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.

Mrs S

I work with physicists and software engineers, so the odd level is pretty high anyway tbh.

But my first 'proper job' boss used to call us into his office individually on christmas eve for a talk about the real meaning of christmas, how it wasn't a time for celebration, and to give us each a bunch of evangelistic leaflets.

Oh god there are so many. Some of which I've posted on MN about before, but here are my top 5.

1. The bloke who got fired for running a porn website during work hours piggybacking on the network. He wasn't vile in person, but the website was and anyone with that amount of chutzpah deserves a mention.

1. The one who cuts his toenails in the office, smells like an ashtray, and only eats food that can be rehydrated. His desk has around 8 different varieties of soup-in-a cup and his drawers full of noodles with random pot noodles shoved everywhere making it look more like a kitchen cupboard than a work area. He surprisingly has a girlfriend. No, we don't understand it either.

1. The one who stored a variety of breakfast cereals in the kitchen and munch coco pops and shreddies at his desk all day. It wasn't 'presentee-ism' as he was never in on time either.

1. The one who had had serious food issues. He only ate about 3 things and had to do it in secret, in the loo.

1. The woman who I fired - I can't tell you all of the things she did as it would out me to anyone who knew her, but you, you dirty cow, I'm talking about you.

OMG MrsS. It makes my lot sound almost normal.

Oh the oddities on this thread are great but jumpjockey's 15 to 1 fan sounds like a prize catch!

My favourite strange colleague nearly drove me to resign. We had to work on a team of 5, he was a long term temp/contractor in a supporting role but seemed to think he was MD. He was very dim but covered up for it by using a LOT of management speak. I had to mentally translate everything he said. He was utterly incapable of having anything like normal conversation - like the bloke off Brittas Empire x 100! We were trying to arrange a team meeting venue and instead of "what does everyone think?" he said "What's the cohesive consensus?" ARGHH! Talk normally! He was unable to moderate his delivery regardless of who he was presenting to (we were in sales) and if a presentation had 200 slides, every audience got all 200, rather than picking out what he needed. He had a 10 min slot at a conference and had to be forcibly removed from the stage as he was still crapping on 40 mins later, regardless of the audience bleeding from their eyes. Ugh. And he announced that all meetings with him should start after 11 as he had a "toilet motion" at 10:50 every day and if he missed it then it would "go back up."

I was going to tell you about the bloke who would regularly rummage down the back of his pants then sniff his finger...

But that doesn't even come close to the wierdos the rest of you have worked with

at the man covering everything in jizz

MrsS, especially the goal story. The bastards. Do you work in the City by any chance? I hated the majority of the arsehole blokes who worked in the city. The strange thing was, get them on their own and they were normal, but with a pack of blokes they were awful.

I used to work with a lady who was very tight (she had money, she just chose to spend it on odd things). She didn't have central heating at home so she would bring her wet washing in in plastic bags and hope the clothes would dry in the bag under her desk. It took weeks of me hearing her rustling plastic bags to realise what she was doing. Surely her washing must of stank.

She also would bring in frozen bottles of milk so they would defrost by the time she took them home. It was so cold in her house that they wouldn't thaw.

When it got extra cold at home, her and her dp would hop into the car, turn the engine on and put the heating on full blast.

I did feel sorry for her until she announced that that had bought a brand new kayak, which was the same sort of price as getting central heating installed.

I used to work as an employment lawyer and came across some seriously strange people at work (by which I mean they worked for my clients).

It never ceased to amaze me what people thought they would get away with at work. There was one couple that used to exchange really filthy emails at work, so detailed that they could literally have spent all day at it (I used to have to warn IT that the client was forwarding me emails saying stuff like "OMG I've just cum in my pants" so they didn't think I was doing something suspect).

There was one employee who had such a fiery hatred of a gay colleague that he refused to touch anything (paper, a chair, anything) the colleague had touched because he didn't want "to get AIDs". He used to wear a tape recorder to work and made detailed diaries of the "evidence" he had amassed against the gay colleague (one entry told of how the gay colleague had wished him a good morning with a tone that suggested he was going to rape him in the toilets). He was seriously unpleasant.

One young lady claimed sexual harassment against a colleague and produced a number of fairly graphic letters from him explaining what he'd like to do with her. Unfortunately she omitted to mention her enthusiastic replies (including a classic post it note she left on his phone that said "come feel the warmth of my silken beaver".

There were hundreds of others, many quite sad like the alcoholic receptionist who left a water bottle filled with vodka on her desk (which was taken by mistake into a meeting and swigged by a manager - whoops). It was really common to find men accessing hard core porn at work, and not unheard of to find child porn either - not a pleasant issue to have to deal with.

OMG I am loving this thread.

:( Paws, some people are awful.

at "come feel the warmth of my silken beaver" though.

The colleague who used to warn us she was going to be off sick. She used to say "I've updated the bla bla file, just in case I'm not here for some reason ". Two days later? Off sick.

Happened as regular as clockwork, she was SOOO predictable. I kept dropping hints to the boss that we knew Miss X was going to be off sick, then she was, but boss either didn't notice or didn't care. Mind you, Miss X had her head so far up boss's arse.... .

