I had the misfortune to work with a female colleague who was so loud, and I mean loud, and completely over bearing. She was quite boastful in that she belonged to this group, did that and had so many friends. It all sounded like she was bigging herself up and boy, did she love the sound of her own voice! She would belittle me and be quite unkind as I am a quiet person and apparently I should become more loud and vivacious like her. I am no mouse, but I go to work to work and not spend hours (and that is no exaggeration ) talking about myself all day. These conversations would be repeated endlessly if someone else walked into the room so it was a vicious cycle. All in all her conversations were the minutae and I mean minutae of her movements from when she left the office to when she saw everyone again . I would go home with the sound of her voice ringing in my ears. We worked in a 'quiet calm ' environment but her voice would ring around our workplace so much so that people would have to ask her to please keep her voice down as it was impossible to hear on the phone and also the fact the person on the end of the phone would often ask what on earth was going on in the background. We had no HR dept as there were only 5 of us and the boss didn't want to know. She was very indiscrete about visitors to the office and would pass on this gossip to the next client.
She ended up doing less work than anyone else due to her endless yakking about herself, her perfect life and how wonderful everyone thought she was. She dominated everyone's conversations and all of us in the office liked a chat but it came to the point when you just scuttled in and daren't say anything more than 'good morning'. For a woman of 55+ she was very childish.
I shamefully ended up dreading going to work because of her and found myself not really liking her at all. I am in no way suggesting I am so bloody perfect in the workplace and my way is the right way! Nor was I jealous of her - absolutely no way.
Ironically, I was the one who encouraged my boss to employ her and initially I thought she was lovely but time getting her feet under the table changed all that very quickly. She had a different act to follow that was all me, me me. We are all very different in how we interact with people but she really did my head in in the end and I left as did another colleague.
What problems have you encountered in the workplace?