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Wacky Co-Worker Habits?
weekendWarrior asks: "Every office has 'that guy.' The one that performs some bizarre or nonsensical action almost daily. The guy with an almost love-affair for the company's standard issue red stapler. The guy who prints out every email he receives (even the spam - thank god he's not on some pr0nographic spammer list). What strange, bizarre, and wacky habits do your co-workers have?"
You mean besides showing up for work?
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
I used to work with a guy who would submit the weirdest questions to slashdot.org and then spend the afternoon obsessively refreshing his browser window, waiting to see what sort of flames resulted.
some of mine dont generally arrive 15 minutes late every morning. whats that all about?
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
"What strange, bizarre, and wacky habits do your co-workers have?"
Working?
How on earth does he avoid getting pr0n spam? I call foul, because no one can avoid getting that.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
Go figure.
I once shared a cube with a guy who farted constantly. I got used to it, but it caught most folks off-guard. He would even do it in mid-conversation. The look on peoples' faces when he would rip one during a meeting was priceless.
..."
A typical scenario went something like this:
You: "Hey, man. You have a minute?"
Guy: "What's up?"
You: "I'm curious about this section of code in
Guy's Anus:
You: "Uh, um... main.cpp"
My coworkers post big print outs of geek/tech-Haiku.
:P
And post them all over the walls.
I want to work from home
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Sales team was given Treos for "increased effectiveness"
The team is technically inept and couldn't figure out the optical mice installed on their new workstations.
They leave the ringers on high and on their desks when in meetings. So the IT department started changing the ringers to different tones, just to watch them tilt their heads when the phones ring. Like when you talk to a dog...
Then we changed them to other sounds - like farts, people talking, or other wacky things.
It's fun... so I guess we have the wacky habits of messing with the sales team. Fun!
Once worked with a sales representative who was rather exuberant in her use of punctuation.
Every email she would send would have a subject line like, "VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" or "READ THIS IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!"
Her letters were similar. Her grammar and spelling were fairly decent. However, do interrogatives seem more pressing when they end like this?!?!?!? She was prolific in the amount of email she generated, and making every subject sound like an emergency along with the abuse of the punctuation made for rather brutal stuff to read.
One day, I told her that our license for Office required micropayments for usage of punctuation and that accounting was concerned about the ridiculously large overusage fees we were paying Microsoft for exclamation points.
She went pale. I wish I could have kept up the ruse, but another sales person fell out of her chair when she saw her reaction.
I am 'that guy', you insensitive clod!
I'm the office weirdguy. I have toys all over my desk ("Why do you have teenage mutant ninja turtles at your desk?" "because, they make my code better by defeating evil bugs for me"), postit notes with odd sayings stuck everywhere, the outside wall to my cube is the 'wall of dissent' with politcal comics all over it, and my while board has been turned into a piece of art when I decided to connect all the vowels in my todo list with a line then colour in the resulting shapes.
... and I've got the only seamonkey farm in the building.
.. it's some surplus that us techs use and it jams all the time and beeps constantly, all day.
.. people come visit me when they're having a bad day cuz they know I can cheer them up. My toys are all over the floor in other peoples desk now .. I have a lending library really (just sign out a toy on the white board).
... we have an important role to play in office dynamics.
I bring a beer pitcher full of ice water to meetings, and drink out of a scooby doo cup. When I'm stuck on a problem, I'll unplug my headphones and play bagpipe music until someone tells me to shut it off (bagpipe music is very inspirational!). I have a Jesus action figure (now, with real blessing action!) which sits on top of my monitor, despite the fact I'm a staunch athiest.
Oh
I frequently yell at the printer behind me
it's fun being the office weirdo
don't knock the office weirdo
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
A friend worked for Harlequin Romances.
One editor (male) at the company would stop at least once each day, stomp around his desk, and mutter "KILL! KILL! KILL!"