I love these!

The lurker - A man i used to work with, we had an earthquake at night and he came in to the office when i was on my own and said "Did the earth move for you last night?" WTF!

Then everytime i went to make the coffee he would come out of his office and just look at me in a creepy way. I would say he was socialy impeared but i think he was just creepy.

The colleague who used to have his hands down his trousers most of the time - helped him think apparently.

Oh, and the female colleague who shagged the office hunk at the christmas party, after taking a load of coke, then appeared back in the bar "dripping" (eugh, sorry) spunk everywhere, slagged everyone off and eventually stumbled off to god knows where (minus her knickers).

She phoned the next day to resign.

bearskinwoolies you don't happen to work in journalism do you?

Pawsnclaws - your Phantom Crapper story - used to work with one of those too. I had assumed it was the same one as yours - at a certain NHS Trust in the Midlands. But after seeing your last post, I realise that there must be more than one in existence....

Agatha this was in London. Vile isn't it though? It was clearly deliberate and every time it happened they had to get a specialist cleaner in.

-I have a colleague that eats chicken bones. Occasionally we'll have KFC and she'll sit and crunch her way though the entire thing, no waste at all.

She's from South Africa, maybe it's normal there? It makes me

-I used to work with an alcoholic with a penchant for getting his penis bitten by prostitutes.

Some of these are amazing

Pawsnclaws - yes completely vile. The place I used to work were considering asking everyone for a specimen to DNA test and compare to the samples taken from the walls/floor/cupboards etc. They gave up on that idea in the end as lots of people refused, so there was really no point.

Unfortunately, no specialist cleaner employed to remove it where I worked - but that's the NHS for you!

My office manager cooked hot dogs by boiling them in the kettle. Didn't bother emptying the water and let people make coffee and try and work out why it tasted revolting.

But his worst ever joke in the office was to take a colleague's Slimfast powder that he bought in bulk and tip it in the bin. He then replaced it with "Weight Gain" body building powder and didnt tell said colleague. Only a month later when colleague couldnt work out why he was putting weight on did he actually confess.

I could go on about his antics.

Such a massive loss when he died in the Tsunami. He would still be doing these crazy things other wise.

The woman who turned up high as a kite after an all nighter with a 'famous man', got on all fours on the md's desk and asked him to please fuck her now! All before morning tea

I assume he declined her offer?

Did she manage to keep her job?

Mine.

I worked with a man who had 2 toupees. One short & 1 longer. He'd wear the shorter one & then change it for the longer one for a few weeks. And then back to the shorter one.

I also worked with some football holligans. I went nuts at them one day when they said they'd been to a rival town & followed a local girl down the street threatening to rape her. They seemed chuffed that she ran off crying. They never dared tell their vile stories in front of me again.

I also had a boss who had no idea who I was. I got her in one of those christmas present things & when she got the present from me she had to ask other people who I was.

I worked with a man who would take a 30 minute dump at 11am each day.

Where do I start.....

We used to have a phantom crapper in our office in the female toilets. This person used to smear it all over the walls and door, always in the same cubicle and always between 9am - 10am. It was so bad HR sent an email around warning us this person when caught would be sacked. They then fitted CCTV outside the toilets to monitor who was going in an out, and asked people to be vigilant. The thing is I started work at 10am and always used the toilets around the same time as I had a long bus journey to work and was always bursting for a wee on arrival. I was that worried I would be blamed that I stopped going on arrival and got a water infection as a result of holding on too long.

In the same place we had a guy who was seriously unhinged. If anyone looked at him wrong or slighted him he would hold a grudge forever and would tell anyone who would listen what he would do in revenge and that he wouldn't care if the person died. He used to go on holiday by himself and would attach himself to random groups of people without seeing anything wrong in this. The worst occasion was when he had been off work sick for ages and when he came back I asked if he was feeling better. His reply was "Don't worry I am not going to hurt anyone anymore". I still fully expect him to appear in the news one day.

There was the guy who never washed, always reeked of alcohol and was eventually sacked for downloading porn featuring dwarves.

The girl who found out she was 8 weeks pregnant and declared she was too heavy to fetch her own drinks and tried to get everyone to run round after her.

The older guy who would sleep in his car at lunchtime and would never wake up on his own. We had an informal rota to wake him up at 1pm after lunch. He would come into work regularly with a talking toy parrot on his shoulder and would dress as Santa nearer Xmas. Mad as a box of frogs that one but lovely with it

Notalone that's awful - with our Phantom Crapper the sense of paranoia was so bad that we started going to the loo in pairs and getting each other to sign off that we'd left it in a clean state!

One less than charming colleague used to loudly announce "off for a dump" or some such graphic expression ...... every single day. Mind you, he also used to ask every female colleague if they wanted to see his "one eyed trouser snake" - he was a real catch.

One of the secretaries in her 40s told everyone she was a virgin. She was desperate not to be, and married a man she didn't know in the hope of finally getting some action. Sadly the marriage was never consummated because he was a gay Russian ballet dancer who needed a visa. The marriage was annulled.

one who called in sick then turned up to same place to do an agency shift!

(as sick cover for herself )