Strange Creatures In The Workplace

I was inspired by Misssy's recent post to think of some of the 'characters' that I have come across in my, far too many, years working in different offices.

Some of the choicest ones that come to mind are detailed below:

Ear Defender Man

By all accounts an extremely intelligent and capable individual, Ear Defender Man used to drive us mad with his continual claims that his ability to work was being hampered by the high pitched whistling noise emanating from a nearby computer.

We sent a support technician to investigate, needless to say he couldn't find a problem or hear the mysterious noise. More complaints, so we sent another engineer. Still nothing. More complaints, this time I went down myself along with a representative from the HSE department. Guess what? Yep, nothing. We swapped out the machine anyway just to be helpful. Two days later, more complaints...maybe the noise hadn't been coming from the machine we removed after all, it was maybe the one next to it. And so it went on...

This carried on for far longer than I care to recall. I felt sorry for the guy as it was obviously bothering him, however, it was difficult to address the problem without recruiting some bizarre support technician/border collie crossbreed.

Eventually he came up with his own solution. He took to wearing a pair of industrial ear defenders at all times when he was at his desk. Not ideal but he seemed happy.

Hope for his sake the fire alarm doesn't go off...

The Matrix Vampire

New boy starts on the servicedesk upstairs. We can kind of forgive the ponytail and the floor length leather coat cos hey, its IT and we are pretty well used to geeks and nerds.

On his second day on the job he feels comfortable enough to put in his Dracula teeth, not the cheap plastic ones you get in lucky bags etc but a custom made set. Apparently he wore them all the time in the evenings and at weekends...

Not in here son! Get them oot yer mooth and get back on the phone...

The Gonk Bashers

A couple of normal everyday IT folk, good company, funny, good banter, etc etc

Except - when they start discussing their latest exploits in World Of Warcraft (or Gonk Bashing for Geeks as I call it).

I just can't stand it when two apparently rational people start rambling on about attacking some madey up monster, getting a new cloak with magical powers, and working on their leather working skills so that they can make their owl bear character a new belt, and on and on and on...

DMFHI.....(does my feckin head in)

The Clean Freak

This is not a particularly nice tale, if you are of a sensitive disposition please skip to the next section.

The Clean Freak was an otherwise normal joe who had developed a bit of a phobia since leaving the gents toilet just after another bloke who didn't wash his hands after doing what he had to do. This lodged in the Clean Freak's brain and started to eat away at it, before to long he was opening doors with his elbows or pulling the sleeves of his jumper down over his hands to press the start button on the photocopier.

The situation was most definitely not helped by the colleagues who worked alongside him. Being 'roughy toughy' oilmen they decided that playing on the Clean Freak's phobia would be a great laugh and proceeded to lace his lunchtime sandwiches with some freshly harvested pubic hairs when he was away from his desk. Needless to say this did not go down well.

Not sure what happened to this guy, he is probably living in a bubble somewhere.

The Overtime Golfer

Some years ago I worked on a major project that encouraged weekend working. This was quite attractive fiscally as you only had to work a half days time to get a full days pay, but this still wasn't enough for some people.

The main office block was 'L' shaped with the main entrance to the front and a long wing stretching out to the rear of the building.

One guy used to come to work on a Saturday, park his car in the car park at the back of the building and then walk round to the front, enter, and sign in at reception. He would then proceed downstairs and along the corridor to his office on the ground floor of the rear wing. Once he was in his office he would open the window, climb out, get into his car and drive off to play golf. On his return he would climb back in the window, make his way back to reception and sign out as having done a days work.

Fly git.

The Ground Floor Lady

The lady in question became known as The Ground Floor Lady after a safety review in the office decreed that she was not allowed to work on any of the upper floors.

The reasoning behing this was that she was so obese that in the case of a fire she would not be able to use the lifts and would be unable to walk down the stairs.

Surely a whole load of issues needing to be addressed here rather than just a blanket ruling of 'Hey porky, ground floor for you'...