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

Boss:"Ronan could you comb your hair next time you come to work"

Me:"eh in fairness the contract doesn't say anything about me having to comb my hair"

Boss:"yeah but I mean you're a student now yeah? this job isn't so bad. they look after you well, it's a good wage, I'm happy with my lot"

Me:"I don't think there's any chance of me ever working here for a living, long term"

Boss:"Yeah and they pay your health insurance, it's not too difficult a job either"

Me:"Yeah no I'm never going to want to work here, to be honest I was planning on quitting as soon as I start college, or maybe even sooner, you needn't tell the main boss that"

Boss:"Oh don't worry, whatever is discussed here stays here. *long David Brent style lecture* I know what it's like to work WITH people and AROUND people, and I know that this station is not being run as effectively as possible, it's a clique, and I'm sure you can see that too Ronan. But quitting isn't going to change that. You quitting will not make this a smoother operation.

Me:"Eh I don't care about this job, I'm not sure what your point is"

Boss:"All I'm saying is, think about what I've said to you yeah? Just think about it"

Me:"............ok"

CEBCWTJCW: Morning Rachel!!! Oooh! What have you done to your NOSE??

Me: What? Oh yeah, it's a spot.

CEBCWTJCW: No! You've cut yourself or something! It's really RED.

Me: No, really, it's just a big, shiny, noticeable spot.

CEBCWTJCW: It looks really BAD!

At this point I gave up all hope of having a good day.

Woman At Next Desk: Oh, you used to live in London? So did I. I moved back after my daughter started school and, to be honest, I'm really glad I did. The education you get in London is terrible.

Madchen: I've heard inner city schools are, er, challenging.

WAND: Oh yes. I mean, she was one of only three white faces in the class.

Madchen: Oh. (Mutters something under her breath about 1 in 4 Scots).

Office twats who preface statements with 'I'm not being funny' should recognise that everything following the phrase comes with its own virtual kill file.

My other suggestion would be to canvass other coworkers for a pizza delivery one Friday and exclude her blatantly.

I work in a room with two people. Person 1 said to me all the stuff I wrote above. She thought nothing of saying it to a stranger (the assumption, I guess, being that I would think the same). Person 2 laughed along merrily. Also, I have come across numerous people in Glasgow who tell me they get scared in London because there are so many black people around. Again, the way they express themselves implies they feel no sense of shame whatsoever - they just don't see there's anything wrong in expressing obviously prejudiced opinions.

I'm not denying for a second that racism doesn't exist elsewhere (and I'm not forgetting that the survey found 3 in 4 Scots aren't racist) but this is the only place I've encountered bigots who have the expectation that my opinion must be the same as theirs.

reply from me: "actually, on Friday we both determined that we had the wrong CD and would have to special order a new copy. On Monday."

reply from my boss: "There must have been some miscommunication here."

yeah, between your ears and your brain. moron!

What the fuck?

Despite the fact that she's obviously still pregnant.

However, I AM authorized to purchase them, however I want, whenever I want.

What does that even mean?

SUBJECT LINE: I gotta get outta this place
...if it's the last thing I ever do (feel free to hum along.)

After a delightful morning spent discussing why someone:
1. Shouldn't open a printer paperfeed drawer, while the printer is printing;
2. Shouldn't send emails to everyone on their mailing lists about Church-related emails;
3. Should let others know when they need the printer instead of deleting documents in the queue;
4. Shouldn't tell someone "this is urgent" so they work really late to get it finished, when really, it isn't urgent at all and in fact, doesn't need to be done at all; and
5. Shouldn't take someone else's lunch from the refrigerator and leave it on the counter to make room for "extra drinks in case we have visitors,"
I have now experienced the conversation to top them all (and really, you have to laugh at this one. I did. Once I calmed down, imbibed chocolate and nicotine, and thought "well, at least it's not quantum physics?). So....here it is:

