most surprising thing you've learned about somebody you work with

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Not in a general way but specific to them: for instance, my go-getting, cheerful, yet slightly dim boss used to be a graffitti writer in Brooklyn and was called "king of the B train" by the Zulu Nation!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Not coworkers, but three people in my 11-person English class have killed someone.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Where is this English class held? Riker's Island?

― kate, Monday, 28 April 2003 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

The owner of the company I work for has owned several different types of companies, including a rather seedy (I'm guessing) strip club downtown. He sold the property to a local college, which is now using it for offices.
A woman I work with married a male stripper she met at a bachelorette party. I've met him and he doesn't seem like the type. Very nice but dopey.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

It really makes you wonder who is the murderer you know, doesn't it, Kate?

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Ally: !!!!

The sweet, giggly, VERY minnewegian blonde girl in my office has dropped acid.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

there is nothing interesting about any of my co-workers.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Was it part of their homework?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Whoa fast typers!

hstencil: that's what you think.

Actually my boss's qualities sound like a perfect recipe for a graf artist. Maybe it's the daily suit and tie and two kids that makes it surprising? I asked him if he has anything left from those days and he feigns this whole don't-care thing but you're damn skippy he's still got one of his piece books.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

has anyone's co-workers dropped acid AND killed someone while on it.

that person would rool this thread obv.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

i work with the most boring bunch of turds, there is nothing interesting about any of them.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

That someone upstairs has a rather lengthy laundry list of b-list rock stars what she's bagged.

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

well no, but my colleague played a policeman in Brookside during the Sheila Grant rape trial

― j0e (j0e), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

but have you go to know them chris?!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

This is not the thread for those of you whose co-workers have yielded no surprises. Though I thank you for your forthrightness.

g--ff: "minnewegian" ?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

My boss is, according to him, "one of the world's top experts on the social significance of meat". He's written a book on it, in fact.

― caitlin (caitlin), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Minnewegian = super cute and pocket-sized.

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:51 (twenty-two years ago)

nothing surprises me because they're all a bunch of blabbermouths. and they suck.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

One of my bosses had sex with my best friend 10 years ago, apparently.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't you people get it I want SURPRISING THINGS HERE.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:54 (twenty-two years ago)

yes, Julio I have. The interesting ones left the department. One guy was into leather bars.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:55 (twenty-two years ago)

That IS surprising! I didn't even know they knew each other 10 years ago! Jesus, ok, fine, let me think of something surprising.

One of the bookkeepers here used to be a male underwear model.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:55 (twenty-two years ago)

My new boss was the last typewriter salesman at Macy's.

That's all I got.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

one of my bosses once announced that he had been a maoist and a junkie during the 70s (when he wz also an english lecturer)

to be honest i think the junkie bit wz a lie, though

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Another one of my bosses used to be in theatre.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

This may only chime with Brits, but almost the first person my boss met when she arrived in England from Germany was Chris Eubank, on a train. He didn't believe that she had never heard of him, then tried to chat her up.

And our French tutor is also an expert gilder and long-distance swimmer.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I try to learn as little as possible about my colleagues, and let them know as little as possible about me!

― kate, Monday, 28 April 2003 14:03 (twenty-two years ago)

nothing. this is place is the planet dull.

― kephm, Monday, 28 April 2003 14:07 (twenty-two years ago)

mark how did he announce it, over the intercom? "attention all personnel: i wuz a tweeky freek" - methinks not! this is exactly the other thing i want to get at though, so thank you sir, how this information comes out, how these confidences finally find a way to get exchanged. I learned about this guy's Italiano Bensonhurst upbringing and boyhood shenanigans because we stayed until 1am Friday night bringing a new project "online", giddy with scotch and lack of outside air, we busted thru our ritualized bonhomie and now this morning when i see him I have to be kind of real. But I doubt I would have found out otherwise.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:10 (twenty-two years ago)

no, he did announce it in the office, to one and all: however this wz very typical of him, very manipulative and "performative" (ie he said it to produce a particular effect at a particular time, in re winning an argt or some such)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:23 (twenty-two years ago)

My boss who I just assumed was gay (actually, he's even mentioned having a boyfriend) just got engaged...to a woman!! I think it may be just for show. Whatever, I don't care either way.
This guy that I used to work with spent 20 yrs in prison for murder, 6 of those in solitary. He claimed to have been framed and I believe him. Amazingly, he was very friendly and very sane and not at all bitter. He rationalized it by saying that his karma caught up to him--he did a lot of bad things previously that he wasn't punished for. (He used to be a pimp! A mothafuckin' fur coat wearing, jive-talking pimp)

― buttch (Oops), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I got nothing. Our president used to have a mustache; he doesn't now.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I wouldn't say my coworker Tom and my boss Bruce contain any surprises, I just like their personalities and all our quirks make sense (also helps we're all music freaks and cynical, this is a good thing). Um, yay?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Not a whole lot here. I once shared an office with a foot fetishist, though. I found out about it because he was profiled in the Village Voice.

