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.

pawsandclaws - The paranoia is awful isn't it? The thing is everyone seemed so normal there, yet one was capable of doing that. I left shortly after and never found out if they were caught. Did yours get caught?

Grumplestilskin - The front of some people! What happenned after?

Well, had a thread whinging discussing one last week. To recap, this colleague:

• only talks about cricket or gardening. That's all he ever talks about. Until I started working with him I had no idea there was such a thing as county cricket matches (and I was a happier person for it).
• cuts his nails at his desk in the morning
• refers to looking after his own child as "baby sitting" and
• is always right, and the best at everything, ever.

Though compared to some of the specimens others have worked with, he's looking positively normal

There was the guy who lied about everything. He had greenish teeth (nice), was skinny and grubby looking, but would come out with stuff like "I used to date Ashley Simpson. I dumped her as she wasn't good enough for me". or "I'm getting a knight rider car; it's being shipped from the States on a catamaran". I think he also allegedly dated Shakira at one point. I don't think so.

then your usual group of useless people, and my line manager who would have a go at us about writing Business Appropriate emails (meanwhile, I was editing her boss's emails before they went out) and who sent a NOTORIOUS email to senior individuals saying they couldn't do something because of legal reasons "so hard cheese".

notalone the Phantom Crapper stopped abruptly. We never found out if it was someone who left or just had enough of winding everyone up. Our office had three floors of a five storey block and the toilets were in a common area by the stairs, so it could have been someone from the other offices (also they were unisex - each was an individual lockable room rather than just a cubicle) so it could have been a man or a woman.

Oh I forgot one deeply unpleasant man I shared an office with once. I politely enquired whether his three children were boys or girls and he said "two girls and a boy. Took the wife three tries to get it right."

My DSis had a workplace where while the boss was overseas , her husband came in to the office and put pressure on junior staff to lend him money. Including walking one to the ATM and standing over her while she got out quite a large sum. Turned out he had a gambling problem.

Team leader who had the very worst dandruff I have ever seen and would announce around 11am each day that he was "Going to wave a brown one off to the sea" and then meander off to the lav

Oh god. I'm self-employed now and work at home, and this sort of thing is partly why.

The IT support who stole loads of computer equipment, wore sexist t-shirts, stank, swore, took endless sickies and then when he was finally sacked, staged a dirty protest on the office doorstep!

The utter loon who was off work with a burn on her stomach because she tried to iron her jumper while wearing it. She was mad in many, many other ways too, too many to list.

The senior manager who never did any work, dressed like a hooker (really - teetering heels, fishnets, micro-mini, birds-nest hair, tonnes of slap), pissed off all her staff yet somehow kept getting promoted by the board.

If anyone else on here worked there in the 90s, maybe you recognise them!

There was a chef I worked with when I was a waitress, who was AWFUL. Really awful. All the waitressing staff bar one muppet hated him.

He would smoke constantly (though not unusual for a chef) and hardly ever changed his chef top, so it was covered in food stains and general grossness; he stank of ash. The kitchen was a state - he hardly ever cleaned, and one day he was having a go at me for wearing nail polish (said that we'd get a massive fine if environmental health saw me wearing nail polish) so I said "and how big would the fine be if they saw your kitchen?" He was gob smacked and couldn't respond. He then got ill with lung cancer - still continued to smoke and would turn up to work with tubes in his nose and down his throat, would walk through the restaurant like this in front of customers. He then asked a waitress who was a medical student to buy some medicines for him while she was on vacation in Spain. Being a lovely, caring individual she did, and when she came back he said "ha! If you'd been caught you would have been arrested".

He was going to go off to law school apparently and train to become an employment lawyer. He now has a hotdog stand in a small town in Scotland, so achieved his ambitions I see ...

There is a man i work with bless him he's quite lovely really but he ALWAYS says the word 'so' at the end of a sentence. For example

Me; "Ian did you have a good weekend"
Him; "Yeah was really good thanks, so."

I'm like so what?? Secretly his name is so Ian hehe.

He also has a thai bride!

One man worked for the company since school, in the same role and was rather set in his ways. When he was transferred to my office he arrived with a large cardboard box containing spare shoes (with shoe stretcher thingies), jacket (with hanger) and various homemade manuals which would occasionally be referred to with a weary flourish. At 10.30am on the dot he would go for his morning ablousions and lunch was at noon regardless of whether we were busy or quiet. He also kept his tea bags in a wash bag in the gents loo.

The woman who was 54 but told everyone she was early 30s who was going to have a baby. From Jesus. She also apparently had several postgraduate qualifications including in IT but she could not work the computer. She also claimed to be able to speak Spanish and once talked to a Portugeuse customer in this "Spanish" because "ees just necks door". She could not speak Spanish or even English (her native language was Italian). Apparently I was racist for insisting she speak English to our English speaking customers She also complained to HR because I "shows no concern for staff crossing the road". There was no road in the office or requirement to cross any roads at work. She got very upset when I had to invite her to a disciplinary meeting and wrote to her home address because "now you know where I live you can follow me home". I pointed out if I was going to follow her home I would just follow her home but that I wouldn't as a) I was not a nutter b) I had no interest in her what so ever out of work and why would I be arsed?

goats, is he Irish? That's just what we do, put "so" at the end of some sentences - ok so. Or maybe he's picked it up from visiting Ireland or something..