Another woman, even more scary, was heard to say at lunch one day "If I ever had boy children I would have to malnourish them so that they would be smaller and weaker than my girl children".
Think for a moment how many millions of women are reading three, four, or five of these books every week...
Three Squirrels
So I'm working at a small company over the summer. One of my friends was the sys admin/lead programmer there, that's how I got the job. This new guy comes in a few weeks before I go back to school. So my friend goes on newegg and buys him the usual 400 dollar computer. He also always gets a standard logitech optical USB mouse and the cheapest keyboard which has the correct button layout.
He presents the computer to the new guy. The new guy says he doesn't want the mouse and keyboard "I'll bring my own ergonomic keyboard and trackball in from home." he says. So he comes back with a big old dirty microsoft ergonomic keyboard, the kind that has the keyboard split in half with a hump in the middle. And he also bring a fancy logitech trackball.
We think nothing of it really. He's just an anal guy. But then I look over into his cube one day to see the most hilarious thing ever.
The dude types via hunt and peck. I don't think that ergonomic keyboard makes a difference when you only use two fingers bub!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
This is /.
Everyone reading your post is that guy.
We've got this 30something year old virgin who storms around the store floor angirly day in and day out. He gets pissed at everything... from having to do work, to eating lunch. One day, he is actually in a good mood, and we're arguing with a customer in the back. The customer is old, cane and all, and proceeds to walk up front. Angry Bald Virgin walks out behind him, without any idea whats going on. The old guy turns around and says "you following me??" and leaves the store. Angry Bald Virgin proceeds to grab the bat from behind the front counter, and walk into the parking lot following the guy with the cane... because that's the only kinda guy he could win a fight against. Everyone needs Angry Bald Virgin to work with them... his antics make the day fly by.
Molly, who I work with, seems to spend *way* more time than is reasonable just wandering around the office, or going outside and, again, just wandering around. Not a smoke break, just wandering. Or I'll just look up and she's standing there, just staring at me. Not a word. Just staring, maybe smiling, maybe not.
I don't want to be mean, but she's just.. quirky. I can't imagine she gets much work done. Her typing skills are horrendous, she clearly doesn't have a clue how to refill the paper in the printer (I think she just pretends she didn't notice it was empty, and waits for someone else to come along), and sometimes I see her just sleeping, or sitting there by the computer doing absolutely nothing. Watching the clouds go by outside. Watching the birds. Who knows.
I don't want to give the impression that she's utterly silent. No, sometimes she can be talkative, even loud, but it's like gibberish to me. Maybe I only understand techie talk nowadays, but from the looks on other people's faces, I get the feeling no one else is following her either.
She's actually kind of cute in a way, but she's startlingly hairy in ways most women simply are NOT (I'm SURE she doesn't shave, anywhere), and she can somehow be simultaeously very affectionate, but still a bitch. Her breath is, well, not pleasant, and I think I know why -- I've seen her peering interestly at food other people have *thrown out*, yes, in the trash, and I swear one I saw her munching happily on what looked to me like dog kibble.
Did I mention I work from home?
http://myannoyingcoworkers.blogspot.com
Hilarious stuff on there.
-bZj
.sig
There is this one guy in my office who always wears the most stinky, years old snickers without any socks. Then he comes to my cube, sits on a chair and puts one of his feet on top of the another - I have to literally push back to the farthest corner of the cube and I still can't avoid the stink. I always find a way to get him out of there as quickly as possible.
Where I work, we've got two bathrooms, one is rather small and one is even smaller. The larger of the two is located down the hall from our main work area, and the smaller one is considerably closer.
We've all silently agreed that the one farther away is to be used if you need to take a crap, partially for privacy (since nobody walks farther to go to the bathroom, that'd be stupid), and partly for courtesy to fellow employees.
