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've nearly finished my masters in HR and I have to say at no point during the course did we cover shit smearing. Not ever. I'm now thinking, based on this thread, that there should have been at least one lecture on it if not a whole module.

MNHQ can we put this thread in classics please?!

DH had a colleague who used to leave a trail- slimey fluid, all over seats and everything else. We assume she had something permanently leaking in the handbag she always carried (NOT an inco bag, was checked each day by security who confirmed it) as there were never any marks from her clothes. It smelled foul though and she did really hate everyone so quite possibly deliberate, goodness knows what it was! She's now in the hospitality industry, wish i knew where to avoid it.

When I worked in the filing vaults of HMRC- yep you cam imagine my joy at THAT one- I was on my own with a bloke who'd make your blood run cold for no reason, he was about 40 and I was about 22; on my birthday handed me a birthday card then said (memorably) 'Some days I like to wake my girlfrioend up with oral sex becuase she says it makes her clitoris tingle'- then walked off.

I was like ----> but also

Oh and the boss at aforementioned Governmental dept (was circa 1995) who called in and got a day off with the following excuse:

'I can't come in becuase I have been cleaning the goldfish's bowl and put him in the bath so now I can't have a shower'.

Nobody even mentioned it as a problem!

(PS can I just point out that the palce I mentioned ceased to exist the year after which is when I left so if you still work for them it's not you I promise )

I am a redhead. Very normal looking, I promise, but a redhead nevertheless. A college asked me if I was a celebrity in my home town because of my hair colour. They were being serious. They genuinely believed that red hair = celebrity status.

"you can pick the peanuts out of my shit"

Nice!!

OMFG - some, actually most, of these are seriously weird. I used to work in an industry where eccentricity wasn't frowned upon, in fact it was almost encouraged ... but you lot ... I'm almost lost for words.

The only one I can think of was an ex-boss (and owner) of the company, who was normally a nice guy, albeit he could be a bit of a hard task-master at times. But on the odd occasion when he was working late, after we'd all gone home and probably in a bit of a bad mood, used to stalk round the office with a pad of Post-It Notes leaving notes on people's desks/computers which said things like : "if you don't tidy up your desk in the next 48 hours I'm going to throw it all away", or "where's X document I asked for?", or "have you remembered to X?", or "SEE ME".

We finally got used to arriving in the morning seeing the entire office absolutely festooned with yellow Post-It Notes - and used to compare notes on our 'Mark-O-Grams' (not his real name)

I had one who used to lift up her arse and let out farts in the lunchroom whilst we were all eating our lunch!
No shame, even lift her arse up to let it out.

She also used to remove her mouthguard at the table before dinner, right at the table, just spit it out and leave it glistening on a napkin.

She also used to bite her fingernails and line them up on the napkin next to her plate.

And then she used to eat all the fucking bread rolls and leave none for anybody else.

I got used to her foul habits pretty quickly so when we were at a conference dinner, I would sit on the same side of the table as her, several seats a down and chuckle inwardly at the looks up repulsion from those sitting opposite her.

You couldn't make it up.

looks of repulsion

We have had a phantom crapper too

One bloke absolutely stank, he also didn't wear a belt, he just had a bit of string! He helped run a Boys Brigade troop, was probably about late 20's/early 30's. No-one would tell him he stank so in the end we drew a name out of the hat to tell the manager, don't think anything was done about it. He left to become a priest!

I wonder if anyone else will recognise mine? Completely bald except for one long strand of hair that he combed round and over, he used to eat licorice shoe laces in loval government meetings, slowly sucking them in. He wrote in a magazine under the alias of "Goat Groper"

I can't believe the amount of phantom crappers I'd love to know what the psychology behind it is.

Yes there was a female phantom crapper at one place I worked, they once found a whole poo outside the door of the toilets . I had NO idea it was a common thing.

Worst boss I ever had once said to me (after making some minor mistake) "if you do that again I'll put my cock in your ear and fuck some sense into you". Charmer.

Can I just say I am loving this thread!

I wanted to add not so much an odd colleague, more a seriously unpleasant one.

I worked for a large City law firm and one of the departments was headed by a female partner named F. Each department took on about 4-5 trainee solicitors per six month rotation, and they did 4 seats x 6 months to qualify.

F was known as being pretty much the worst partner to work for. She reduced trainees to tears on a regular basis, kept them working overnight even when it wasn't necessary, and was generally rude and unpleasant.

One September the head of the firm called everyone to a meeting to explain that one of the trainees due to join F's group had tragically died. The poor girl had been raped and murdered. She was 22.

Shocked silence fell upon the group, broken only when F piped up indignantly "but who's going to do my work?"

There was one tightarse in one office. Loads of members of staff so would often sponsor someone's child for this, that, other etc. This one member of staff never did any of that, wasn't in the social committee where we paid about £2 a month to go towards lots of little events that were organised.

One time, he bought in a football scratchcard for his son's Scout group. With this, someone wins about £10 or £20 depending on the price of the teams. A number of us may have boycotted decided not to do his card!

In my first ever job we had a colleague who smelt so bad that you just knew when she had arrived in the building in the mornings because the smell pervaded the whole building somehow.

Paws that;s so awfu;l :(

I wear very high heels at work and then sometimes change into flats if I have a lot of walking to do at lunch

Once came back, retrieved high heels from under desk to find a male colleague had left a note in them professing his love for the shoes..........couldnt help wondering if he had sniffed / licked them or worse when he was crawling around under my desk leaving the note in them

That is bad Paws :(

Paws, I know to what you refer.

Still ed now, X years later, to re-hear that story again... unreal.

That is so shocking. Did nobody tell her off for being so thoughtless?

I had a very odd colleague who seemed to dance to his own jig in so many ways which I actually admired. He was wierd but just doing his thing.

My personal fave was when he visited my desk with a matchbox which he then slid open to show me a 'spectacular' spider he'd caught the night before at home who was 'large but very friendly'. He thought I'd enjoy seeing given he'd overheard me mention the week before how scared I was of them and how much I'd like to get over my phobia . Well intentioned but what on earth????

We also had a nose picker who used to wipe it on the walls of the ladies loos. Disgusting.

anonymous it was about 14-15 years ago, I remember it was around the time I got married. I think the story got round pretty rapidly, F was never the most popular of personalities!