I am definitely cranky these days due to various issues, but one of my co-workers is treading close to getting a smackdown along the lines of the one above, when the boys from Office Space pounded the crap out of the company fax machine to the awesome rap song Die Motherfuckers!
Yvonne works with me and about six other people in a fairly open office space. We all have our own little cubicles, but the dividers are only chest-height, so you simply have to stand up if you want to talk to people face to face. This also means everyone hears everything — there is no privacy.
And Yvonne is outrageously nosy. If I am sitting on the phone having a conversation with my banker, for example, she will start quizzing me about it when I hang up the phone. She even asked me how much money I had in my savings account the other day! I responded: “Well, Yvonne, that’s a bit of a personal question” when what I wanted to say is: “Are you fucking kidding me, lady? Mind your own fucking business, will you?” She will also quiz me about what’s going on with my kids if they call to discuss various issues. The worst thing? Yvonne is a duplicitous little gossip, so anything she finds out about you, she spreads around the office on her daily waddle-and-gossip sessions with the other losers working here. Needless to say, I’m a source of much gossip given my second marriage has collapsed and I have been spotted for the past year weeping in back alleys, washrooms, shrieking into my cellphone, etc.
And there are also little, petty things that make Yvonne particularly loathsome. She’s an aggressive Hello-er, for example, with a loud sing-songy voice containing a subtle hint of menace. She starts two hours later than me and when she comes in, she sings “Hello Trixie!” and then proceeds to go down the other five names. Why she just can’t say: “Hi, everyone,” none of us understand. What’s worse, if you don’t say hello back immediately — let’s say you are distracted by something at the time or engrossed in your work — she will sing the “HELLO TRIXIE!!!!” loudly and aggressively until you say hello back. This makes me want to leap over my cubicle wall, put Yvonne in a headlock and smash her head into the nearest filing cabinet until the sing and the song disappear.
And to make matters even worse, even after you have the big morning hello-fest, she will still say hello to you every time you walk past her that day. If I get up to go the bathroom and she catches my eye, she’ll say “Hello!” again! If I walk past her in the hall on the way to another floor, again with another goddamned “Hello!!!”
This has made me want to erupt in a scathing rant that would go along these lines: “Yvonne! We said hello at 11 o’clock this morning. And when I get up to leave at 5 p.m., we will say good-bye. One hello per day, and one good-bye, you got it??!??!?? And if I AM CLEARLY DEALING WITH A WORK MATTER when you come in and say hello every morning and don’t answer you immediately, just live with it, OK, Yvonne?!??!!”
It’s not like I don’t talk to the woman. I include her in some of the chatty small talk that typically goes on in any office setting every day. And I don’t snap at her the way I want to when she imposes herself into one-on-one conversations I might be having with other people within her earshot. Believe it or not, of the six of us in our space, I am actually the most tolerant of her. But one day soon, someone’s really going to blow at Yvonne. And it might be me.
Please, tell us your own annoying co-worker stories. We long to know we are not alone as we sit seething and huddling in our cubicle, stressfully awaiting Yvonne’s arrival.
March 20, 2008 at 11:20 am
It is stories like these that make me get up out of my desk and kiss my office door (and then shut it in the face of my loud coworkers).
I will be aggressively saying ‘hello’ to everyone on the way to the bathroom though, in your honor Trix.
March 20, 2008 at 12:25 pm
There was a woman at my old job who was probably one of the loudest people on the planet. We had cubicles like yours, so you could hear every single word she said on the phone, to other people, and to herself. Yes, that’s right, she had a running conversation with herself all day every day. “I want a snack. No, you don’t need a snack girl! Oh, who cares, I’m gonna get a snack. *snort*” That’s just one of many conversations I heard her having with herself. And everything was followed with a snort, funny or not.
She was also a huge bitch about her space. If anyone moved her chair or sat at her desk while she was out (we had limited desks and she was part-time, so sometimes, people had to use her desk or chair), she’d have an absolute shit fit. She also had this fan on her desk that caused the guy next to her’s computer screen to shake whenever she turned it on. Yet, she refused to give up the fan because she’d get hot. We all wanted to kill her.