This one guy, thinks it's hilarious to occupy the close bathroom and take a giant dump every day, and totally stinks up the whole bathroom, while the rest of us have very little time to even make a quick visit to the restroom, he has to make it nearly unbearable to do so.. Resulting in a a breakdown of the system, and making people run clear down the hall to the larger bathroom just to avoid the horrible smell.
So the other day this guy was whining about the paper piled up on the printer, so I told him to sort it, and he called me a primadonna.... Stupid cow-orkers.
Perhaps this is conscious strategy on his part ?
Do you have a reputation for soaking up an hour of someone's time in conversation everytime they pop by just to ask you to commit a certain file or change a permissions somewhere ?
When I was starting out in the business about seven years ago, I wasn't a coder but a tech support guy in a call center. The guy in the next cube over was a tall skinny young hairy gay guy and his boyfriend supported a product for a different company (for the same overall call center) in another part of the building.
You could constantly hear him arguing over the phone very loudly with his boyfriend and having spats. He's stand up in his cube and yell to do it, so we could all share his phone conversation.
We also used to have a guy what had a devil beard and moustache and painted one of his fingernails (which was really long and sharpened to a point).
I'm not sure if this is "weird" exactly, but now that I've been working from home for many years, I've let myself go pretty bad. I can count the number of showers I've taken this year, on one hand. Pretty sad when you go from a few hundred showers per year, to three or four total.
The guy who sits next to me (of course a caffeine junky) enjoys building soda can pyramids on his desk. He's recently been getting better at building higher and higher pyramids, but the other folks around me find it increasingly funny when the pyramid finally comes tumbling down
The best part is when he begins a new pyramid, he always starts with a loud sigh
If you're career is dependant on your ability to type aka interface with a computer, I recommend adapting, but hey you can keep using that flat dinosaur keyboard, less competition for me in 10 years.
ps, people who peck type should be forced to have a cover over their keyboard until they don't look at the keys. Or someone should be hired to watch them type and hit them with a sock filled with marbles every time they look at the keys.. oh, and eh could say "homey don't need a look at da keys!"
fine i'm done..
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
...and then showing us later at lunchtime. It's always when we least expect it, because it looks like he's just checking out his schedule or something.
ARRRGH!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A French-Algerian chef who ran a panini and crepe stand outside our office building would regularly barge into the office, fire all the employees, steal supplies (phones, chairs, etc.) and demand that someone make him coffee. Of course, he was best friends with the CEO, so he was the only person who could open the CEO's door when it was closed without fearing for their life. If anyone else did something like this, the CEO would run up and down the office hallway yelling "Unbelievable!!! Un-f*cking-believable!!!!" But with this guy, it was okay. Note that it didn't matter if you were on a conference call, or conducting an interview. He had free reign.
:-)
Fortunately, he always brought stuff back. And the panini's were excellent. So all was good
"look at me! look everybody! lookie! i'm sooooooo weird!" Did it ever occur to you that maybe people want to just be able to do their stupid job in peace so they can get it done and go home?
Guys at tech jobs that think that they are weird are usually the biggest squares in the whole company. Typically they "act out" at work because it's the only place where they have an audience.
Most of us grow out of "freaking out the normal people" by age 19 or so.
if you're a fag.
I once worked with a guy who loved to try to make himself sound more professional during tech support calls, and would constantly use the same phrases and questions over and over every single night. Our favorite was "Are you eligible to access the internet at this time?"
First day I started as a postdoc I was shown to the office I was sharing with another postdoc. Walked into the room and found his wet socks pinned to the noticeboard - as he explained later, they'd got wet when he was cycling in and this was the best place to dry them.
Universities seem to foster strange behaviour. Once got sent around to see a lecturer in another department to negotiate use of his photometer microscope. My supervisor warned me before I went that he was 'a little ecentric', but even so I though I did rather well to keep a straight face when I found him in full boy scout uniform.