A Dialogue between "M" (yours truly) and "S" (Otherwise known as Scarett/Princess/Arch Nemesis/The Scarf Lady/etc.)
S: Hey "M"!
M: Yes?
S: You know how to work that digital camera yet?
M: Yeah, figured it out last week.
S: How long does it take to get those photos developed?
M: What?
S: I need some photos really fast, so I can photocopy them and make notes on the back. And get duplicates too, in case they get messed-up.
M: What? What pictures do you need taken?
S: I need to you take pictures of my computer.
M: Why?
S: I need to know what's on my computer.
M: (sigh) You are looking for a file?
S: No, I need to know what is on my screen thing.
M: (dawning awareness) You need screen captures?
S: No, I need pictures of my computer.
M: For....?
S: I need to know what's on my screen, 'cause these instructions don't make sense and I want to make notes.
M: Okay, then you need a picture of the information on your screen, that you can print and add notes to?
S: Yes.
M: Okay, we don't need the camera for that. We can just do screen captures. It's easy.
(M walks over to other office, taking deep and soothing breathes all the while, and explains how to "CTRL+ALT+PrtScn" - runs into trouble with explanation of holding down all keys at the same time. Eventually resolved and screen is captured.)
M: Now open Word and set the page to ?Landscape.?
S: My computer won't do that.
M: What? Yes it will.
(M goes through brief discussion of "portrait" vs "landscape" and how to perform operation in Word. Discovers part of problem is that S doesn?t know how to open Word because the icon isn?t on her desktop.)
M: Now just hit "Shift+Insert" and your screen shot will be inserted.
M: No, you need to hold down both keys at the same time.
M: I don't know, that's just the way the program is designed.
M: Yeah, it is find of frustrating.
M: Okay, now you have it. Just insert a new page for each of the next screen captures and then print the file.
(M returns to own desk and gets back into rhythm of formatting proposal.)
S: M! It isn't working. I want you to take the pictures for me.
M: I don't have time to take the pictures right now, I have to get this back to _____.
S: Well, I don't have the time to use the camera, so I guess this won't get done and _____ will be mad.
M: Yeah, I guess ___ will be mad, but I'll explain the problem to him.
S: Can't you do these thingys for me?
M: No, not right now. I have to get this done.
S: You know, it's your job to do this.
M: No, actually it isn't. I am sorry, but I really can't do it right now. If I have time later I'll come over and see what we can do. In the meantime, why don't you look under the "Help" menu to see if those instructions are better.
S: Oh, my computer doesn't have any "Help" on it. I keep telling ____ he needs to fix it, but he won't.

(M decides, for sake of sanity, to not try and figure out what that last comment means and returns to her editing, swearing all the while.)
End of original email.

And here are additional interesting tidbits about ?S?:
She claimed on her resume to be ?Microsoft Certified,? but was unable to explain what that meant;
She wrote all of her correspondence in Excel, because she didn?t know how to open Word (the icon wasn?t on her desktop);
When she came into work each morning, she made herself a pot of tea and sat in her cubicle reading household decorating magazines and drinking tea for the first two hours: and, best of all
She was once asked to provide a file that she had finished working on to another co-worker. The file was not on her hard drive for, as she explained, she ?didn?t want to fill it up with things? (and it was a 20 G HD!) File was eventually determined, by her, to be on a floppy. But floppy was blank when co-worker opened it. Eventually ?S? showed supervisor where she stored all of her floppys containing important info. She was attaching them to the metal parts of her cubicle with large magnets, so she ?could always find them.?

~ Laura (who is thankful that she can claim to be a happy rat, that abandoned the sinking ship in time to move to a much cushier and affluent ship, and is now ridiculously happy with things)

I've met a few people who have done basic "computer literacy" courses at colleges and Adult Ed. places who do this. What seems to happen is: the college says "don't store your files on the hard drive [of our lab computers], use a floppy" and the person absorbs this without understanding *why* they're being told it.

These sort of courses always seem to produce people who can't do anything except exactly what was on the course, and then only if their computer is set up exactly like the college ones were. Hence, not being able to start Word if it doesn't have a desktop icon.

(of course, the other stuff shows that this person seems to be a fuckwit regardless of that)

The ex-receptionist at my office once printed out an email so she could type it up in Word.

it's a sappy day.

1. "What does agriculture mean?"

2. "I was so annoyed. Someone threw themselves under my tube yesterday. People that do that must be mad."

3. Me: "Just tell them to put the web address in and it will take them straight into the site."

Her: "What address? Their address?"

Other things he did: worked at his cube standing up (making everyone around him very tense), unbuttoned his shirts halfway down his chest, commented on every phone conversation I had (work related or not), talked to himself, and played horrible CD-Rs of cabaret tunes he wrote and produced. I think the whole experience inoculated me against ever being annoyed by co-workers again.

