It's Driving Me Up the Wall

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What are your work colleagues' or friends' most irritating habits. The bloke who sits opposite me is, as I write, cracking the knuckle joints of of each of his fingers in turn. He does this every 20 minutes. He also continually mumbles to himself and picks his nose with enthusiasm. If I ever did any work it would definately distract me from it. Do any of you have worse things to put up with.

― scott, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

An loud, clumsy fat oaf who listens to a Walkman playing self-help counselling tapes all day, so whenever someone speaks to him he shouts "WHAAAAAATTTTT!?", removes the headphones and makes people repeat the question. Also eats messy sandwiches while standing over the photocopier. Surfs the net for online dating services as well, unsurprisingly.

― tarden, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I can get no work done because my co"workers" spend their entire time sending so-called comical messages to stupid bulletin boards.

― mark s, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Joe asks me on a near daily basis why I'm not smiling. Hello, am I supposed to grin like an idiot all day? What is that about? Then he'll repeatedly say to me over the day, "Hey, smiley!" STOP IT, THERE IS NO REASON TO GRIN ALL THE TIME.

And when I AM smiling, he asks why the hell I'm in such a good mood. Argh.

I guess it's better than his bizarre sexual comments. Best recent one: picked up a piece of a drain pipe that was inexplicably put on my desk, and asked if we thought it was kinky. I mean, it's a piece of a drain pipe. Still, the time he watched Real Sex and said some woman with 40 dildos who washed them in a dishwasher reminded him of Nes was way better.

― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Blokes in the office who every 10 seconds or so announce the cricket score. Thankfully rain has stopped play at the moment. Good.

Mind you when they are not talking cricket they are constantly discussing their next meal - what, where, when etc. etc.

― Emma, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Even though I no longer work there any more, the ENTIRE creative department's habit of making fake golf swings ALL DAY LONG. For fucks sake! That's the sort of thing people take the piss out of accountants for doing! You're the fecking CREATIVE department- shouldn't you be playing air guitar or measuring things with your paintbrushes or something?!?!?

That said, the only one who *did* bring his guitar in used to sit all day playing the most objectionable blues licks imaginable. I mean, Dire Straits. For fucks sake...

― masonic boom, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

the other day i was walking down the hall, when i stopped short a bit as i encountered two fellows practicing golf swings or, rather, one practicing his swing as the other looked on. they saw that i had stopped briefly and looked up at me and that was my cue to keep on going. it was just way too strange.

― fred solinger, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

That's not even remotely strange, Fred. What, you've never worked in a corporate office for the past year and a half???

― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

it was STRANGE. it was SURREAL. this guy, standing outside his office, doing a slow-mo golf stroke, while this other guy watched on with glee. when i was looking at them, i felt like *I* was the odd one. it totally freaked me out, more than anything i've seen here.

people actually do this sort of thing? it's weird and it's lame and it's, like, WHY?

― fred solinger, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Fred you WERE the odd man out. In many offices there are two accepted forms of male-male bonding behavior: talking rudely about women in the office, and checking out each others' golf swings. Get with the program!

A place I worked at recently featured a guy who listened to Classic Rock Internet Radio or something ALL DAY EVERY DAY on his goddamn SPEAKERS. Luckily I freelance so I would just grit my teeth, inhale, exhale, and continue when "Hollywood Nights" came on for like the 4th time that day. My favorite moment: after a day or two, guy leans over conspiratorially and says "do you like... Pink Floyd?"

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Fred, that is 100% normal behavior in any corporate environment. They talk about golf. They show off their swings. They talk about how bad they are at golf. They talk about good golfing ranges. When they have nothing to talk about and don't feel like talking business, they talk about Tiger Woods. This is how it works. This is normal. You are the odd man out, even in terms of finding is surreal and bizarre, because it's not. It happens every single day, everywhere. It's what is done.

I have a coworker who just randomly shouts out stock market info and then shouts for people in the office who AREN'T AT THEIR DESKS, and won't quit. "Ally? Ally? ALLY? Where are you?" WELL OBVIOUSLY NOT HERE YOU TWIT.

― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You can form a business with me, Fred, because people who talk about golf in the office farm cock. In my last office we talked about Pokemon. In my current one I don't talk.

― Tom, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

tracer, i understand the former. when i was at wenner, we had a boys club where we spoke rudely of women, told crude jokes, and devised elaborate ways to get fired (re-enacting the crucifixion was a favorite). the joke was on us, and then was on them when we got new jobs, as they systematically eradicated us.

here, women and men work together, unlike at wenner where there were three guys in the department. there, we struck at from a position of weakness; to do the same here would be akin to fascism.

that golfing haunts me, i've had dreams about it. the guy's swing was SUPER SLOW, the other guy looked on as if it were sexual, and the original guy was a CLOWN. though maybe this is how it really happened.

― fred solinger, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

How is the joke on Wenner, Fred? As far as I can tell, they got rid of crap employees who sat around discussing arses and writing blogs all day. Ahem.

Our workplace talks about just about everything in the known universe, I honestly can't think of a subject that hasn't come up. Even the fucking Manics have come up (NOT BECAUSE OF ME, strangely). Most of the conversations here are about sex, golf or whatever sport is currently doing playoffs, though. And whatever tin of mints Joe has, like the Dilbert mints he gave me today - they have cat shaped mints! It's the best thing ever!

― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think that this is the most disturbing thing I've read today (including the worm-egg thing). A clown????

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My desk at work used to be near this woman with this simultaneously piercing and booming (and above all, impossible to ignore) loud voice that makes it impossible to get work done when she's on the phone, and who likes to brag about bullying her kids, demolish the english language ("may I can help you ?", "it's not me your aaaah-gent"), advertise everything she's about to do ("I'm going to wash my hands now"), submit clients' 8 year-old kids to interrogations without introducing herself first, laugh out loud when she announces to a client that she's about to close their welfare file, boast that she would suck up to management big-time if she were to become a supervisor, say one day that she's too old for sex and another day that it ain't none of her husband's business if she sleeps around... she's fucking unbearable... thank god I don't have to hear her anymore...

― Patrick, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Patrick: I would have had to do something very subtly evil to her, she sounds awful.

I work completely alone for most of my day, aside from people coming in with research requests. Suits me fine for the most part, as I have a ton of stories a couple of awful former coworkers.

But it may just be why I babble on ILE&ILM so much, sinceI don't really get to talk much to actual people during the day.

― Nicole, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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