― mike a (mike a), Monday, 28 April 2003 14:57 (twenty-two years ago)

The woman I shared an office with used to tell me all about her herpes, but I'm not sure it was much of a surprise. Just something I reeeeally didn't want to hear about.

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Sometimes I wonder if one of my bosses wasn't a pimp... if he wasn't, I bet it's his life-long dream.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Most of the people I work with are rather anti-social for fear of our boss. He's such a hardass so we rarely talk to one another. I've been here 5 years and not once have any of us been out for drinks after work together. Its never even come up. Oh well.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I was rather surprised after the '94 earthquake to find out that the afore-mentioned boss has a cupboard full of hardcore porn in his office. It fell over during the earthquake and I was given the job (while he was out of town) of cleaning up his office. I don't know if anyone mentioned it to him, but thankfully he keeps that cupboard locked now.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:10 (twenty-two years ago)

luna, do you work in the west coast office of Ally's company?

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

One of my guys hung with Sinclair in Detroit back in the day--I think he was a White Panther. Radio is full of people with interesting stories...lotsa folks who are great all-american parents/members of the community but will bust out with a crazy story and totally surprise your ass...recently a sweet mother of two got me with, "oh I did special K once after doing a lot of coke; I didn't even know it wasn't coke before I did it but afterward, my goodness, I thought I was gonna die!"

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, I've been on the opposite side of this. I was DJing at a show last month and ran into one of my ex-coworkers from my dot-com job. He had no idea about this side of my life.

― mike a (mike a), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

We do have a west coast office, actually. In San Francisco. They don't know how to dial phones there, it's actually tres shocking. We are always getting complaints from one of the higher ups that the phones "don't work", but all testing has proven is that they don't know how to transfer calls, and keep hanging up on people.

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

No, but maybe I should...

Someone here did tell me when we all went for drinks on Friday that we're going to fuck. Well color me suprised.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Though myabe I'm over-qualified - I'm quite adept at using the phone...

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah but what about using the phone while fucking?

(sorry)

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Clinton to thread!

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I blame hstencil.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Didn't Motley Crue claim to do this in their autobio?

― mike a (mike a), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, look over there! *runs away*

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet people I work with would be surprised to find out that I usually go to my car and take a nap at least a few times a week for 2 hours sometimes. "Oh I had a meeting".

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Or, you'd be surprised they do the same thing

― buttch (Oops), Monday, 28 April 2003 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

true.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 16:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I wish I could.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 28 April 2003 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

that just reminded me of a line from "If It Ain't Ruff." I just snatch your girl to take a nap with me

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

At the last restaurant I worked at, I caught the manager doing lines of coke in the office once. Walked in on him all like "I need the key to the beer cooler cuz the Budweiser guy is here...oh." His response was something like "huh huh...um...ssssssh".

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 28 April 2003 16:04 (twenty-two years ago)

off a chicks ass?

― Chris V. (Chris V), Monday, 28 April 2003 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

one can only hope.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

My next-to-last boss spent six months in a Louisiana prison after he beat some guy to a bloody pulp while managing a strip club. I was pretty shocked to find that out.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 28 April 2003 18:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I wonder how many of these stories come up in the circumstances mark s describes. "ON my desk at FIVE PM!! I used to be a violent pimp you know!!"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

A girl I used to work with posed nude in a porn magazine. My friend and I hunted down the issue of "Leggs" that she was in. Not the world's greatest porn, but it did mark the first time I'd seen a co-worker's hoo-hoo without being intimate with her.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

One of my bosses used to live off the grid on a small (less than 100 people lived there)island in the south Pacific. She got divorced and now lives with her girlfriend.

― brg30 (brg30), Monday, 28 April 2003 19:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Tracer: minnewegian = Scadinavian Minnesotan, poss. very country, poss from outstate or oot nort (relative to the Twin Cities)

(she's not that country, but she's not that I've-done-acid a person, either.)

