tell me about your oddest colleague?

[StealthPolarBear]

Past or present.
We used to have one who would pick his ears and then make the coffee, it used to have bits floating in the top.

i was on an interview panel once, for a librarians job in a University. we interviewed seven people in total, but one of them came in looking like a walking corpse and sat in the chair, throughout the whole interview his chair squeaked. he didnt get the job because we thought that we would find him at the end of one of the aisles, rocking.

thing is, i sat in the chair and couldnt get it to squeak at all...

PrivateBenjamin, please accept my apologies for being too harsh...Its just that I seen people like that being bullied by the more extrovert "but I was only having a laugh" types

My friend works for Northampton county council and he was interviewing people for a job, one lady came in and listed one of her attributes at having being the chair woman of the Northampton Budgerigar society!!!!!!

I had the one colleague who farted and picked his nose up to the knuckle whilst speaking to you. Being the manager and having had a difficult red wind fuelled night I told him if her persisted in doing that I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't vomit on him.
He was either picking his nose or scratching his bits or picking his teeth. Yuck ! When he passed me parts for work I had to play keepy up with them until I could get a pair of gloves on.

There was also another minger colleague who used to turn up at work in the same clothes for weeks on end. We worked in an engineering environment where it wasn't uncommon to work up a sweat. Yuck. He once came in to work with stuff on his jumper which he explained was where the cat had given birth to kittens on the jumper during the previous night! We complained to the next level and they took him aside and had a word. The next day he turned up looking like something from miami vice in a light coloured suit - it was finally chisselled off him 4 weeks later !

cat afterbirth on a jumper?!

PlanetoftheGrapes, DH tells the story of an interview panel for a position in a cutting edge gene therapy type science project. (He got the story from one of the interviewers, all who are multiple PhD types.) One of the interviewees, after her (frankly luckluster) interview, thanked each of the panel, shook hands with them individually, then proceeded to hand out literature from the fundamentalist church she attended.

my friend worked with a blind guy who really liked to feel his way around the tea room.

funny how blokes never got in the way.

she reported him, he got the sack, we rofl!

A man who openly wipes bogies under the desk and chair of wherever he happens to be sitting.

A colleague who left an enormous block of blue Stilton in my desk drawer, it wasn't even wrapped! When I asked why he said "because you like cheese"

My mum worked with a woman who started off normal but spiralled downwards to being a complete lunatic. At one point she left a massive scab on my mum's desk . She would bring gin to work disguised as lemonade, and refused point blank to answer the phone even though she was a secretary.

There are a couple of guys in my department who wear the same clothes day in, day out. One of them at least appears to wash them and shower. The other sadly doesn't and whiffs to high heaven. One of my colleagues was allocated a desk next to him and told HR she was leaving unless they moved her, or did something about it.

Oh and at the beginning of the week I saw a reasonably, mature woman - must be 60s and white haired - pushing an empty pushchair through reception. I figured maybe she had bought said item from a colleague for the grandkids. The next day I saw her AGAIN with it. Well maybe she was bringing it back....??? The next day, yep, I saw her again strolling through the lobby....I double checked for small children, but nope, empty still. I am a bit

Portofino I used to do that every day (the pushchair bit, not wearing the same clothes and smelling). I used to drop ds1 and ds2 at nursery then walk home with the (double) pushchair - then do the whole thing in reverse picking them up. The nursery wasn't able to store the pushchair during the day.

I used to get the same comments day in day out - "haven't you forgotten something?"! I realise it looked a bit strange but it was the only way to get them there and back!

I used to work night shifts in a computer room (in pre-desktop days when computers were huge and operated by a team of about 6) and one guy used to sing filthy songs at the top of his voice half the night. He was also prone to pick me up and turn me upside down to see what colour pants I was wearing. One summer night I wore a skirt with nothing underneath... It was the first time any one of us had seem him blush... Stopped him doing it too.

Paws - Aaah! That might explain it!

Oh I forgot one!! I think it is on a par with the phantom crappers!!

We had women/woman leaving soiled sanitary towels behind the pipes on the loos! Sometimes when I went in a cubicle, I would get a whiff of 'that' smell that there is with towels etc and would be in a panic checking for them. Thankfully never found one!

I worked in US law firms for many years and all these stories are from there:

• One secretary used to go around the corner to a bar at lunch, smoke cigars and drink and come back to the office trashed and stinking of cigar smoke

• During the anthrax scares, someone left a pile of white powder on one of the attys. desk. The police came out and everything to investigate. It turns out it was another atty and he got in huge problems with the partners!

• At Xmas, one of the attys was giving out smoked hams to several people. I guess his scertary took offense to this gift and took the whole ham and put ot back on his desk. I still can't figure out why she disliked it so much, I thought it was a lovely gift, and perfect for the holidays. And no, she wasn't muslim.

• My boss was a notorious cheapskate, even though he is worth millions. He gets unwanted holiday presents and regifts them to the "little people". He did this to his boss's assistant, with an new ipod he didn't want. Nice gift right? When she opened it, the ipod was clearly engraved with his name. Ooops!

