tell me about your oddest colleague?

Oh I worked somewhere with a millionaire receptionist. Long time ago though, would have been mid to late '90's.

DH had a colleague who farted constantly. Apparently his office was so fugged up the smell would drift ominously down the corridor.

He also used to lift his cheeks to let rip. DH said they would be in meetings and this guy would lean towards him as if to say something .... and then almost blow the person on the other side of him off their chair.

He also used to leave his wet, fart-filled swimming trunks to dry hanging inside out in his office. DH showed me once - the net lining of them was blown full of gaping holes!

1. a guy who used to stratch his bum and then try and sneakily sniff his finger(he would pose as if he was carefully thinking with his finger under his nose)

2. guy who used to pick bits out of his beard and save them in his keyboard

3. woman who used to go for a kip under her desk at lunch time

4. couple who used to go for a shag in the cleaning disabled toilet at lunchtime..we soon stopped that one by giving them a round af applause hen they came out...

5. woman who had THE noisiest laugh you could hear her on the floor below

6. Woman I work with now has a not for the cleaner WARNING her not to touch her desk or else!! ...I like to go and mix it up now and again :)

7. Guy ho used to site and eat chopped up raw cabbage for his lunch EVERY DAY!!!

8. Lady in reception reckoned she was a millionaire (in her head)

I could go on.........

My offerings;

1. The one who thought that she was being poisoned by radiation so used to put tin foil at the windows of the office to deter the "death rays". She also believed that another colleague was a ITN newsreader. She also maintained that all her clothers were high end designer but that someone had cut out all the labels whilst they were hanging in her wardrobe.

1. The one who wore the same clothes everyday - a navy/white polka dot dress with no spots left on the patch over the bum

1. The one that made a pan of stew on Sunday, kept it on the stove and rang her husband every lunch time to add another bizarre ingredient (lettuce, curry powder, eggs) to make it go further.

1. The one who permanently smelled of TCP and had his parent in a vat of acid in the cellar

A man with a twitching problem in his crotch. He'd sit there talking to you, doing pelvic thrusts. it was awful. A colleague had this story about him, where he had had to be driven by him. In order to block out the air-humping, he pretended to be asleep, but he could still hear it, as the thruster's thigh made contact with the car keys every time.

A really awful woman who had many idiosyncrasies. The funniest one was that she kept a Vittel bottle full of water in the loo cubicle, with "Do not remove" written on it in eyeliner. I'd seen her put it there, and three of us spent several afternoons winding her up by going on about the strange bottle in the loo, and whether we should call bomb disposal. She never admitted what it was, but after each pisstake session, regular as clockwork, she'd check it was still there. I think it might have been for swooshing out a mooncup.

A man who farted, constantly. Every time he shifted in his chair, or moved around. He never ever acknowledged it or apologised. I suspect he couldn't help it, but he should have at least apologised. They were smelly farts as well.

Phantom shitters!!!!!! We had one who used to do neat little pellet poos arranged in a circle all around the toilet seat. For clarity (in case this is the same individual travelling from place to place) our shitter was active in an office on Jewry Lane 2000-2002 (women's toilets)

I really need to know why people do this.

I am really loving the stories here, and very grateful to not have (yet) encountered a Phantom Shitter....
Had a colleague who was a narcoleptic and who would drop off to sleep at inopportune moments. That wasn't so bad but very occasionally he would wake up with a blood-curdling scream! (think Russell Brand in Bedtime Stories.)
That was bearable. I just wish he hadn't first informed me of his condition when getting behind the wheel of a car I was the passenger in, with the comment "if I start to nod off, just prod me before we veer into the central reservation"

My boss in a previous organisation was a raving alcoholic - swigging vodka from a lemonade bottle at 10.00am in the morning. We'd be sitting in a client meeting and he'd suddenly get up, leave the room and turn the lights out leaving us sitting in the dark, or he'd aim for the door, miss and walk into the wall.

He was completely useless. Everything we'd done he'd done bigger and better or all of a sudden you'd find him recounting a story that you'd told him, but he was in the starring role.

I've no idea how he got the job - the rumour was that he had something on the Chief Exec. The leeway he got was quite incredible, but once the Chief Exec had left his luck ran out, but it took him being done for drunk driving (again) to get him.