I switched to Dvorak layout some months ago. I pulled off & rearranged all the key caps on my home computer to help learn; the keyboard at work didn't allow this (the locking tabs went in different directions on different rows), so I just used a reference chart. When I got my 10-finger touch typing skill back w the new layout, I put the keys back in QWERTY on the home keyboard.
:-)
My speed using Dvorak is the same as my pre-switch QWERTY speed -- I'd hoped it would be higher, but perhaps because character frequency and spatial distribution in code are different than in English prose I'm not getting full benefit. Some punctuation oft-used in code is LESS convenient in Dvorak. Otoh, my (mild) wrist/forearm pains of last year have abated.
The only real drawbacks: I had a 3-week productivity hit and now my QWERTY speed sucks. (It matters when I have to type on someone else's machine, e.g. in a classroom, or at a coworker's work station, where it's not convenient to activate a Dvorak key map.) I plan to do touch-typing exercises in QWERTY so that I'll be just as fast on either layout.
Oh, and yes, I'm probably considered the weird co-worker in my office. Not without affection, I hope!
je ne suis pas un fou
Remember! If you don't see him...
YOU'RE that guy.
There was an employee who worked for AT&T in the twin cities' suburb of Bloomington (reports verified by many of his ex-coworkers) who used to jerk off during staff meetings under the table, while pointedly staring at female co-workers. He was apparently a big fat skinhead with horrible personal habits, and was also responsible for the following memo being sent out to the entire building:
"Please do not smear fecal matter on restroom walls."
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Anyone attempting to learn Dvorak may do well by not painting over/switching/etc. the QWERTY keys. Just put a reference right below your keyboard so you can glance at it, otherwise keep your eyes on the screen and fingers on the home row. You'll learn faster and pick it up in touch-type at the same time.
Oh, and reserve about two weeks for a reasonable speed.
.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I hunt and peck without looking on a flat keyboard at 110-130 WPM..
Most of my friends can do the same.
It's not hard as long as you can remember what keys your random fingers are resting on.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
One guy at work is REALLY cheap and doesn't want to spend a dime. One day at lunch we see him eating some tamales he brought him. A coworker asked if he made them and he said "No. I found it in the trash, my room mate threw them out." And he ate it for two days in a row
There is an employee at my place of employment who can make anyone laugh. Out of nowhere, he will break into a whole episode of SouthPark. Every voice is done with perfection and every line is without error. But the best part is when I check my voicemail and hear, "Timmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!"
This one guy shot up everyone in the place. I managed to survive by hiding in the server rack. I pretended to be a 2U file server.
I'm not sure, but I think the guy who shares an office with me thinks this person is crazy.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I switched to the dvorak keyboard when I had to travel for work. It was a real pain dragging my ergonomic keyboard with my laptop through the airport... Now I can type on straight keyboards without pain. I used to have a 5 minute limit. I used a similar plan to yours when learning. I put stickers on my home computer, and a print out of the layout at work. By the time the labels wore off of my home computer I no longer needed them. I keep the print out at work so I can direct peoples questions towards it... A very welcome side affect of the keyboard layout switch is that after word got around work, no one even tries to use my computer anymore. :-)
I also share the load on my mouse hand by using the right hand at home, and left hand at work. (I don't mess with the buttons though) It was great when someone came to my desk, reached for my mouse (uninvited) at the right hand side and just got air. (Hieght of the flu season, I'd rather no one touched my mouse or keyboard... Plus, I'm perfectly capable of copying a file from a mapped network drive...)
Typing on QWERTY is painful, but usually all I have to type is my username and password. People on my team learned that if they wanted my help either to come to my computer, or setup their computer so I could switch layouts. (or they can control their own computer...)
Incase you are wondering, my concern about disease spread through mouse and keyboard sharing does not make me the wierdo at work! Most of the developers on the team would agree with me. The Dvorak keyboard, and left handed mouse use might though...
i think i am the wacky one...
Interesting that there's no mention of % of accuracy. I bet bashing the keyboard with my forehead could yield me at least 200 wpm at 2% or 3% accuracy.
