Office Psychos

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I don't mean the Patrick Bateman type. I mean middle-age guys, usually grossly overweight (except for the ones who are anorexic and twitch a lot) and sweat profusely, who mutter to themselves all day, saying things like "Fuck 'em all" and "they'll be sorry". Spend hours on the phone daily, and whenever I overhear it it consists solely of "Alright Mom. Yes Mom. Sure Mom, I'll be home in an hour". Also says nauseatingly graphic things about women he's seen on the Tube and claims to have gotten their phone numbers, surfs for porn at work, and hangs over the receptionist for his entire lunch break (she can't exactly leave her post, after all), occasionally darkly alluding to "wild mood swings - I just can't help it" and asking if she someday intends to have children. Does anyone else work with one of these types? Do you ignore them, or wind them up?

― dave q, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dave, is this you?

― Nick, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually, it would be funnier if it WAS me calling home every hour on the hour, as my mother lives overseas and making long-distance calls on the corporate phone is always great, even (especially) if you have no reason to!

― dave q, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've got to agree Nick, whenever Dave posts about his office (see the pasive-aggressive thread too) he always

a) Describes something which his title is not (ie this is a middle aged bore - not an office psycho - and his take on PA was equally way out)

b) Seems to be talking abotu something which his ILE persona resembles. Popping the Wall back into Berlin just so he can experience the thrill of living with the Cold War smacks a wee bit of a Passive Aggressive Office psycho to me.

But to answer the question, no. I only work with whippersnappers.

― Pete, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hold on, do most middle-age bores wear Walkmans with no tape in them all day while muttering "Just keep calm" and "Goddam bastards" all day? I mean seriously, I'm a bit frightened of this individual, if this was a US Post Office who knows what would happen.

― dave q, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think you are talking about yourself. Only I can make threads about myself, damnit.

Anyhow, all the people in my office are quite nice.

― Ally, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

dave should be grateful he is not in the US as then this nutter probably would have a gun and would come in one day and blow everyone away.

I am the Office Psycho as I sit reading email and ILE and sniggering to myself all day long making my colleagues think I am insane.

― Emma, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think this guy was hired from one of those 'Re-Start' or 'Re- employ' schemes they have to get people back into society, does anyone in the UK know about this? It would certainly explain how people like this get jobs at all.

― dave q, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Q = only bloke on beertch who can (momentarily) turn pete b into concerned adult'n'citizen = panth/champ of SOME sort

― mark s, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I just sit back here in the big room and listen to the pretty music in my head and talk with my electronic friends. Oh wait, the music comes from the speakers.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I hide behind a notebook, and people fear that I am writing scandalous things about them (though where I found out these scandalous things they never say, unfortunately). Or I walk around with headphones on, completely oblivious, and run into them. Most people are too uninteresting to be psychos, I think.

― Lyra, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I work with someone like that, sort of. I hesitate to call him a "psycho", because he's actually really sweet and harmless, but he has all sorts of problems - mostly addictions and compulsions of various sorts. He spends all day in sex chat rooms (I know because he's printed them off and left them lying around - he thinks he's chatting w. women, but judging from the conversation, I think they're men posing as women), and looking at porn. It's more sad than annoying, but he does have a tendency to fuck up his own life, especially his finances, and blame it on everyone but himself. Also he's extremely noisy - can't get through the day without candy or gum, which he chews or sucks on really loudly. He chews like four packs of gum at a time with the vigor of a cow. I think he has an oral fixation or something. I'd have more sympathy for him, but I work six feet away, and he's driving me crazy.

― Kerry, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Kick his ass Kerry.

― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Uh, he's 6'6". I tried making as much noise as him, and he quieted down a bit after that. Only now, he's suddenly taken up singing along to whatever's on his headphones. He's still doing the porn thing, but I'm on here, so...

― Kerry, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Come on to him really strong. It seems crazy but it might work. Have snot coming out of your nose and lean in really close saying " I wanna make you my little Ham n Cheese butt bandit!!"

― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ew....

Another thing I did for revenge: I used the "edit page" function on Netscape to make fake books that looked like books sold on Amazon. A lot of librarians select books by browsing Amazon. So I made up all of these fake books with fake customer reviews, printed them off and left them in his inbox. But I chickened out and pulled them after a day. "Edit page" is a blast, BTW.

― Kerry, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

sort of turning this into a question about pornography problems ... it's weird how some guys respond to pornography. I worked as a waitress with a chef who had grotesquely transposed pornography over real life, and would talk about girls in porn language ... and when I bent over to pick things up, he would say ... I won't bother to repeat, cos I don't want to turn this into a titillating porno thread! But the point is, he would use language from porn, not real life, and then he would smile at me, like I don't think he meant to be insulting ... he probably thought we might ... TOTAL SEXUAL HARRASSMENT, but every time this has happened to me on the job, I've always forgotten to think of it that way until I've left the place ... but I just want to talk about this more. I mean, some guys are so blatant about having mixed up porn with real life, it makes me think, are all guys actually like this, but some are clever enough to see that they shouldn't let anyone else realise it? That's 90 percent of the reason I'm uncomfortable with sex. Like you're sleeping with your boyfriend, who you take seriously, and they're like 'lets do this' or that, and you're thinking hey! this is something you've seen somewhere else and TRANSPOSED OVER THE TOP OF ME ... sorry I know this is off the topic, but I would be SO interested to hear what any guy has to say about it

― maryann, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Men tend to get a lot of their ideas of what to do during sex from porn, because a lot of us learned what little we know of the mechanics of sex from porn. There's a lot of things that I hadn't even thought were possible until my thirteen year old self discovered the Interweb. But just because your man learned a sexual position from a video doesn't mean he's having sex with you and thinking of Jenna Jameson, it just means that they don't get their kinky ideas from Cosmo like you and your girlfriends do.

― Dave M., Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Women are sometimes equally bad though, they just use different materials, like wanting to go out to some scenic spot so it'll be just like a scene in some weeper film, etc., or comparing every day- to-day situation with the Ricki Lake show.

Kerry - this individual I speak of makes noise all day as well. Chewing gum, coughing, belching, humming, yawning, you name it. Why do certain people need to fill up every conceivable frequency with sound? I think this is the key to understanding these types.

― dave q, Friday, 24 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am the office psycho. ;-) Alas, I also have a psycho who has been calling me up. He doesn't say a word though. Freaks me out.

― nathalie, Friday, 24 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

six months pass...

My office doesn't have a psycho so much as an alien. She's got this weird-ass mop of hair that she stares through with these bizarre piercing eyes. She has a voice like a Dalek and never actually listens to what you say, rather responds to what she assumes you were going to say. Very difficult to deal with for sure.

― electric sound of jim, Thursday, 28 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

eight months pass...

more office psycho stories

― Josh (Josh), Sunday, 17 November 2002 18:57 (twenty-three years ago)

I like jim's story. I have such a fantastic mental image of her.

― Kim (Kim), Sunday, 17 November 2002 19:13 (twenty-three years ago)

We had someone a little like Jim's. We theorised that he had a random question generator. There were regular questions, like "Are you going to watch any television tonight?", but they were generally rather bewildering. I'd hear him call "Martin" across the office, and I'd look up, and he'd say "Google is very fast, isn't it?" or "What do you think of scorpions?". On a 'good' day, you (i.e. one individual - everyone nearby got some of this) might get ten instances of this in the first hour. People started blatantly lying to avoid conversation - about half of our end of the office was denying owning a TV, or they'd deny having seen any of the shows or knowing what scorpions were. It became very odd indeed, but he has just left, and we are all relieved. (Well, except he had been working on a project full time for over seven months without getting very near the end - I have been handed it, and after agreeing with my boss that we had to throw out all of his work and start again, I have been allotted two weeks to do it. This should be more than I need, if I can avoid wasting too much time discussing scorpions.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 17 November 2002 19:50 (twenty-three years ago)

but martin what DO you think of scorpions?

