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??

I am annoying because I type too loudly, apparently :)

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.

We have one of these who actually dries his gym towel over the sofa after lunch 🤮 Why does he think people want to sit on a damp sofa? That’s been covered in a towel he’s just dries his big wrinkly balls with?

Colleague who I actually really like CONSTANTLY hums. Literally all day long. It isn’t even anything recognisable - just noise. The worst part is he’s always, ALWAYS off-key - he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. I can’t even escape behind headphones anymore as my boss has a bee in her bonnet about them

WELL... I'll PM you, OP.

In all seriousness, I think I might actually BE the annoying colleague.

In a previous job someone took me aside and asked if I was a bit stressed becasue I always slammed the phone down furiously and then walked off and slammed the door out to the lifts. Had to explain that I am just naturally heavy-handed (car doors have been known to shatter beneath my delicate, ladylike hands, too) and I also happen to be cursed with resting cat's bum face, which adds to the effect.

Do feel a bit bad for the colleagues I have left in my wake, living on the edge of their nerves and terrified every time I pick up a piece of office equipment... At least I didn't cook any slow cooker meals under the desk though.

One colleague is really pally with the director
When the directors not there he makes up appointments and disappears for hours. Knows we won’t say anything as there’s only 4 people in our team

Luckily my work is fairly solitary apart from weekly debrief meetings when we report on our projects to get feedback from overall project manager. One (as yet not fully qualified) team member will report things where she is either breaking regs or has overlooked something vital. That’s all good, that’s why we do the debrief, to be steered back along the right lines. What drives me mad is when the group leader or another group member gives feedback suggesting any revisions or change of direction she will shout over them saying ‘I KNOW , that’s what I AM doing’ even when it directly contradicts what she’s just told us. She also used to overrun in her reports leaving less time for the rest of us but now it’s generally arranged so she goes last which has settled that. And she zones out when the rest of us report - she pulls across a hank of her hair, goes cross eyed to focus and concentrates on splitting her hair ends rather than supporting her colleagues.

The most galling thing of all is that she often gets excellent results.

Oh so, so many.

Colleague who leaves his cycling gear drying on my chair. Always nice to find someone’s pants eh!

Victim colleague who is always hard done by and don’t we know about it.

Eerily quiet colleague who doesn’t respond when we talk to her. Really disquieting.

Colleague you can’t make eye contact with as it will mean the rest of the day is lost to her pontifications about her wonderful kids, who are actually a pair of little thugs. Last week it was justifying why it was ok for the 10yr old to have taken a knife to school, and the 12 yr old was in detention for punching a classmate in the face!

I really wish someone in my office had a slow cooker under their desk, what a fab story!

Years ago, I used to work with a "pat" (office named) because she would bring you a cuppa (nice) bit of chit chat (her semi-perched on desk, hand casually draped across in tray) and then wander off after saying "talk soon!" And lightly patting the intray.

On investigation you would find a piece of work she had been sitting on for weeks and was due tomorrow nearly slid under the top sheet. No one ever saw her sleight of hand but we all fell victim to it.

New boss clocked this in days and pat had a one-to-one to discuss why work she had been given was then done by someone else. Pat came out of the one-to-one complaining that she was being scapegoated for lack of productivity!

I have a colleague who talks in baby voice. She is a Middle aged lady who dresses in a kooky way and declares herself to be so crazy all the time. Can I bowworw wur ikle stapler. AAAAAAAHHHHGGGGGGAAAAAAA

She's SO over the top happy, calls EVERYONE by a pet name and is just unnecessarily in your face. Like, I'll give her the most basic of answers to something and it's like I've just offered to give her a million pound and clean the house. And we start work at 7am some days. Have mercy.

Mrs Crafty. We survived the paper flowers in the summer, but now every flat surface is covered with Christmas sledges full of tiny parcels, there are decorated pine cones hanging from my monitor and the sodding felt snowman has already fallen off the door twice!

I work with someone who would never say she is racist, but is very vocal about anyone she can't stand, and oddly enough they all turn out to be black people. Her latest ones are Charles Venn and Meghan Markle, she rants several times a week about how hateful/annoying/repulsive they both are. She was an effing nightmare during the Olympics, our cyclists were heroes but most of our track athletes were rude and arrogant and probably cheating, except Greg Rutherford of course, he's lovely.

On a lighter note, my sister works with someone who doesn't trust computers, to the extent he prints out EVERY EMAIL HE RECEIVES and neatly files it away.

