12:1

trust me on this

thats what she said

in our office, most of us take thirty mins for lunch.

except one person, who takes forty...to go out and get lunch, which he then spends another thirty noisily consuming. the place he gets it from isn't even far away, there are two around 5 mins away each.

Oh my god, I do not care about the fucking royal wedding. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. ALL OF YOU.

OMFG. SEVEN people standing right next to my desk blathering like school children about this goddamn wedding. So fucking annoyed today.

but her dress was soooooooooooooooooooo beautiful

lol I know I sound exceedingly bitter, I just DO NOT understand the appeal of this for U.S. people AT ALL. Also, like, how much actual good could have been accomplished with all the money being spent to send all the media over to England?

I am happy that none of the people sitting around me care even a little bit about the wedding

Oh how I wish.

Oh christ, now they are talking about it via email, copied TO THE ENTIRE OFFICE. WTF

One girl sent out a picture of "the kiss" and now its like an unbroken stream of shit. Like, ugh. WTF.

Our connection is abnormally slow today. How the fuck are we supposed to get any work done like this?

so my coworker turned into a pile of batshit crazy yesterday, and forced me to sit down to a "chat" where she listed, like, a dozen really weird things i do that annoy her: that i only show up 20 minutes early for work, as opposed to the 30 i used to; that i once shopped online for a DVD during my lunch break; that i have better relationships with our coworkers than she does (and she's been around longer), etc., etc., etc. she told me she will not write me a good recommendation for another position when this one ends, unless i "blend in" more. she told me i don't "know my place." when i tried to protest/explain/question she yelled "I DON"T LIKE THIS FINGERPOINTING" and "THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER" but made me sit there while she continued to lecture me for a while more. when i told our supervisor, the supervisor basically confirmed that she thinks this coworker has borderline personality disorder.

ughhh. this same coworker yesterday called a juvenile client's parent to tell them the client was in a "self-destructive spiral" and needed "significant intervention" because the client got nervous and cried before a major placement test.

that i have better relationships with our coworkers than she does (and she's been around longer)

WTF. That sounds incredibly annoying, but also a little frightening that this person might have any sort of influence on your ability to advance. Do you think it boils down to jealousy/intimidation?

> i have better relationships with our coworkers

and yet you still need to "blend in" more? makes no sense.

Remy that whole thing sounds really sadly familiar. Have boundaries here but also you know that there's no good answer to this kind of crazy -- no matter how gently you turn it aside, she'll blow up. Can you get out from underneath the chain of command with her in it?

Remy, that's some sick-ass, scary shit. Can't your supervisor do an end-run around the coworker and write you the recommendation?

it sounds like they both report to the same supervisor and the supervisor thinks she's crazy

djp is right. supervisor already thinks this coworker is crazy, but didn't really know the extent until i related the conversation.

this is a contract position will expire in a couple of months, thank goodness. i'll got great recs from all of my other coworkers. i think i already got screwed out of a long-term job here b/c of crazy coworker's snakey recommendation a few weeks ago, tbh. she's got a notoriously bad relationship w/ her closest team, and i don't really fancy being part of it for any length of time. i'm feeling amazingly level-headed, given that the person i have to work side-by-side with for 8 hours each day just outed themselves as totally cuckoo. moreover, a lot of the kind-of-offputting stuff i'd seen from her in the past month and rationalized as "a different way of doing things" i can now acknowledge as straight up malfeasance.

maybe you can get her fired as your final project

At what part of that conversation did you slide from prickly fear/confrontation/nervousness to just "ah yes, I see what this is now" relative calm?

seriously though, go to HR with a formal complaint (or, if more appropriate, express concern about the mental health of your coworker) and start documenting the shit out of everything she does and Bcc your supervisor on every email you send her

best case, she gets bounced for STD* leave and you get an extension filling in for her, giving you the opportunity to make her irrelevant by being better at her job than she is

worst case, no one does anything (you already have your recommendations and exit strategy)

"short-term disability, you pervs

ohh, i am doing all of that – basically w/ support from other coworkers.

and laurel, i slid into the blissful relief of "oh, this isn't real –– it's just bananas talk when she said "i'm disappointed in you. i'm feeling disappointment with you. in fact, i'm even – i don't know, just disappointed. i expected more from you. and you've provided me with a lot of disappointment. frankly, i feel like you haven't lived up to what i imagined your potential might be, and i'm not sure i can write a good recommendation for you any more. it would just say i'm disappointed, unless you can do things my way for the next few weeks, and really finish out the year strongly" (pause, while she studies my – kind of incredulous – face) "and i'm sure you're going to take that in your head, and you've already twisted it so it seems like blackmail or whatever but you know that's not what i mean"