Unfortunately something this stupid is uttered in my office at least once a day...

although I mentioned it as an aside I think the thing about him maybe being on the spectrum, and his past ability to take feedback, means that you might be on to something, even if the sort of rules-setting and following isn't unique to any one group and I suspect it's broken containment at large

I've had friends who have been on the spectrum or acquired what I sometimes think of as 2016ish social media brain where the conversation very much goes into a chain of them considering what I have mentioned, evaluating things based on their knowledge -- and specifically a good/bad framework, specifically about stores, people, etc -- and then responding with that as opposed to reacting to the original topic

Thanks for your thoughts, mh. I also think this has a lot to do with straightedge, tbh— he grew up in the hardline era, and was deeply “in the pit” during the heyday of Victory Records and bands like Earth Crisis and etc. Very macho, unyielding, “purity”-driven ideological base that most people grow out of because that shit is for teenagers, but alas.

None of the rest of us responded to his message— except he liked his own message. Which we all got notifications for, of course. What a baby.

wow--the line from Earth Crisis to anti-Target AI posting. . . that's pretty wild and you're spot on with the purity stuff. your coworker sounds immature!

update: coworker also loves the sort of C-grade pop shit that suburban wine moms love to pump on their way to Costco. think Ava Max and Gaga deep cuts.

he won’t let go of my saying that Max’s “My Head & My Heart” is unoriginal trash, saying that the fact that she bought the rights to the song shows “artistic integrity.” i have decided that he is just trolling me, possibly to get me angry and get me fired, and i am refusing to respond to anything he messages me about unless it’s work-related.

i am used to having coworkers have mid to normie taste in music. that’s fine tbh, and i have learned a lot about popular music in the past decade or two of working. this is a good thing!!

but christ, this guy has the worst taste. straightedge hardcore from the late 90s, warped tour pop punk from the same era, and the aforementioned c-grade dance pop shit. it’s embarrassing.

Definitely embarrassing… not sure how it rates compared to the mid to normie tastes of my colleagues whose jobs entail promoting and supporting the arts … I want to set the bar higher, but it’s just resulting in resentment and disappointment tbh

table's coworker
https://media.gq.com/photos/5d8129999f076b0008f2c8b1/4:3/w_1427,h_1070,c_limit/Burn-After-Reading-Brad-Pitt-Comedy-GQ-2019-091719.jpg

new GM of the region changed the summer shift schedules for all the gyms, so there’s an 8-2, a 1:30-7:30, and a 4-10. this would work well at our other gyms, which are either smaller or don’t have heavy foot traffic on weekdays. but our gym’s busiest hours are 6:30-8:30.

this means that i ended up leaving 25 minutes late from my 7:30 end time because there was too much shit going on that i couldn’t just leave, as my co-worker was running a training. i ended up having to pull a coach who once had my job to take over for a few minutes so i could leave.

deeply tired of being smarter than my bosses.

head of IT department here really bothers me, they should just rename it the gaslighting department

I would never have the patience to be in IT. As it is, because ours is outsourced to a 3rd party company who is terrible, I get lots of tech related questions from instructors that typically:

-Contain screenshots where the important part is cut off

-say something unhelpful like "isn't working

-Establish they did little to no troubleshooting before just immediately rushing to get help.

Then, when you ask a follow-up question, you get an "I don't know, I'll find out" followed by no answer for hours, followed by them asking you if you have any updates as if the answer to your question wasn't directly tied to resolving it

There’s someone in my plant who’s started taking up two disabled spots with a Ram 3500, the back glass of his camper has a giant version of this sticker - https://www.scrollfactory.com/products/urgent-fury-ranger-diplomacy-sticker

Bragging about invading Grenada has to get an eye roll even from people still riding high on their Panama action.

lol he was in danger of getting a mojito

oh yeah... liberating the sketchy medical school from marxist fiends, one of our finest moments

operation urgent fury sounds like a euphemism for a prescribed anger management program.

this sticker

Or masturbation.

And is that a totenkopf and half an SS lightning bolt?

This annoying creepy guy I work is convinced we all hate him and that the work environment is toxic. The truth is he’s just bad at his job and doesn’t listen. It’s not that deep. Anyway, he’s talking all this shit to HR about his colleagues (inc. me) and creating a bunch of extra auditing work for us as a result. Not only stupid and annoying but also vengeful! He’s hasn’t shown up at all this week, wonder if he knows we’re all mad at him now.

eugh i already feel bad posting about that. just blowing off steam, i guess.

you have to, sometimes

my friend had a coworker like that who was either jockeying for a special assignment or something cushy but genuinely had no skills and was doing nothing. they eventually just started making bogus HR claims

gee, wonder how the "annoying creepy guy" would ever have the thought that people hate him?