The couple that had been having an affair for 20yrs, He was divorced and she was married to a nasty bully of a man, but neither was brave enough to get together properly. If you happened to share the staffroom the same time as them it was like watching nine and a half weeks-they fed each other desserts .

Another couple who had a brief affair (it was rampant at our place for a while) he used to play Kenny Rodgers loudly whille wooing her. She was delighted when he said he was taking her out for a romantic meal one night, went and bought a beautiful evening dress, had her hair done. He took her to a little chef on the motorway. They are no longer an item I hear!

The very prudish spinster of 60 something boss, who wore american tan tights, knitted cardis and who did nothing more than go to church and enjoy walking holidays, had a visit from strapping 6 foot Jamaican toy boy who announced in front of all of us, much to her utter shame, that he had enjoyed their break together and was happy to carry on where they left off

LimburgseViaai - you just reminded me of the colleague who gave one of the men in our office a daily supply of what he thought were hay fever tablets and which turned out to be contraceptive pills.

When he finally realised she muttered something about her fiance being away and them having a placebo affect on him.

I am crying laughing at this thread.

I worked in bar for a while. The manager clearly had a drink problem. His drinks of choice were carlsberg larger and vodka. He would often hold 'stay behinds' for regulars when he would get absolutely hammered. The Brewery apparently did regular stock takes and low and behold we were always down on carlsberg and vodka. So, he would ask all staff into a meeting on a Sunday morning and tell us that heads would roll if he found out who was drinking the stock away! It was strange, like nobody would mention the elephant in the room. I was only 18 and found the whole thing ironically amusing.

When I was a trainee solicitor there was this male lawyer who kept 3 dogs that he would show at Crufts etc. He loved his dogs. When 1 of them sadly died he thought the others would be grieving so he brought them in the office, sat them with the secretaries who were given the job of walking them through a very busy business district of the city at lunchtime. It was quite a sweet if not liberty taking thought really, but walking into this busy secretarial office and seeing these two terrier dogs lolling on the floor really made me giggle. This went on for about a month until some of the partners had 'a word'.

I worked in an office with a lady who had a bad back. For a while she brought in a hotwater bottle. On about the third day I saw her empty it into our kettle, heat up the water & re-fill it. The kitchen was miles away so this was the water we were using for making coffee!

Oh we had a lady who'd bring her dog with her to work.
When it got very old it crapped all over the carpet, and she cleaned it up using nothing other than paper towels and water. The place absolutely stank and we complained but management did nothing about it, and important customers were coming in and out for meetings all the time

I used to work in an office of weirdos interesting characters.

• the one in his 50s living at home with his mum with long finger nails, terrible dandruff and evil breath (boss told us to turn away, take a deep breath and then put our hand over our noses)

• the red faced, overweight, old soak who went on frequent visits to Amsterdam

• the really quite sweet one but who was having an affair with his childhood babysitter (he was single, she was married and her husband use to know they sat in the car outside their house)

• the one who used to pretend to be on the phone but was actually sleeping

• the slightly creepy one who (will be outing myself now possibly!) used to sing 'your as cold as ice' in my vicinity because I didn't like him touching me.

Slug, I would have thought that a fundamentalist type would not work in cutting-edge genetics for anti-evolutionary reasons.

Our office had a chap who set up a "Christian Group", bombarded everyone with emails and posters about lunch-time talks and films such like "How to have a Christian marriage" etc.

I made a spoof "pagan group" poster at home - inviting everyone to dance at dawn in the nude on midsummers, bring pan-pipes etc, but I was too chicken to pin it up amongst his posters!

In the end he gave up as nobody went to his meetings.

Had many but these were the most interesting:
This strange woman (her father had been a teacher at my school - small world ! he was weird. Explains it). Who was in her late 30's (looked/dressed like a 50 year old), was determined to find a partner - dragged everyone out to a cheap student bar frequented by 18 year olds ! I had stopped going there years before and felt old there, yet was about 23 at the time. I don't think she found anyone there.

• She tried to come onto my boyfriend at the work Xmas party - in front of everyone. He was terrified ! it was soooo funny. He didn't come to anymore parties after that.
• Was convinced people were stealing off her - got back from lunch one day to find her searching everybody's rubbish bins (?). Then she sent an email to the whole building (about 500 people including MD, CEO, CFO etc) accusing someone of stealing her museli bar and that she hoped whoever took it 'choked'. Lovely.
• My boss at the time was psycho - (he later got asked to leave) he used to ring bank, insurance etc places and yell at them down the phone in full view of everyone (open plan workplace). It was awful. His name was Christopher, if anyone called him 'Chris' watch out ! one poor person he was ringing made the mistake of doing so and he went off at them yelling 'did i give you permission to call me Chris ? my name is Christopher ! I don't like your attitude ! I want to speak to your manager ! ' was so awful