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 thought I'd worked with a few rather odd people... then I read this thread and my somewhat odd former colleagues have started to look barely quirky by comparison to some of these horrors.

So I can only think of one remotely worthy candidate from my working past.

Office job. Lots of case files being passed about.

My heart used to sink if I looked on the system and saw J. Jones* had the file I wanted. He wasn't a bad guy and would helpfully produce the desired file quite swiftly, but he had the most awful faceful of acne and pimples you ever saw in your life, which was not a problem in itself... but he had a bad tendency to fiddle with his face and pop squirty juicy pustules at his desk.

So any files obtained from him inevitably had spatters of pus and smears of blood on them and his fingernails always had a lovely rusty bloody tinge to them from all the picking and squeezing he did [boak]

He also had a tendency to drink too much and would often come back after lunch quite boisterous and inclined to be hilariously borderline rude on the phone to arsey clients who usually deserved it, the slimy twatwaffles.

*name changed to protect the guilty.

You've just reminded me about our mystery Christian! One day we started finding Christian texts in the form of leaflets in some of the books - Harry Potter and such. Over the next few months it started getting worse with leaflets left all over the shop and very visible. Some of them started to upset some of our customers but we couldn't figure out who was leaving them. We did a sweep every 30 mins at its worst and as soon as we took them all down they almost instantly reappeared. After watching hours of CCTV to try to work out who it was the manager realised it was actually a member of staff. Bizarrely he was actually quite vocally atheist. He stopped after he was confronted but never explained it...

So many.

Bosses:

1. Restaurant manager sat in her office doing lines of coke during a major event.
2. Director got so drunk at a client dinner that he passed out and fell face-first into his food.
3. Current manager eats rocket from a bag like it's crisps.

Colleagues:

1. Student who sat in seminars picking bits off himself (skin, scabs, spots, dandruff) and eating them. Best Worst was when he blew his nose in a tissue then gnawed the contents out and ate them.
2. DH (scientist) works with a very smelly guy. One day, they were testing a thermo-imaging camera in the office and the smelly guy disappeared on it completely, apart from his eyes. He was so sweaty that his skin was too cool to show up.

There was the one who lived in a house filled with floor to ceiling newspapers. Literally. And there was the one whose leg moved of its own accord. The more excited he became, the more it jiggled. There was one who looked like Basil Fawlty and wore a bow tie as if it were not strange. There was another who slept in his clothes in his office.

HandsOffOurLand I think you might work where I work, was the man who slept in his office 'entertaining' students in there too?

My others over the years are:

The girl who always ate her lunch in the toilet. With hindsight I do wonder if she might have had issues.

Once worked for a very posh management consultancy where the board members would take all the new lowly admin staff out for the evening as a 'welcome to the company' night, then all pick one each to go back to their hotel with them. I was 17 but luckily had enough sense to tell them to get stuffed. One of the others ended up married to hers some years later. I always wondered what she was thinking when he went out with work and stayed out overnight.

There are more...

NeopremeMermaid when I was newly pregnant I used to feel like eating rocket out of the bag like a bag of crisps. (But I never did and I have never been anyone's boss)

In the 80's I worked in the head office of a Major high Street retailer. At the time we used to get breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and 'high tea' after work all for £12 per month taken directly from our wages

I worked with a guy who had such a large mortgage that he had so little left after paying it he used to have all his meals there and on a Friday would take sandwiches for the rest of the weekend away with him from 'high tea'. Nobody minded.

I used to work with a guy who would turn the lights off and make all his students sit in the floor and chant. They were supposed to be studying the history of an academic discipline.

Woman in her 30's, self announced virgin. Spent all day sharing info on her personal life, including the fact her and her Dad shared a room whilst Mum slept elsewhere and everyone got naked in the evening. She would also spend at least 8 hours a day in S&M internet chat rooms and tell us all what various loons had got her to do over webcams. One day she returned from lunch clutching a sandwich bag full of pubes which she proudly displayed, having been instructed to shave by one of her chatting loons. When I dared object, she reported me to management for bullying her.
Eventually, she met someone in said chatting that was apparently THE ONE. In the space of a month he had flown in from the US and they got married. On his first night, he was discovered sitting on top of a toilet with the lid down, having a crap - claimed he didn't know how English toilets worked. Last I heard, they still living with her parents, he had taken to naked nights with enthusiasm and they were trying for a baby.