PMSL at these, especially the email ending "so hard cheese"
I really want to use that now in a formal letter

"hard cheese" woman also used to refer to everyone as "sweetie" and "honey" on conference calls. It was awful - we were in an open plan office and she'd be on these longs calls so for an hour you'd hear
"Hi, yes, this is the [blah blah serious work] call. I hi sweetie! How are things? That's so lovely dear" "Now honey, you can't do that, I don't think the system specifications are quite right. Now [this was my favourite], I'm going to stop talking for a minute so that you can all make comments or ask questions" "okay my lovelies, that is great".

This was not in a nursery school, it was in an investment bank.

The one who would ring his wife during the day to check she'd loaded the dishwasher correctly....among other things. To this day I think he was an emotional abuser. He was definitely a bully.

The bloke who had very greasy long hair, a lot of stubble and very hairy legs who would wear a dress to work every day with Doc Martens and nothing on his legs, hence I know about the hairness. On Burns night/day he'd wear a kilt.

The one who was sacked for stuffing ladies' knickers down the tolilets and blocking them. All the knickers were stolen off washing lines. Not in my department, thank God.

The man who stared at your tits while talking to you, he was very short so basically was directly in line with most women's breasts, but even so...he also played pocket billiards a LOT.

I worked with a girl who was well into LARP (live action role play)...basically dressing up as a sexy unicorn or some shit and fannying about in a field for a weekend. She invited myself and a few other colleagues to her birthday party in a pub where she took us up to see her 'living quarters'. The whole room was just covered in stacks of fetish wear, crockery and piles and PILES of cat shit. It stank to the high heavens and gave me the dry boak.

She was dressed as a sort of medieval wench with the tightest corset imaginable so her areola were actually on show...her cake was actually based on her breasts and at one point she shoved them in it and allowed fellow LARPERS to lick the frosting off as her Husband fucked her with his eyes...it was seriously creepy. Her presents were, um...interesting. I was most impressed by the fact that she received about 6 bottles of authentic Mead, all from different friends.

I worked with another colleague who was a bona fide mentalist and when we had a fancy dress day she wore a costume that basically looked like a porno version of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (the tiniest gingham pinafore imaginable, push up bra turned all the way up to 11 and great big fuck-off glittery red stilletos, frilly white ankle socks and red lipstick!)

I should probably mention that I was the Manager at a certain childrens stuffed toy shop (truly unBEARable) and she spent the morning walking her Toto on rollerskates at the front of the store and literally screaching pleasantries at passers by until I had to break it to her that somebody had complained about "the whore Dorothy scaring the kids".

"The whore Dorothy scaring the kids"

more more!

Babyheave I wish! I currently work for a public transport company, so only posted the weirdos from there. I'll have a think about the ones I used to work with in pharmacy, and also in the police service.

One colleague used to regale us with the trials and tribulations of his step-daughter who had run away from home and hooked up with a crack-dealer in South London.

You could have heard a pin drop when he shouted out "So she's got syphillis", when he was on the phone.

The shift manager who developed a lazy lob whenever we had a particularly difficult IT problem in the data centre. He would stand behind you with his half-erection at the level of your shoulder. Didn't mess with it or owt, but you could spot it a mile off.
Otherwise he was a really smashing chap

my gay work colleague used to announce he was going to 'drop the kids off' when he went to the loo i was until he explained it was a reference to the days before safe sex...

Oh dear - These are HILARIOUS, I love the Dorothy whore one and WHO gets off on smearing poop all over the walls? Apart from my potty training DS ...

I once worked in an electric goods shop, a small shop in a big chain - We used to have a massive stock room with big TVs and Fridgefreezer boxes so lots of cubby holes and hidey spaces, used to have a lad who was a few years older than I was (16) who used to shout me and tell me he needed help to move such and such - I'd get upstairs and he'd be wanking - Once he actually stripped down to his birthday suit - I had a few flutterings with him but generally used to walk away - 6 years later he is the manager at a brand new mega-store of the same chain, I belly laughed when one of the saturday girls was telling me all about the size of his stock room ... Not that impressive if I remember correctly!

But its always the quiet ones, another guy I worked with has been arrested for being part of a pedophile ring - Now if you'd have told me it was the first guy I'd have said "Yes, I fully believe it" but not this guy - really shook me up!

Toxic thinster, drinks protein shakes. Has to leave work last as thinks it makes her more important. Only holidays in America as somehow thinks it's common to go to Europe. Head to toe polyester suits - only buys clothes in the next sale. I could go on but I'm boring myself ...

Thankfully I haven't worked with nearly as many strange strange people as you lot have!

The oddest I think was a manager who, as an example of his outstanding moral character REHIRED a guy he'd fired for phoning sex lines at work! Later when one of the women decided to leave the company he started sexually harrassing her in a really blatant way, including sending her naked photographs of himself. He was truly vile. (The woman won her tribunal against him btw!)