At another job, I had one of those annoying greeters. She was younger than me, yet tried to lord over me, which pissed me off. And every single time she passed my desk (which was often since I was the receptionist), she’d ask, “how’s it goin’?” I wanted to be like, “the same as it was the last time you asked me, five fucking minutes ago!” She’d always come and kind of look around at my computer to see what I was doing. I wanted to strangle her.
March 20, 2008 at 12:47 pm
The lady who works right beside me is ALWAYS on a diet. But you’d never know it, seeing as how she raving about some restaurant dish (fried chicken salad with blue cheese crumbles and hot bacon dressing. What, you ask, IS hot bacon dressing? It’s warmed bacon grease with some herbs in it. BLECHH!) or recipe (double-fudge brownies with slice Rolos baked in). The thing that she does that drives me INSANE is, no matter what I’m eating, no matter how mundane, she has to stick her face in my cube ogle my food going, “Thaaaaaaat smells goooooooooood!”
Aaaaaah! Leave my lunch alone, lady!! For real, she’s obsessed with food, but she’s not a gourmand. At all. Maybe trailer park gourmand. Which is why I call her ‘The Food Fetishist’.
March 20, 2008 at 1:33 pm
As some of the Jezzies in NYC saw, my boss has a bit of a problem with limits (he once crashed a Jezzies night, and wouldn’t leave – but hey, who can blame him, really?). However, this means that I can get phone calls at pretty much all hours of the day or night. Last weekend, it was 9am on a Sunday – to basically shoot the shit about the work event we had attended the night before (where, mind you, I was with him past midnight). And of course, as he’s my boss, I can’t not pick up. All 175 times he’s called my cell in the past month…
March 20, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Yeah, LC you need to get that man a girlfriend or something. He is cling-ey! He needs someone else to cling to or you’ll forever be stuck as his not really girlfriend. Wasn’t there some Hugh Grant movie I slept through regarding this very issue?
March 20, 2008 at 2:57 pm
He in fact does have one…she just happens to be engaged to someone else. Which just means he spends work hours getting laid, and off hours working – whereas I prefer the opposite.
He did ask me if I thought he should go back to therapy yesterday. The answer was a rather strong yes on my part.
March 21, 2008 at 12:01 am
The secretary at the law office where I’m currently doing penance for some horrible character flaw I had in a past life – let’s call her “Cuntface Bitch” – is an complete moron about everything, with the exception of how to meet skeezy guys online.
Seriously, Cuntface must never run spell check, because the letters that she sends out are embarrassingly filled with shitty grammar and bad spelling. Despite this, my boss does not review most of the letters she dictates for Cuntface to type. And I don’t bother trying to correct Cuntface anymore, as she’ll only dismiss the most egregious error as being the result of not having enough time to do her work carefully. She will, strangely enough, find plenty of time for multiple personal phone calls from family, at least 5 smoke breaks a day, shopping trips, and god knows how much time surfing the net and forwarding jokes and videos by e-mail.
Now, Cuntface would be tolerable, if only she didn’t purposely undermine other people in the office. When I started working there, literally nothing got organized in the client files. Documents got filed just by sticking them into the front of the case file. So each file was a jumble of letters, financial records, discovery documents, court orders and pleadings. It was impossible to find anything quickly. When I started organizing the files I was working on, Cuntface had a hissy fit. She argued with me that that’s not how it’s done in this office, that it will never work, that it makes it impossible to find anything (no, really) and that the files will never stay organized. In her mind, having massive accordian-style folders stuffed with paper without any discernible organization was preferable to having everything in specific sub-files. After a year or so, I finally got my boss to realize that we needed someone in the office specifically to do the filing and keep the files organized, and she recently hired someone who seems to be on the ball. So how did Cuntface tell the newbie to file documents? “Just put them into the front of the file.”
I’m about to put my fist into the front of her face.
March 21, 2008 at 12:12 am
holy shit, amazonred – i think i would have done something painful to cuntface by now. is this the same one who loudly chews all her food with her mouth open, too?
March 21, 2008 at 12:21 am
speaking of shitty co-workers, i am just back from a day long product demo where this bitchface midget of a woman gave me the stinkeye all day because we were once (sortof) competitors. i won’t even get into the bullshit of delta switching aircraft from a turbo jet to a fucking prop plane that somehow managed to piss off all our gravity.