@Isleepinahedgefund on your CHAIR!?

@CoughLaughFart and @Isleepinahedgefund - that's disgusting. Has anyone mentioned it either to them or to management so that it can stop?

p.s. (Is there a suitable emoji available on MN for someone about to vomit and no the green envy one just wont cut it any more?

God many many over the years .
I once worked in a small office 3 of us , 1 was my manager who would talk very loudly the 2nd he walked in the office 1st thing about the film he watched the night before , then would spend the next hour telling us in great detail the whole story of the film , very annoying. He would also bang on the desk if me and another colleague were talking if he was on the phone .
The other colleague in the office spoke to me like she was senior and I was the office junior ( we were the same level although she was older) she was also homophobic and racist. They are both self obsessed I swear that never asked about me in the 6 years I worked there .
I currently have a very annoying supervisor who likes to be very petty hates it if we chat or if I leave paper on my desk to shred so of course I do it more to annoy her . I also like to sing at my desk so I suppose I am also a annoying colleague.

What actually fucks me right off is people moaning and being really annoyed by their work colleagues but not having the balls to say something or at least completely detach from conversing with them.... I see people slagging people off in the office and then sucking upto them and being really nice... Two faced spineless bleeeeeeps

Manager goes to gym every lunch time. Hangs his used kit under the desk. Sniffs it to see if it can be worn that day...

Someone I used to work with had really vile smelling feet and used to take her shoes off under the desk. She was told and told not to by the Manager but used to do it when she wasn't around.

One particularly hot day there were tiny little flies in our office and further investigation led us to her feet!! She found it funny, I would have been mortified and burnt my shoes

She got sacked in the end but that's a whole other thread

i currently work with a lovely team of 5, but then I'm the boss and I picked them so that works well for me (wonder if they think I'm annoying, I am too cheerful

In a past job there were 2 ladies & me in the department. One lady was just married and trying for a baby, the other was just about to get married. They spent the ENTIRE day talking about their husbands/weddings so much so that I, as the junior, couldn't get a word in to ask how to do stuff (I was new). After a month of this I determined I would talk about my boyfriend, so ANY silence I spouted off about him. The lady in charge of the department (the just married) took me to one side and said I shouldn't keep talking about boyfriend as it was boring for them to have to listen!
I engineered to move departments when somebody else had left
not long after that.

In a previous job someone took me aside and asked if I was a bit stressed becasue I always slammed the phone down furiously and then walked off and slammed the door out to the lifts. Had to explain that I am just naturally heavy-handed (car doors have been known to shatter beneath my delicate, ladylike hands, too)

I worked with someone who crashed and walloped her way through the day. From the moment she arrived in the morning, the simplest action she did was accompanied by crash, thump, wallop.
She also spent a lot over the time on the phone, due to the nature of her role and slammed and crashed down the receiver after every call. She was a nice person but oh jeepers, heavy handed wouldn't even begin to describe her.

An ex-colleague many years ago went swimming every lunch hour and used to drape her cossie on the radiator next to my chair. She was most affronted when I said I didn’t want it there. By a strange coincidence all the branches on my lovely houseplant I kept at work were broken the next day and she was making pseudo sad faces.

My ex boss used to slurp her tea and then say aaaahhhhh really loudly each time. When she had a cold she used to lob her snotty hankies into my bin rather than the one by her desk. Used to call me by her three year old daughter’s name when annoyed. The last I found funny so if she did I called her Mummy.

The colleague who hated all other women in the office and was convinced they were jealous of her wiles with men. No one was and no one cared.

I have a colleague known as "the boss". Really annoying. Insists I come in by 9am 5 days a week, and keeps banging on I do this really annoying and stressful thing called "work". Keeps insisting on evidence of this so called "work" thing by asking to see "reports" and evidence that "you've actually fucking done something this week". Luckily my Dad owns the company I work at so I just ignore them

An ex-colleague many years ago went swimming every lunch hour and used to drape her cossie on the radiator next to my chair.

Ooh, that reminds me of another one. Someone my friend used to work with swam every day before work and, to ‘save time’, used to just put her jeans on over her swimsuit and go to work like that. She’d literally sit at her desk all day in her damp swimsuit

The woman in the office next to me clears her throat. Around every 15 seconds. (Not exaggerating. I’ve timed it.)

Reading this thread makes me feel better, as I have nothing as bad as most if not all of those people that those on this thread have described.

The worst I have is a head of another department who leaves his personality at home, and another who cannot keep to any meeting agenda.