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 17 November 2002 19:56 (twenty-three years ago)

hey this guy was actually like ilx made flesh-n-bone

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 17 November 2002 19:57 (twenty-three years ago)

i worked with a nutter like the one dave q describes. he was actually quite scarey in the end and was fired, following which he threatened us all and we had to be escorted to our cars in the evenings after work.
he used to carry a briefcase to work, with bits of paper inside that had nothing written on them, that was all that was inside it.

― donna (donna), Sunday, 17 November 2002 20:04 (twenty-three years ago)

donna surely everyone does that? *silence*

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 17 November 2002 20:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Office psychos?

Let's see. My favourite was the woman who insisted that I had stolen here chair every morning. I would point out: No, the chair is in the boardroom where you had left it. She would respond: Oh, well, I called security on you - could you deal with it?

Or she would hear me laughing and have the manager call me into his office to explain, 'No, I was not laughing at her, I was laughing at a joke'.

She also favoured blind carbon copying emails to my manager and team leader.

― k nearly, Sunday, 17 November 2002 21:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Mitch: I am against them on principle. And because of their k-rub records.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 18 November 2002 00:51 (twenty-three years ago)

I worked with a mad mad girl, she had mental frizzy wild hair, she didn't walk she sorta flounced, with her nose in the air, she had a degree in Russian or something and was only temping. If anyone asked her to do anything she considered beneath her (ie - her entire workload) she went nuts and started hurling abuse. It was a wee quiet office and nobody knew how to deal with her, she was beyond confrontational, even the boss was frightened of her. Working with her was like being in a soap opera.

― Plinky (Plinky), Monday, 18 November 2002 14:18 (twenty-three years ago)

When I started work here there was a BELLOWING mentalist Kiwi woman who got fired quite soon after for SHOUTING at poor social workers on the phone. I mean, how hard _is_ it to hold onto a crappy temping job ringing people up to find out if children in care have had their dental checkups? She seemed to have absolutely no volume control and really didn't realise that everyone was sniggering/about to shoot themselves when the morning's 40th instance of "HI! MY NAME IS *** AND I'M RINGING AS PART OF AN AUDIT ON LOOKED-AFTER CHILDREN!" resounded across the open-plan office.

And she smelled really nasty but took vast amounts of exception when her agency (actually mine as well, yikes) had to be used as an intermediary to let her know to use deodorant/not wear sleeveless shirts. Eurgh. Office legend now, though.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Monday, 18 November 2002 14:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Guy the original thread was about is still around! ('Mongoloid #2' on the other fucked-up office thread) Today's update - someone had a box of chocolates, and one guy (not M2) started making a big fuss about wanting to see the diagram so "I won't get one I don't like", which he took 10 minutes over. Then he left the room, and when he came back M2 was laughing hysterically at his own little 'joke' which was "While you were out, we opened up another box of chocolates and ate it all! Ha ha!" Everyone was embarassed that he would make loud stupid 'jokes' about something like that, but he kept at it. "Yep, the whole box! MMMmm (lip-smacking noises!) they were GOOOOD!" BTW this individual is 37 years old.

― dave q, Monday, 18 November 2002 16:16 (twenty-three years ago)

There's a guy in my office who can't seem to keep an assistant. They mysteriously dissappear. This morning I can hear him & his partner doing phone interviews once again. The last one took off on Friday and simply left a message with the receptionist saying, "Tell ... I'm leaving. I'll explain later."

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Monday, 18 November 2002 16:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Is his name Patrick Bateman, Sarah?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 18 November 2002 18:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyhow, all the people in my office are quite nice.

I can't believe I ever said this. Oh the halcyon days.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 18 November 2002 18:55 (twenty-three years ago)

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