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 28 April 2003 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

ha, that's two sexual things people have joked about that I've done, on successive days: having sex while on the phone to someone else (having phone sex with them, but they didn't know I was having real sex with someone else). Yesterday's was (I swear) asking if someone actually liked me after getting a blowjob from them. My girlfriend treated me like an idiot, but the circumstances! Might she not have just been being polite? I'm still not entirely sure.

Getting back to the thread, I once worked with someone who claimed to have been in Johnny Kidd And The Pirates, back in the '60s. I didn't know how to verify this, so it may have been a fiction.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 28 April 2003 20:13 (twenty-two years ago)

One guy was a Mentos boy (the one who sat on the painted bench I believe) and one was a playgirl model but not a centerfold. Lots of ex gang members in the menial postions

― SplendidMullet (iamamonkey), Monday, 28 April 2003 20:38 (twenty-two years ago)

menial positions are the hottesttt

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 28 April 2003 20:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't answer this thread. Dammit. I could totally win, too. But then again you people don't really want to know, I don't think.

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 28 April 2003 20:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Does it have to do w/Vietnamese peasants?

― buttch (Oops), Monday, 28 April 2003 20:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I've got nothing here. The best I can do are the woman who was briefly a foot model and the surprise of discovering one never-expected-it girl listened to nothing but Mego records, Kool Keith, and Morton Feldman.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 28 April 2003 21:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I once worked with someone who was married to a famous rock critic.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 28 April 2003 21:36 (twenty-two years ago)

(Oh wait though, I was surprised in a general way, not in a specific way. Reject, reject.)

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 28 April 2003 21:42 (twenty-two years ago)

as i've mentioned on other threads, i found out (after i left the job) that one of my coworkers claims to have been abducted by aliens, tested on, etc.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 28 April 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

i once asked how a semi-colleague (i worked on a cpl of projects with this guy) made a living as I could not remember when he had last worked. I found out that he apparently made videos of himself performing auto-fellatio (what would the right verb form be here?) and was able to survive on the sales. I was a little taken aback as that was def. not an answer I was expecting.

― H (Heruy), Monday, 28 April 2003 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

i met a girl at dartmouth who spent seven years sailing around the world with her family...that was cool. not really shocking, but cool.

― Maria (Maria), Monday, 28 April 2003 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I worked with a woman who had a third nipple. I declined a viewing as proof though, as I had no desire to see a tough old middle age woman's boosies. So theres an outside chance she lied (but fark, who would about something like that!?)

My ex-supervisor at current job used to be in a dodgy 70s hair rock aussie band. He's been on Countdown (Aust 70s equivalent of TOTP I guess) and he'e met Molly Meldrum. This amuses everyone who finds out about it to no end.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 06:45 (twenty-two years ago)

this real dimbulb i used to work with laid claim to the title of "3rd best break-dancer in canada back in the '80s".

he still had the moves, man.

― brian badword (badwords), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 07:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I once worked for a guy who had a PhD in Accordion Performance.

― Dave M. (rotten03), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 07:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I work with a guy who was a Christian for 9 years.

― toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 07:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Toraneko OWNZZZ this thread!

ha ha

― Sarah McLUsky (coco), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I find everyone I work with vaguely surprising, but I guess they are quite normal. Many of the field staff used to be farmers, or hunters, or have spent time in jail. Or the army. The office people are mostly boring.

Obv I don't know how one finds out exciting things about co-workers. Though I do seem to have a knack for finding out embarassing things (husband with vasectomy, surrogate mother for infertile sibling, herpes, having an affair, ex commited suicide etc)

― isadora (isadora), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 00:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I was surprised to learn that the person in the office I'd assumed was retarded (long story) wasn't.. and that they had terrible hearing (which accounted for many of the reasons leading to the assumption)..

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 00:52 (twenty-two years ago)

My boss spent his teenage years following New Model Army around the country. This isn't surprising, just a bit depressing.

― Matt (Matt), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 00:55 (twenty-two years ago)

seventeen years pass...

New answers!

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 29 July 2020 20:30 (five years ago)

that one of my co-workers that I thought was mega-cool is a big-ole Xtian Trumper who believes in deep state-ish stuff.

very surprising considering her best friend (also a former co-worker) is gay and fucking hates him.

― XVI Pedicabo eam (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 29 July 2020 20:32 (five years ago)

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