I don’t know, maybe it was the flirty texts he kept sending to the female staffers? Gfy

I’m just trying to do my job, he makes everything into a big scene revolving around him

Do you hate everyone that annoys you, Jon?

i don't like people who hold grudges toward their coworkers. this used to be me. i've been in this job i don't like for 6 years now. i feel like the purpose of all of this has been to teach me to just not care about what someone else does or doesn't do at work. it's such a liberating feeling. suddenly i can be nice to everyone. i know everyone talks behind my back. they do the same to everyone else when i'm around them. i don't do it anymore. what a waste of energy. i know i do a good job when it isn't some bullshit, you know? i do my best when it isn't bullshit. the rest of it all can gtfo. reclaiming my power. i've noticed i don't dread going into work as much. i get to choose what my day is like. the actions of everyone else, what they do or don't do, are either commendable or funny or kinda sad.

i am aware that i don't really deal with any hostile coworkers or a hostile boss. that's an entirely different can of worms. mine are all mildly backbiting grumps with no real demonstrated bite.

put in my notice today, gave them a month.

my sweet but young and slow coworker scheduled a mandatory training to happen during his shift, which we were told not to do so we could get paid for it, which meant that i had to pick up two shifts worth of work while he did the training.

also the new guy arranged the bills and coins lowest to highest instead of the standard highest to lowest. honestly felt like i was going insane all day.

that said, one of the schemes for the fall involves teaching writing workshops online again, and the fees from registrations have already outpaced what i would make in two months at this gig, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i know i made the right choice monetarily and for my own sanity.

im working all the time at taking map's approach above

im nowhere near being "the problem" with any of my work but have spent years stressing out over filling every gap and prevailing upon others to do likewise and now im just....doing my job.

and nobody said boo to me when i made the change

during good weather i may decide to take it to extremes, we'll see

Similar here. Last year I phoned it in by my standard, maybe working qt 75% of my usual effort.

They gave me the highest performance rating in the dept anyway. Killing myself truly wasn't necessary all these years.

In our last virtual townhall, people kept spamming the question "how does the company plan to address the burnout and loss of morale due to layoffs and the excess workload that has resulted from it?" in the chat.

Since we're siloed a bit this made clear to me that the entire company is miserable, not just us, and alleviated any and all misguided 'guilt' I had over pulling back. I don't owe my soul to the company store etc etc

(100% of my effort used to involve picking up other people's slack. I just let them fail now)

It’s been 2 1/2 years since I last had a co-worker… idk if I could go back to having co-workers at this point… I feel like I have become feral, out in the wilderness too long. Fwiw sometimes I annoy myself.

The last time I had coworkers was in 2021, and that was because my client had 16-hour a day care.

the silly managers on my team are now tracking the same information in three different documents, instead of one - and all of them contradict each other. the person in charge of it initially told me that information would always be the most recent in one location, and now it appears this is no longer true, that the 2nd location is more up to date.

even more amusing - this person failed to change the "last updated on [mm-dd-yyyy]" indicator in the 2nd location and has been making updates for the last week anyway, so for about a week and a half I ignored it, thinking there were no updates.

I swear, I don't know how some people get to these roles.

"hi Neanderthal, can you explain why so-and-so was left off of this email thread?"

"in the client resource report, the person listed in that role no longer works here, and in their final auto-reply, they direct all inquiries to a completely different person altogether."

like garbage in, garbage out folks

i don't like it when someone you are talking to for the first time just wants to problem-dump. my boss sends out a customer service survey to the agencies we work with every year and asked me (3 months after it was sent) to follow up with two people who responded asking for help. (usually the customer service survey responses come from difficult people, and how my boss has handled the surveys is a whole other annoyance.) one of the respondents is in a "problem county" here. i called her this morning. she just started problem-dumping from the get go. our records are such a mess. everything is a mess. we don't know what anything is. we are so helpless. every statement or question i had was met with a "no but..." i was trying to give her the first step of inventorying their boxes (20-30 - not that big a deal imo). she insisted that was impossible based on having no time. i insisted that would need to be the first step. she wanted me to travel to their city office and inventory their boxes for them (it's half a day away). my nervous system was pounding and here is where i entered fight or flight (i fought a little then flew lol). i told her we aren't in the business of doing other agencies' work for them. she said i don't mean to be rude. i said well you kind of are. she said that wasn't my intent. i said well that was your action. and then i wished her a good day and said goodbye even though she wanted to keep talking.