**whoo-saaahh**
ahhh, there’s my joint…
March 21, 2008 at 8:04 am
Argh, my agency just moved into an open plan office and now everyone reads my browser on the way to the printer or shitter. So now I have my headphones in all day and read a lot about serial killers and making meth labs. If they wanna be nosy, go ahead I say!
By the way, did you know Ted Bundy got married during his trial and conceived a daughter during conjugal visits? Creepy, much?
November 22, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Haha! My computer is also facing everyone that walks by! I must try that! BRILLIANT!
March 21, 2008 at 8:52 am
Ewwww …. I did not know that!
Jesus!
March 21, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I once was an operating room supervisor, and I had some of the worst people working for me and around me that you can imagine. Nosy, tattletale, bratty bitches and passive-aggressive jerks. I actually worked out on the floor with the people that worked for me, so I knew exactly what their job entailed and they still bitched about how I didn’t understand their problems. I ended up doing my job and about half of everyone else’s just so they could go take breaks and watch TV. I had one dude who would actually leave the hospital and go take naps for HOURS.
Okay, I may have told this story before to some of you, but it’s too ridiculous not to repeat. The nap guy I mentioned above was a lazy jerkwad. One time we had finished amputating a leg in one of the operating rooms. Anything that comes out of or off a human body has to go to pathology to be examined. So I bagged the leg, filled out the paperwork, and time-stamped everything. I brought the leg out and gave it to Douchetard and asked him to take it downstairs to Pathology. He whined that he didn’t know how to get there. I explained the (simple) directions to him and listened to him whine about how he didn’t feel like doing it. Finally he turns around and starts walking off with the leg, but he takes two steps, turns around and says “This isn’t my job, so fuck this” and THROWS THE AMPUTATED LEG AT ME.
I wrote him up, but it was so hard to find help at the time that he didn’t get fired.
March 21, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Alas, Kandinsky, it would have been so much easier if it were the same person, but the cud chewer is actually my boss. And I have let her know, if somewhat indirectly, that she grosses me the fuck out with the chewing, which drives me crazy, but to no avail.
Scoregasm, so do you weep as I do for the state of this nation when throwing amputated human legs at your supervisor doesn’t get you fired? The mind . . . it boggles.
Too bad you don’t still have that leg, because I know someone I’d like to throw it at.
March 22, 2008 at 7:35 pm
HA! I found you girls! I may be slow, but I eventually catch the eff on!
March 24, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Holy shit Scoregasm. I would have whacked him on the top of his head with that amputated leg.
You’re a better woman than me girl.
March 25, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Cubicles are one of the most heinously dehumanizing inventions ever. They empower and enable these morons to ply their annoying tendencies to a wide office audience.
Uhh, Trixie? Yeah…. we’re gonna have to go ahead and have you come in on Saturday…. yeahhhh…. and Sunday too. OK, yeahh. Great. Thanks a lot.
September 8, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I work in a hospital..I am fairly new to the “Cubicle World”, I was recently kicked out of my office, because a doctor came and needed space, hence my move to the “Cubicles”. My co-worker (WHO IS SEATED BEHIND ME)talks to herself ALL DAY LONG, she passes gas, burps, sings, and walks back and forth pass my cubicle all day, trying to engage me in the office madness! Talks loud on each and every call, and walks by me at least 25 times with something mundane to say..I am losing it..help me
May 7, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Dude I am so utterly annoyed that I felt I had to vent. Why is it that people feel the need to bully others at work? Is it perhaps, that they lead incredibly pathetic lives and need to feel powerful by making others feel worse. Must be in this case. I have this coworker that is just a constant bully. Today she makes this snide ass comment that I am just no fun and act like an old lady just cause I don’t want to go to some stupid ass concert for $200 bucks. So apparantely the fact that I know the value of a buck and don’t care for pop artists makes me dull. In my eyes, just smart and with good taste. So I go about my business and at the end of the day am ready to leave and overhear her talking about me to another coworker in the kitchen. The nerve! She is right in the middle of saying that I act like an old lady but have a youthful face. This woman has no manners! Luckily I was taught that if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all, let alone talk shit behind other peoples backs otherwise I would’ve said that she acts like an old lady and has an old face, wrinkles and all! Haha! I just held my head high the way I always do and let out a bye guys! Any thoughts on how to deal with this bitter 55 year old woman? I am getting rather tired of this constant bickering. If this behavior continues, I will definitely be bringing this and other instances up to HR. Employees or bullys like this make the working environment difficult and create unneeded drama and a hostile environment for those that actually work.