But I find 130 wpm hunting and pecking impressive to the point of disbelief. I type on the homerow and have to concentrate to do 130.
don't knock the office weirdo ... we have an important role to play in office dynamics.
You mean like making the rest of us glad that we can get attention for our good qualities? ;)
My dad told me a story about this guy who worked at Arthur Andersen (his former employer) who would have his secretary print out all of his emails. Then this guy would write a reply on the printout, then fax it back to the sender.
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
At least 90% accurate the last time I checked.
I took typing in High School (all of 2 years ago) and the teacher was amazed that I could do it.
I finished the assignments in a few minutes and played Starcraft for the rest of the class.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Yes because all school districts across the nation allow students to install games on their PCs. What bullshit.
http://www.iworkwithfools.com/
I can assure you, this was right before they installed Fortres on the computers to "secure them"...
Until somebody used a boot disk, of course.
It's funny, I'm applying for a job to keep kids from doing what I did in the same school.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
My boss worships Phil Collins. Isn't that strange.
On a similar note, the computers at my school will not allow you to save a program from the Internet, but you can say "open" at the download dialog. I run Putty this way almost every day to log into my Linux box and play nethack or check email :-)
The moral is, no matter what the admins do, somebody will get around it
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
unless the pcs run linux.
You must work at RealNetworks.
I remember quite a few folks there who seemed to spend more time on their can pyramids than work.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I had a similar experience, except that I touch-typed (my style was moderately weird; I have small hands, so they moved an insane amount over the keyboard). Difference was, my teacher said, "OK, you passed the tests with 75 WPM, and we only require 45 WPM, but you used the backspace 4 times, and we only allow two. I mean, if you learn to type without the backspace, you'll be much faster". Fascist jerk.
Our computers did the same thing ... but I found out it was an IE-only limitation and used firefox (put it on a USB key or whatever, use firefox to d/l, install firefox onto network drive, use network drive firefox to install putty/xchat/foosoft) to get around it.
We have someone here who constantly says "All Righty" all friggin day long. She exclaims it in a loud, abrupt kind of way before and after all kinds of events such as returning from the water cooler or getting up to walk around aimlessly.
I hear it so much I was tempted to record a few hundred of them throughout a day on my pda and give them to a friend of mine. Maybe he could have turned it into some kind of horrible, sickening music track that we would then anonymously send to her as proof of how annoying she really is.
I dont know where to begin with this guy, he seems to encompass all that makes office guys weird minus the toys on his desk... he's got the creativity of a fruitbat. I'm on a webteam with the guy and he considers himself the leader of our pack b/c he's been here for years. Our client is ATF and the guy is convinced he IS an ATF AGENT! HIS POSTINGS SAVES LIVES!! He's so gungho about this mediocre web maintenance job it drives me nuts. Hats, badges, pins, plaques of and even a baseball with ATF tattooed all over them decorate his cube. also any picture of ww2 planes and submarines. and my favorite, every email ever sent to him for the past 6 years clutters his desk. he doesn't take lunch, he sits 5 inches from the monitor and picks his nose and eats boogers and finger nails at meetings. Every conversation is about his wife, his kid getting beat up at school or about submarines. In emails he'll use words like "whilst" and excessive punctuation?!?!!!!? Plus he talks to me like im a crewman on his ship. "Steady lad, steady" "Easy as she goes" "Okay troops, whilst reviewing the customers request..." blah blah blah. He'll CC managers and team leads on even the most insignificate emails. I can't stand looking at him either, he'll wear vibrant horse jockey looking polo shirts over his bloated torso and girlish arms and super thick Milton glasses. Well.. i guess thats enough for now cuz i have a meeting, i'll let you all know how many boogers he devours this time! Oh and about "Jum" to annoy him i purposely mistype his name in emails every once in a while.. Jim.. Jum.. simple error for a touch typist and boy does he hate it!