Tell me about your annoying colleagues

[MaMaMaMySharona]

I work in a very small team and the woman who sits opposite me drives me completely insane! It’s going to sound very minor, but she interrupts me constantly to talk about her boyfriend. I’ve had to start putting my earphones in and pretending I’m listening to music and can’t hear her because she makes it so hard for me to concentrate on work, but as soon as I take them out she wheels her chair over to my desk to tell me something else inane about him

I don’t know how much more I can hear about what tv show they watched last night, what she cooked him for dinner, what she’s bought him for Christmas, how to interpret every last thing he says to her...it just never ends!

AIBU to ask you to make me feel better by telling me about your annoying colleagues??

Trills that would annoy me too.

@baubled no, thankfully I managed to avoid the conversation with my trusty earphones! We have a business breakfast in about 15 minutes though which means no doubt she will sit next to me and continue where she left off

I confess to always rolling my eyes a bit when people are intolerant of "smelly" food though. I mean ok if you are microwaving a smoked haddock and eating raw onion but come on, a bit of curry is hardly the end of the world.

I only ever brought in salads to work as people get so pissy about any kind of hot food at all IME.

Lovely lovely woman but my God, she coughs... constantly...all day.... every day....365 days a year.

Not a chesty, infection kind of cough but like a 'just clearing your throat'.

It makes me twitch.

My DP was talking me through what he eats at work the other day - porridge on arrival, soup late morning, nuts and seeds after lunch... All I could think was that his colleagues must want to kill him!

Years ago, I was a polling clerk at an election (7.00 - 22.00, no breaks) with an older bloke. I was 19.Just us two. It was a small, over-heated classroom and he had that noisome, greasy, unwashed man-pong. Lovely.

He had brought what seemed like a never-ending supply of hard-boiled egg sandwiches that stank the place out, as did his resultant wind.

He was a single chap (never!) and unfathomably thought he was a real catch so parked his chair right next to me so that our legs were touching. He then engaged me in his gruesome sexist chat-up / conversation all the long morning, afternoon, evening and night while simultaneously exposing me to his horrible, mouldy teeth and atrocious breath. I've just remembered that he ate with his mouth open too.

To top it all, his seduction technique included telling me about his interest which was Nazi atrocities. He'd brought a selection of books with him and insisted on reading out "the good bits" as he called them, and showing me the pictures. I was in tears and repeatedly asked him to stop, but to no avail.

I can't believe I was the sort of person that sat through all this, but in my defence, it was 40 years ago and I was young and painfully shy and insecure. Also, no mobiles, or even a coin-box to ring up the Election Office for help/ rescue.

... struggling with anything and homes in to see what's going on. Shows faux sympathy and then heads off to tell everyone else. Awful creature.

Oh yes, we have one of those too. She knows everyone's business, well not mine, because I keep to a friendly but non personal work relationship with her.
Strangely, people don't know HERS!

At the moment its the man who knows everything
No matter what conversation we are having he has to but in to tell us that he knows more about it or give some patronising speech. Even when my manager has said I believe this person does know what they are talking about as they have done it for 10 years he won't shut up.

Yesterday my colleague was going to another department, where she used to work, to give a presentation and he made her late by trying to tell her were to go, even though she used to work there. His final remark was to tell her not to speak to strangers on the way. She is a 35 year old adult women.
My mouth dropped open and she just gave me this look of what a fucking eejit before she walked off.
Alas my manager has made me promise not to tell the man who knows everything off or he would have got an earful

Woman who works opposite me isn't very good at her job and often gives out wrong information which causes problems for the rest of us. She flirts with the men and is fake. She dislikes women and called my supervisor stupid, she isn't. She is just awful.

Does your dp work as a man of the woods heidipi?

The completely inappropriate HR assistant in a previous job.

Asked a friend if a pregnancy was planned or not (when said colleague had already suffered a couple of miscarriages) and she'd only informed HR for the H&S aspect.

Signed my pay rise letter and (I am 99% sure) gossiped about it.

Would interrupt people in desk meetings to ask for help with a wordsearch (I was one of the interruptees).

She wasn't malicious, just extremely young and naive. Did my nut in though.

The ones who make heavy weather out of every simple job, and even make a bunch of filing sound like a terribly important task.

The woman who has arse licked the boss into promoting her way beyond her capabilities, and walks around as if she is wonderful while shoving as much work as possible at people who are actually capable of doing it.

The office martyr types who always work late, bring work home at weekends and don't use up their annual leave allowance, while not actually producing any more work than anyone else.

Just left my old job so not my concern anymore but... office brown nose. Every email from management was replied to with a little ':)' or 'I think it's because (boss) just works so hard, it's bound to stress them out and make them irritable.' Like the rest of us had it easy.
Also used to meet up with boss's out of work and buy them gifts?! I got told off because she had to ring in from America (on holiday) to check everything was running ok without her (it was.) Would never back me up in a disagreement about a policy that was clearly wrong e.g: one day they told us we were no longer seeing patients in wheelchairs.
I don't get what was in it for her because they don't reward you. There was literally no promotion to be had so why was she doing it?