The post much higher up about the guy who carried a photo of Gillian Anderson reminded me of my old colleague.

It was my first job and this man was 40 years my senior, and we were both entry-level admin assistants. He'd had an 'important' job before he retired, and then his wife made him go back to work as he was getting under her feet. He always wore a suit, even though it was a closed office and everyone else was in jeans - but he also carried this briefcase. Inside he kept his sandwiches and a framed photograph of his friend's house. At every opportunity he would take out this photo and tell us all that his friend was a millionaire, and had this massive house. He'd go on and on about this bloody friend.

A couple of years ago this friend shot dead his entire family and burned that house to the ground because he was having money trouble, couldn't believe it when it was all over the news. Often wonder if old colleague still has that photo in his briefcase

Oooh I forgot the partner at the firm of solicitors where I worked who kicked my office door in.

I worked in a specialist team of about 10-12 lawyers - one lunchtime it was some occasion or other and everyone bar me in the team had gone out to a lunch. I stayed behind because I had to get a witness statement exchanged by 2pm and was on the phone finalising it with the client.

I could hear phones ringing outside but obviously was on the phone and couldn't pick up. This particular colleague on a different floor was not known for courtesy and patience and became irate that no-one was picking up the phone to deal with his "urgent" query.

So he marched up to our floor, saw me sat at my desk behind a closed door ..... and literally kicked the door in. Only he kicked a little harder than even he intended and the whole thing swung off onto just one hinge. Then he just stood there boiling with rage, bright red and sweaty, staring at my broken door.

Being a fucking miracle worker quite efficient I was able to finish the statement, exchange it, then deal with Red Face's urgent query (which wasn't urgent at all). He was pretty chastened when he realised why I was the only one there and did mutter a quiet "sorry about the door" as he skulked out.

Paws - !!!!!!

I worked with someone once who ate the same thing every day for the whole 4 years I was there. Boiled chicken breast, boiled spuds and iceburg lettuce.

She was late regularly because she didn't want her freshly boiled spuds to wilt her lettuce

Great bloody thread. Marking my place to come back and share my contribution!

BalloonSlayer That I can understand but my boss has never been pregnant. She has hinted at eating disorders though. :(

Ok. I have a few. Advertising in the 90s

The production temp who turned up having obviously hugely lied on her (fantastic) CV about her age and many other things. She was 60 odd yrs old and very frail physically but had a character of steel and some bizarre ways. She had this really screetchy loud voice that whistled through her false teeth and she would not do an ounce of work, just talked about her "sugar daddies" and stay on the phone calling friends, filling up her desk with toy chickens and she scared the clients so much we nearly lost so much business. We only kept her for as long as we did as we were seriously desperate and she was available immediately (wonder why). When she finally got the tin tac she spent the last day literally screaming on the phone about what a "shit cunting company" we were and how she may apply for a job as McDonalds next as she had been fired from so many jobs.

One of the company directors asked me to do some voiceover work. Being young, pretty and hugely gullable I didn't ask for payment for this but accepted his offer to take me to dinner instead (I know I know). I was 19 and fresh faced he was about 60 and looked like Mike Read. He took me to The Savoy and proceeded to get more and more horribly pissed at the American bar. I was so embarrassed and wanted to just leave. He told me his wife was taking medication that put her off sex and said he had booked a room. He got really forceful about it at one point and I ended up running away from him screaming down the back streets of covent garden.

The chairman's office was opposite my desk. He used to call me up and tell me he was imagining fucking me and watch me through the window and rub his cock. That man harassed me to the point it was unbearable. Every year his wife would bring a new baby in to the office.

I have lots more but it would blatantly out me. Most of them are of a sexual nature

I've just remembered another one. Perv boss years ago. He used to entertain married ladies in his office every Friday afternoon, he would lock his door and tell us not to disturb him.
The colour scheme of his office was yellow and dark blue - it was the 90s!
when we had meetings in his office, if you sat on the sofa, it had white stains on it - boak.
We used to strech the yellow throw over them - urgh!!

His deputy manager used to look at porn sites while he was supposed to be training teenangers in job skills. If you went to speak to him he would hurriedly minimize the screen.

Oh MarKettle that wasn't the guy who killed his daughter and wife and shot the dogs and horses too was it?