Oh yes and lord knows how he got the job in the first place - his CV had huge gaps in it, but apparently he couldn't tell anybody what he was doing because he'd signed the Official Secrets Act and had been doing stuff for 'the Government'. He even phoned in a few times to say that he wouldn't be in the office because he'd been summoned to see somebody in London, but couldn't discuss it

anonymous it was about 14-15 years ago, I remember it was around the time I got married. I think the story got round pretty rapidly, F was never the most popular of personalities!

I had a very odd colleague who seemed to dance to his own jig in so many ways which I actually admired. He was wierd but just doing his thing.

My personal fave was when he visited my desk with a matchbox which he then slid open to show me a 'spectacular' spider he'd caught the night before at home who was 'large but very friendly'. He thought I'd enjoy seeing given he'd overheard me mention the week before how scared I was of them and how much I'd like to get over my phobia . Well intentioned but what on earth????

We also had a nose picker who used to wipe it on the walls of the ladies loos. Disgusting.

That is so shocking. Did nobody tell her off for being so thoughtless?

Paws, I know to what you refer.

Still ed now, X years later, to re-hear that story again... unreal.

That is bad Paws :(

I wear very high heels at work and then sometimes change into flats if I have a lot of walking to do at lunch

Once came back, retrieved high heels from under desk to find a male colleague had left a note in them professing his love for the shoes..........couldnt help wondering if he had sniffed / licked them or worse when he was crawling around under my desk leaving the note in them

In my first ever job we had a colleague who smelt so bad that you just knew when she had arrived in the building in the mornings because the smell pervaded the whole building somehow.

There was one tightarse in one office. Loads of members of staff so would often sponsor someone's child for this, that, other etc. This one member of staff never did any of that, wasn't in the social committee where we paid about £2 a month to go towards lots of little events that were organised.

One time, he bought in a football scratchcard for his son's Scout group. With this, someone wins about £10 or £20 depending on the price of the teams. A number of us may have boycotted decided not to do his card!

Can I just say I am loving this thread!

I wanted to add not so much an odd colleague, more a seriously unpleasant one.

I worked for a large City law firm and one of the departments was headed by a female partner named F. Each department took on about 4-5 trainee solicitors per six month rotation, and they did 4 seats x 6 months to qualify.

F was known as being pretty much the worst partner to work for. She reduced trainees to tears on a regular basis, kept them working overnight even when it wasn't necessary, and was generally rude and unpleasant.

One September the head of the firm called everyone to a meeting to explain that one of the trainees due to join F's group had tragically died. The poor girl had been raped and murdered. She was 22.

Shocked silence fell upon the group, broken only when F piped up indignantly "but who's going to do my work?"

Yes there was a female phantom crapper at one place I worked, they once found a whole poo outside the door of the toilets . I had NO idea it was a common thing.

Worst boss I ever had once said to me (after making some minor mistake) "if you do that again I'll put my cock in your ear and fuck some sense into you". Charmer.

I can't believe the amount of phantom crappers I'd love to know what the psychology behind it is.

I wonder if anyone else will recognise mine? Completely bald except for one long strand of hair that he combed round and over, he used to eat licorice shoe laces in loval government meetings, slowly sucking them in. He wrote in a magazine under the alias of "Goat Groper"

We have had a phantom crapper too

One bloke absolutely stank, he also didn't wear a belt, he just had a bit of string! He helped run a Boys Brigade troop, was probably about late 20's/early 30's. No-one would tell him he stank so in the end we drew a name out of the hat to tell the manager, don't think anything was done about it. He left to become a priest!

looks of repulsion

I had one who used to lift up her arse and let out farts in the lunchroom whilst we were all eating our lunch!
No shame, even lift her arse up to let it out.

She also used to remove her mouthguard at the table before dinner, right at the table, just spit it out and leave it glistening on a napkin.

She also used to bite her fingernails and line them up on the napkin next to her plate.

And then she used to eat all the fucking bread rolls and leave none for anybody else.

I got used to her foul habits pretty quickly so when we were at a conference dinner, I would sit on the same side of the table as her, several seats a down and chuckle inwardly at the looks up repulsion from those sitting opposite her.

You couldn't make it up.