Colleague who barges into the room without knocking when she knows you are on the phone, whether it’s a private conversation (lunch) or work related. It’s as though she thinks you’re hiding something and wants to catch you out. Or just plain rude. Or letting you know she is there.

Same Colleague. Only has one volume. Loud.

Same Colleague, I think a previous poster called a grief collector? An example being, another colleague had a scan to find out there was no foetal heartbeat. Came back to work a few days later only for Same Colleague to ask if she was waiting now for the remains of her foetus to come out naturally. Why, in Gods name, couldn’t she leave her alone as other colleague might have been back at work to take her mind off it/get back to some normality.....but no. FFS.

Same Colleague who wants to be patted on the back by management constantly, going unnecessarily overboard with her job whilst undermining the colleagues around her.

Same Colleague who sits with management on the works do.
Fuck Off.

Up until recently there was a bloke in our office who used to commute to work by bike and on rainy days he'd hang his wet clothes around the office (on coat stands for example) and move the coat stand near a radiator so they would 'dry' out before he'd have to cycle home again. Made for a very 'fragrant' room. Think that someone had a word with him (not me) about this as it appears to have stopped.
He also used to clear his throat by making a from-the-belly-like-he's-about-to-heave- noise that I'm sure I've heard on some David Attenborough/The Secret Life of the Zoo style programme and not by the zoo keepers either!
There was another colleague who knew my utter dislike for the current US President and would think it was funny to wind me up about it. The term workplace bullying could have been mentioned so that has reduced over time.

This is not recent, but when I went back to work after maternity leave, a woman in my office went on and on about how she hated children and later, made a big deal of her dog having puppies and how preferable they were. She also made a few choice remarks about my legal holiday entitlement months later.

It took a long time for me to understand that this was simple jealousy, served up in a passive aggressive manner.

The bloke who sits next to me is constantly eating and makes the most awful lip smacking noises. They give me the rage and I have had to bring in earplugs. I put one in to the ear facing him as soon as I detect a wrapper crinkling. Otherwise he would get snapped at which he doesn't deserve.

He also has no social skills and will drone on at me while I am trying to work. When it gets too much I just leave my desk for a few minutes. I also have to wince through his calls with the public where he is so insensitive.

Pretty sure he has undiagnosed autism (have worked extensively in autism related education in the past) as he is in his 50s. I am senior to him although not his manager and I do my best to be kind even when wanting to sellotape his mouth shut.

I have SO MANY of these.

I used to sit next to the team’s resident drain/fun sucker/moaner. I have never in my life met anybody so negative, who could find the bad in every single thing that happened. Every morning it was like a dark cloud arriving... “so this morning I was leaving the house and then the door handle broke and then someone had parked near my driveway so I couldn’t see to get out and then...”

The woman who sits opposite me is insufferable. She’s a complete brown noser and flirts shamelessly with most of the men in the office, and does this awful, high pitched giggly girlie laugh whenever one of the bosses says something that isn’t funny. Her poor DP also works here, and looks like he wants to ground to swallow him up sometimes.

And my boss is one of those people who works from home or had to have the day off at the last minute at least once a week. It’s always an emergency.

The one who only had 2 volume settings.
LOUD when chatting on the phone to her mates about what they did/ will do /should have done on the weekend.
And shhhhhhh quiet when passing on a message re which client had called while I was on the phone actually doing some sodding work. I usually had to ask her to repeat the message 3 times as it was usually "John.. mumble from mumble company rang and asked if you could.... mumble... sometime before..... mumble"

Colleague who cannot complete a task. Only ever does about 80% of it and the rest of us (mostly me) have to finish it off. Same colleague has headphones in all the time as well.

Colleague who is a misogynistic git and makes loud complaints if any woman in any department gets any sort of promotion, award or pat on the back. Quite a young man as well.

Colleague who constantly undermines me to others which is now having a knock on effect to how much we're getting done. He has been warned.

There's a man at my work that has had a cough for like... 4 years (he should probably see his GP).

But he doesn't cough, per se. It's like... a shout. It gives me the actual red mist every time he does it.

Reception staff who can’t be bothered to read the delivery notes and just call me down from upstairs to decide where all the parcels go because I Order things occasionally. Then get me to ask for it to go where it is supposed to because they are far to busy obviously!

I used to work for a charity and we regularly held events which various celebrities attended. One member of staff would elbow everyone else out of the way to get to said celebrity and every resulting photo would show celeb with ‘Sally’ surgically attached to them. They then had to be rescued by another staff member. She became known as Starfuck.

I'm a throat clearer. It annoys me so I imagine it drives everyone mad. A very quiet one mind. I think it's now become habit and I'm mortified every time I do it but can't seem to stop it.

The woman who rings our boss twice a day to gossip and get his backing on all her decisions. She a massive control freak and very manipulative and uses her friendly relationship with the boss to make sure she’s untouchable by anyone else.

The man on my team who prints a bit of paper and stares at it for ages. Then has a sneaky scroll on his phone, then back to bit of paper. Does no typing most of the day and don’t really see him produce any work. Yet gets away with it.

My boss who complains how busy he is constantly, tells you how many emails, hours worked and all the meetings he has to deal with. It’s boring and martyrdom. Sick of hearing it. Either delegate more or shut up.