Wow. Yeah. The digs to make you insecure, the naked desperation of running you down as much as possible to keep you on edge.... Shit is poisonous.

in the face of that, it would have taken every fiber of my being to keep from saying "Disappointed a few people? Isn't that what friends are for?"

well actually I wouldn't have said it but it would have run through my head, as is happening right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Bv887-JlM

Reading remy's coworker in voice of crazy computer from Portal, improved immensely

sorry remy, at least your supervisor seems to know the score, and hopefully even if she does write a bad reference it will be so obviously dripping with the crazy that nobody will take it seriously in among positive reviews

(I don't know about in the US but in the UK iirc it's actually pretty uncommon to get an outright bad reference because the employee can sue if the writer can't provide documented evidence to back up negative comments - is there anything similar in place in the US?)

oh yes

Well, it did seem kind of improbable that the US would be less litigious than the UK about anything, but while we are talking about national stereotypes it did seem possible that the laws might be less in the employee's favour...

"i'm disappointed in you. i'm feeling disappointment with you. in fact, i'm even – i don't know, just disappointed. i expected more from you. and you've provided me with a lot of disappointment. frankly, i feel like you haven't lived up to what i imagined your potential might be, and i'm not sure i can write a good recommendation for you any more. it would just say i'm disappointed, unless you can do things my way for the next few weeks, and really finish out the year strongly" (pause, while she studies my – kind of incredulous – face) "and i'm sure you're going to take that in your head, and you've already twisted it so it seems like blackmail or whatever but you know that's not what i mean"

She's clearly aiming for that new supervisor job that's opened up in Scranton.

lol Ned

wow, good luck Remy -- I'm glad your supervisor knows the score

Latest issue of the magazine I work for is about 10 days late to the printer because of undisclosed issues with the editor/publisher. (And one day late because of storms, and one more day late because the Staples in Morgan Hill is apparently staffed by the bastard sons of Jeff Spicoli.) Hopefully I can get it all off to the printer today.

many of my normally quite nice and not annoying at all co-workers seem to have turned into zombies passing comment on the dress some woman on the television is wearing at her wedding.

Not annoying, just funny: helped a co-worker who was having trouble burning files to a DVD. Turned out she was trying to burn them onto that clear plastic disc that sits on top of the spool of blank DVDs.

Helpdesk TL: "can you fax this customer a domain name application form?"
Me: "uh... ok" (thinking: if you knew they needed one would it not have been faster to take 5 mins to print one out and fax it to them while you were on the matter, instead of passing it to me, who doesnt do such work normally, and who put it aside, so it wasnt done til an hour later when you asked again? DONT SIGH HEAVILY AT ME. Fuck sake.)

Like seriously, he might as well have said "I need to call this customer can you dial the number for me please?". Nuts. Sick of the interruptions. I've started counting them so I can go back to my boss and say "see THIS is where all my time goes, 2 hours of 5 constant, 5-10 minute interruptions from these idjits".

Please stop with the laughing for 20 seconds at a time after every sentence.

I can't stand when people do that. Every single one of my co-workers laughs uproariously at everything they say, no matter how inane: "How am I doing today? Well, it's Monday! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Maybe thats the "you have to laugh, or you'll go postal and kill everyone with a chainsaw" thing.

I think a lot of insecure ppl do this. Like one of the few people at my work who flat out refuses to say hello/acknowledge your presence when you see them in the lift or wherever and just stares at the ground to avoid eye contact is the loudest cackling disgrace in the office when she's with her 'team'.

Yeah Ive been known to slightly exagerate a crap joke, small talk or hearty laugh at work on occasion out of nerves/hating small talk. Dont do it all the time tho.

Every single one of my co-workers laughs uproariously at everything they say, no matter how inane: "How am I doing today? Well, it's Monday! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Peter: Does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?"
Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.

My new coworker has Asp3rg3rs and my stereotypes of little Spocks who find humour puzzling have been shattered, as this guy dissolves into uncontrollable giggles for about 5 minutes every time anyone mentions anything not going 100% to plan, any slight incidence of human error, etc, which is pretty much every time anyone speaks

(we are all trying to hold together some pretty badly thought-out projects in the face of general incompetence, oblivious upper management and insane timescales, but then isn't everyone who's ever had a job?)

xposts - the laughter comes literally after every other sentence, not just after lame jokes. As if the whole of the job, and life, is a continual stream of WRY and IRONIC and GOSH WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT and sometimes WE ARE HAVING AN UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATION.

Dude sitting across from me has the volume on his computer absolutely cranked so every mouse click is echoing across the whole office and the new Outlook mail tone is ridiculously loud. Somehow none of this seems to bother him at all.

DUDE, how can that not be annoying the shit out of you?

he's got popcorn stuck in his ears.