May 8, 2009 at 8:54 am
@Annoyed: play pranks on her (taking great care to conceal that you are the culprit, natch) that result in her being humiliated or embarrassed in some way. bullies hate getting caught with their pants down.
November 22, 2011 at 3:51 pm
@Annoyed: My Co-worker has said “Good-Bye” to my face and didn’t realize that I hadn’t left yet and made an ugly comment to a Supervisor and said “Good-Ridance”… I just walked away, even though I heard them both laughing at me. They are both over 55 and I’m under 30. I’ve been with the company for almost 5 years now, and I am also so tired of the comments. Good Luck!
May 8, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Hang in there. Office bullys feed on the hopes that an unsuspecting person will lose their cool. Rise above it and don’t let her think that she’s gotten under your skin. This will get her to stop when she cannot evoke the desired reaction of anger from you.
October 9, 2009 at 3:43 am
I have recently started a new job, and happen to be the youngest in the office. I am 28, so not a spring chicken, but still the newbie!
There is a woman where I work that sits right next to me, in fact that is where she is now…
I have never met a person like her in my life. Everything with her is a competition! I had macaroni and cheese for dinner… She had macaroni, cheese and BACON for dinner. Something I say, somehow relates to something about her and her life, and I get to hear the whole long winded story that goes behind it.
She is always mumbling and grumbling about something, whether it be her “lack of intellegence, old age is making he lose her marbles” (she said it not me) or her hunger pangs or fad diet, her useless bosses or her two cents she likes to add when she hears something over a partition whether she overheard a conversation or a telephone call (not even a cubicle)!
She is always putting herself down and is fishing for compliments (no – you are still good at your job, promise).
I also find that she is waiting for me to fall on my face in this job, like she wants to prove to herself that older is somehow better and I will not give her that satisfaction. She is always critising what I wear, how I act, and what I say.
She sometimes says things, meant as a dig… You know the kind… Only you will pick up on the subtle message (usually malicious) lying beneath the comment passed. I’ve started to question my sanity, or is this woman really out to get me?! Maybe she thinks I’m after her job! I’m not…
I have been through many things in my “short life” – nothing compared to the many things she has been through of course – but enough to know that you should respect people and their ideas, not always put a person down.
October 9, 2009 at 9:03 am
Nightmare how one person can infect everyone with their unpleasantness, isn’t it? The few personality clashes I’ve had with people at work, I’ve gritted my teeth and kept at my job (although I considered quitting any number of times). The good news is that I’ve outlasted every one of them and now like most of the people I work with!
October 9, 2009 at 4:04 am
I also forgot to mention the menopause. She is going through it, and while the rest of us freeze in the office, she ensures that the window behind my desk is always open “for air”. I’m sure my toes are about to drop off from hypothermia!
Also asking other people to do her work, and then taking the credit for it! Grr! That TRUELY grates my carrot!
Ok I am finished venting now! Thanks for the oppertunity to do so!
February 19, 2010 at 2:42 pm
OMG!! I am so glad I fouund this I site! OMG where do these people come from??
January 21, 2011 at 12:44 am
Ha-Yvonne reminds me of someone I worked with at a restaurant not too long ago. It came out that I worked two jobs additionally (both of which required my college degrees), and she asked me, point-blank how much money I made. I tried to fob it off (‘enough to pay rent & loans…’), but she would have none of it. The girl seriously thought she could badger me into telling her my income!