If so I remember it. Awful.

Yes, in Oswestry. Really, really horrible :(

It was so awful the BBC (I think) made a documentary about it. It really got to me.

I've had some bad 'uns but nothing to match what I've been reading! So my main contribution is:

Over lunch today with a friend who's a facilities manager for a large law firm, I mentioned the Phantom Shitters I've been reading about. Apparently his place had one (a female), but it stopped when the most likely culprit was talked to sternly. Your mileage may vary with your own, but this seemed to be the issue with his PSer: she seemed to think it was her right to do what she liked and the cleaners' - ahem - duties to clean it up.

Simple as that. In theory. Oh, I'm sure there's something deeper to it, of course, but that was the base, as opposed to "whoops, missed" or being artistic, etc.

A pleasantly eccentric colleague used to pace the office saying 'I'm tired and weary of this world' and making various animal noises. We used to egg him on. He was quizmaster for the Friday BBC quiz, and people who were on holiday or off sick would often ring in so they could participate.

One woman never wore a bra - unfortunately she was quite old and had very saggy breasts which ended somewhere around her navel. She dressed in dreadful baggy sacks of clothes and never wore makeup or made herself look nice. Her boss was a very glam woman who bought her suits from John Lewis lines and wore loads of makeup. I was interviewed by the two together and was really confused as to what the dress standard of the organisation was.

A dear old Oxbridge gentleman held some public meetings in a rough area where the school kids shot at the council officers' car wheels with air rifles. He said how refreshing it was that the art of catapult shooting was still in use amongst the young.

One temp drew pictures and doodles all over consultation responses which she was photocopying to give to senior councillors.

Another temp explained at length that she thought that the world should be more understanding towards paedophiles as they probably inherited a taste for young children from the middle ages when everyone got married in their teen years.

Another temp would huff and puff and get cross whenever she had to answer the phone and would be really rude to the caller. It was an admin / receptionist type post.

We finally got a very normal, competent, diligent student temp to fill the job and one day she rang in to say she'd had to go to the police station to give a statement about an incident for which she'd been a witness. She never returned. The agency never managed to trace her and she never contacted them either. She ignored or un-friended all the colleagues who were friends with her on facebook.

One headteacher was lovely and very over-worked, but had to water all the pot plants in the school and change all the printer cartridges himself.

And I was the weird colleague who collected everyone else's rubbish so I could take it home & recycle it. And went round switching off all the electrics at the end of the day. When I started the job my colleagues mocked me, but by the time I left, even the most entrenched thrower-outer had started recycling things even at home.

A variation on the theme of colleagues bringing dogs into work - I work with a woman who brings her deceased dog's ashes to work in a little wooden box kept in a supermarket carrier bag.

I've a few, nothing as odd as some though. :-)

The temp who was on his third chance for randomly taking sick days, doing crappy work and falling asleep at his desk who came in on casual Friday wearing a t-shirt saying "Fuck you".

The schizophrenic lady who went off her meds regularly and when she did would:

• bang her keyboard when typing so hard that it had to be replaced about once a month
• complain to the manager that the other staff were dancing on their desks, making passes at her (eh, no), singing too loudly while they worked etc
• write letters to the wives of male colleagues telling them that she was in love with their husband and that they were having an affair and that he was going to leave the wife for her
• show up on the doorstep of above wives/ male colleagues ranting and crying and trying to attack the wife

Not funny I know but it was pretty odd

The delusional porter who believed that he was some kind of secret agent and when we made a point of asking him what he got up to at the weekend would say stuff like:

• I was trying out a new supercar for the British government, drove to Spain and back just to give it a good run
• I got married to a pilot and we flew to Marrakech for the weekend
• its top secret I can't talk about it

So other porters used to play tricks on him like telling him that there was a suspicious package in the post (they had put a ticking clock in a parcel) so he inspected the package, and then ran a mile to the nearest lake and threw it into it. They also told him to inspect the lockers of the other porters and planted a tightly wrapped package of flour in one of them. He called the police, who luckily knew his history and didn't do a sweep of the whole building for coke dealers.

our boss is a serious 'i've done one better than you' his stories are hilarious, gives us something to talk about for hours.....eg if you say I've been to Tenerife he'll have been to Elevenarife!!!!!