i just cannot deal with people who are radiating so much anxiety that they can't or won't answer simple questions and meet you where you are trying to help them. it triggers my anxiety. i'm not always a solid ship at 9 in the morning on a monday either. these people who cannot be somewhat chill, somewhat present, somewhat bright are a tragedy. they can also be a burden. i am going to forget about it for now and try to have as little contact with this person as possible going forward. i hope she doesn't complain to my boss. this job is so degrading sometimes.

on the other hand, the other person was a pleasure to interact with, and we had a productive conversation. the ratio of "you are fine" to "i can't deal with you" people for me is like 10:1 so i guess i'm doing pretty good overall.

How hard is it to plan ahead? Maybe send an invite out to get a feel for things?

For the first time in the 8 years I've been here, the head of our department decided to order pizza for one of those "mandatory fun" lunches in the office. It is scheduled for today, the day prior to my colonoscopy, when I'm restricted to a clear liquid diet. My boss knew about this since I have the day off tomorrow for it, but he has since left his position.

So I "get" to go sit in an enclosed conference room for 90 minutes to watch other people eat pizza while I drink water, trying not to starve.

people who are radiating so much anxiety that they can't or won't answer simple questions and meet you where you are trying to help them.

This is like every 3rd or 4th client for me … I often end up saying the equivalent of, “Hey, in order for me to help you, can we start with me asking you a few simple questions?”

yeah good advice. i told my boss about the call and i think she has my back. apparently this person has been a problem for others too. so far no blowback. honestly just hope i never have to hear from her again. there is pretty regular turnover in these kinds of jobs.

So I "get" to go sit in an enclosed conference room for 90 minutes to watch other people eat pizza while I drink water, trying not to starve.

― better than ezra collective soul asylum (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, August 18, 2026 9:51 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not trying to minimize and i don't mean to be insensitive or anything but if this were me i'd be kinda losing it at how funny it all was. like some mutant episode of arrested development or something.

i would have mentioned the laxative i chugged at least three times during this pizza party lmao.

i just cannot deal with people who are radiating so much anxiety that they can't or won't answer simple questions and meet you where you are trying to help them.

Bro stop trying to do MY job, that's why I'm the CS manager.

xp - lol, I did manage to mention looking forward to my laxative dinner several times...

I realized I forgot some important context - this was for a group of 4 people. So it wasn't like a "hey we have 30 people here, I'm never gonna be able to meet everyone's schedule, so come if you can", it would have been very simple to sample interest first.

yeah, it's never great when someone schedules something like that without checking with people first.

Wife is prediabetic and there was a surprise lunch meeting with cut up sub sandwiches. Whoever invented lunch meetings deserves a boot to the head.

not a fan of lunch meetings either. i bring my own lunch, eat it at my desk and cherish the 30 minutes of alone time.

i might attempt to sneak out for lunch solo on occasion because I have the opposite situation: years after my prior lunch posse moved on, a friend got a job out of the area, and the pandemic, I have two coworkers I get lunch with around twice a week. it’s just routine now!

the reveal that jon’s pizza lunch was meant for FOUR PEOPLE when he obviously said he couldn’t partake is wild. imo leftover pizza is good for 48 hours and you should have just yoinked an entire pizza to go for a post-colonoscopy feast

why do we need a meeting, just buy us lunch ffs and let us eat it in solitude

map otm

i like lunch meetings because 1. i’m seldom invited to one 2. the policy is that any leftovers from a lunch meeting are fair game and an email goes out to the whole building announcing it’s a free for all.

if I’ve already eaten lunch it’s free dinner, and the current catering does a nice mediterranean-style pita and vegetable/hummus spread

I’m the disgusting savage coworker

more 'stupid annoying software', but the tool that grants access to various applications and roles used to send an email for each request to the approvers. as an approver, it would often fill my box up, but I appreciated it because I'd know I had requests to approve.

they seem to have stopped recently, as I started noticing requests I made sitting for days without being touched, and when I msged the owners, they said they got no alert email, and I stopped getting them too.

so now basically if we submit a request through this tool, we wind up having to send a DM or an email afterwards asking people to process it. really think they should let go the person who bought this third-party software