September 5, 2011 at 7:31 am
I can totally relate to these stories. Its sad that some people never grow up. There is this one guy at work who has a crush and me and seriously will not leave me alone. He has asked me out several times and I have turned him down many times. It has gotten so bad that he would make comments publicly with other co workers present such as do you want to go on a date. When I really want to stay to him god your such a loser and what is wrong with you. Don’t you realize this is a workplace and by the way I’M NOT INTERESTED IN YOU. It has gotten so bad that I have to ignore him and that hasn’t even worked he continues to try to talk to me and sends me emails with messages such as where is my hi and when are we going out. Seriously, this guy is creepying me out and a little obsessed. Why does this happen to me…
November 22, 2011 at 4:02 pm
I have a co worker who is in the office next to me and like a few stories I’ve read, talks to herself ALL DAY! Really?! Do you really think you are that interesting that people want to hear what you are saying to yourself? I know I don’t. She comes up to my desk, uninvited, and just starts talking about EVERY freakin’ little detail about her day and I could really care less! I find myself rolling my eyes with comments that she makes and she still doesn’t get the picture! I don’t want to talk to you! DUH! And she woners why I don’t talk back. Half the time I am typing on the computer and not even looking at her hoping she will walk away. As a matter of fact, she is talking to me right now as I am typing this and she is saying something like blah blah blah…..who knows and who cares???
June 26, 2012 at 8:57 am
First off the Y’vonne story cracked me up! I work with a woman with similar annoying attributes. I work in a very small office there are only 3 people in our one office and the owner of the company and the controller in the other office. The 3 of us all share an office together. Not only do I despise her so does the other woman I work with. She started working here about a year and a half ago yet she still doesn’t know how to do one thing correctly. She is constantly asking me questions about every little thing she has to do so in effect I wind up pretty much doing her job for her because I cant possibly explain it to her one more time. She also thinks she’s a major hottie well believe me she is actually disgusting not the least bit attractive. She thinks because she drives a red Cadillac that makes her Gods gift to this earth mind you everyone else in the office has a nice car too. She goes on and on about how ‘hot and sexy’ she looks in her ‘caddy’. She eats like its going out of style and I’m not talking a regular meal she eats the most disgusting things yet she always is commenting as to why she is “gaining weight”. I dunno asshole maybe because you actually ordered a BUTTERED roll with bacon , egg and cheese on it the bacon egg and cheese wasn’t good enough you needed the extra butter or maybe when you bring in TWO hungry man hero’s for breakfast which include ham, sausage ,bacon ,cheese, eggs, and home fries on a HERO roll. Sometimes for lunch she gets linguini with baby shrimp it is noon you sick freak eat a sandwhich like a normal person. She also makes constant comments about how her pants are getting loose and its probably because she never drinks soda meanwhile she drinks about 5 cans a day. Honestly I’m not sure if she is delusional or just crazy. She wears hooker heels into work everyday I mean the kind of boots that come up to your mid thigh. She is in her late 40’s in fact I think she just turned 47 because she yelled it around the office like it was a major holiday and me saying happy birthday in the morning and once again in the afternoon was not good enough because I didn’t text her over the weekend which caused her to feel ‘disappointed’. My other co-worker val and I are both in our 20’s and she makes constant comments about how we are making her feel so old we have to stop making comments that make her feel so old. Ive never made one comment about her age again back to delusional. Now here are the real kickers if that wasn’t bad enough she once told my co-worker that she ‘looked so bad today that she actually felt bad for her’ like what the fuck is wrong with you? Where are your social skills? Mind you she is a very attractive girl and she didn’t even look bad that day. She also makes comments about how Val and I are such better friends then we are with her. Now remember Val and I have worked by ourselves in one office for 4 years. Clearly were gonna be friendly with one another fool.
Now to get to the most disgusting and unbearable part of working with this woman..she sleep with MARRIED men and is very proud of it..she makes comments about how there wife’s are just so annoying and there wife’s make them miserable..and there wife’s are mean to them..yea no shit dumbass im sure there wife’s are mean to them being that there cheating on them..she has no shame about it..its ridiculous..one Monday she came into work and actually told me..that she slept with one of this married men (all hideous low life loser by the way) and that he called her his “dirty lil slut” the whole time…TMI..i don’t need to know that..she’s like my moms age..is isn’t appropriate..
I also have tried very hard to like her..and never in my whole life have I really not liked someone..everyday I try to say come on just give her a chance..but no everyday she finds a new way to be the MOST ANNOYING CO-WORKER OF ALL TIME!
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