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[tania]

during the course of my undergraduate degree, i spent a year or so working at a call center cold-calling graduate students and asking them to donate to the university. it wasn't actually that raw a deal. i also worked with a student named sam who delighted everyone every single day with his psychopathic tendencies and constant obsession with violence, including (but not limited to) the fact that he threatened death upon people who wouldn't donate money to him on a regular basis, once threatened to gouge out my friend andrew's eyes with a pen, and claimed that reservoir dogs was his favourite comedy film. specifically, for the "stuck in the middle with you" scene.

as weird as this guy was, nothing compared to when a new hire, amanda, freaked out upon realizing she had to work with this guy and then proceeded to tell me the craziest shit i have ever heard in my life: apparently years ago they were very distant acquaintances and knew each other based solely on the fact that they had a class together and rode the same bus home. the conversations never extended beyond the words "hi" and "bye", to give you an idea of how well they knew each other. this goes on for a while and then about a week later, out of the blue, he gets hold of her email and contacts her somehow, letting her know that "i've done a bit of fiction writing and i want to know what you think about it". so she opens it up, wondering what on earth it could be, and it is honest to god a 10 page erotic fanfiction about the two of them having sex. all over the place. grossly physically exaggerated and written like a 14 year old boy's porno fantasy, where she has tits the size of her head and he has a massive penis and etc. she still had it saved to her inbox after all this time. needless to say it wasn't long before everyone had a copy.

so yeah, i worked with this guy and it was amazing. now tell me your stories.

[Jace]

I once worked with this girl we all thought was a lesbian, I think her name was tani-- oh... wait...

I worked with a dude who looked like this:

He would get angry at the smallest things too. It was hilarious.

[JD]

There is this guy in my class that non-jokingly threatened me with a pear. He's also a conspiracy theorist who goes on these hilarious rants about how US corporations are out to get us.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Call centre jobs tend to attract absolute freaks. When I was doing cold calling market research surveys there were a couple of really odd guys. One of the supervisors was an older dude who always had paint chips in his hair, smoked his cigarettes through those long plastic things that you see in 1930s films and walked around with his hands down the front of his pants. Not like masturbating or anything but just with his hands down the front of his pants. He constantly leered at the girls who worked there and would always ask them, under the guise of making friendly conversation about the day ahead, "So, are you up for it today?"

Another guy at the same call centre was this horrible little lad/chav dude who had this horrid ratty little moustache and a terrible mullet. Basically the worst kind of white trash. I sat next to him once and during the day I was doodling a skull on some paper I had. He noticed this and proceeded to tell me why the skull I had drawn was shit and how he could do so much better in five seconds. He then draws this terrible looking skull in a viking helmet, it seriously looks like a child's drawing.
Apparently this guy was a total creeper as well, talking really loudly about the girls who worked there and speculating about their oral sex abilities. And then I heard that one time he walked into a room, while another dude was working on one of the computers there, ran at the wall, jumped and kind of kicked the wall and sort of half spun around like he was trying to be a ninja or something. Then he walks out of the room without saying anything but with this smirk on his face.

[Zingoleb]

My boss at the amusement park never stopped smiling. Ever. Like, it's in the rules that you're always supposed to look happy and smile because it relaxes the customers, but this guy had a sort of Ford Prefect thing going on. Like this huge grin that never went away, even when he was pissed off.

[David_Dovey]

But dude. viking helmet. Dude.

There is this guy in my class that non-jokingly threatened me with a pear. He's also a conspiracy theorist who goes on these hilarious rants about how US corporations are out to get us.

Hahahah that dude is implying that big corporations even give a shit about our existence hahahaha

[tania]

during the day I was doodling a skull on some paper I had. He noticed this and proceeded to tell me why the skull I had drawn was shit and how he could do so much better in five seconds. He then draws this terrible looking skull in a viking helmet

i keep reading this bit over and over expecting i will eventually get sick of it, but instead the opposite is happening and it keeps getting funnier and funnier every time to the point where i have been laughing uncontrollably for almost five minutes straight and actually crying for the last couple

[scarred]

One of my ex-coworkers at Cost Plus World Market talked how about how much she would kill to get out of there. I thought this was pretty harmless because retail sucks and she was probably being figurative but then I found out she was a 9/11 truther.

[David_Dovey]

truther = potential murderer?

[scarred]

Well I did see her picketing the mall about it.

[David_Dovey]

Yes but how does that make her more likely to murder people is what I am wondering

[MrBlu]

Heh, my coworkers so far have been pretty run of the mill (relative to other Jamaicans). There was a short old man we called Stitchy, who was VERY vulgar and VERY loud. We all looked up to him though, because he'd been working there the longest. He was also somewhat of a pervert, but he was honestly very humorous. It's kinda hard to relay it in text, especially since you wouldn't have known him, but he was absolutely hilarious.

[scarred]

Yes but how does that make her more likely to murder people is what I am wondering

Because

[Jimmy the Squid]

during the day I was doodling a skull on some paper I had. He noticed this and proceeded to tell me why the skull I had drawn was shit and how he could do so much better in five seconds. He then draws this terrible looking skull in a viking helmet

i keep reading this bit over and over expecting i will eventually get sick of it, but instead the opposite is happening and it keeps getting funnier and funnier every time to the point where i have been laughing uncontrollably for almost five minutes straight and actually crying for the last couple

To be fair, it really did take him five seconds.

[Metope]

I work with this weird, skinny, blond guy. Now, he does his job just like he's supposed to, but I can't shake the feeling that there's something a bit off about him. Apparently we look quite similar or something, because when we work together customers always ask us if we're siblings. The weird part comes when he actually answer them with a "yes". Oh, and whenever I go back to my family's home he's always there, chatting with my mom or siblings.

[David_Dovey]

oh you guys

[KickThatBathProf]

I smell a sitcoooooooooom

[Barmymoo]

I smell a pilot that wouldn't get picked up.

[ImRonBurgundy?]

I have a co-worker who has a tendency to adopt the accent of whatever customer he's talking to.  I don't know if it's subconscious or what.

[scarred]

My brother does that. It's the most annoying thing ever.

[Dollface]

Nope never had co-worker that was weirder than me cause im on a roll like rolling dice, in hotter than steaming pile of shit no one can touch me, yeeeeehaaaaawww!!

[Elizzybeth]

One of my managers at the zoo was this skinny Hispanic guy in his late 20s with a shaved head, and his life evidently consisted of two things: (1) the zoo and (2) raves.  Both peak on weekends.  On Friday, he'd start getting super antsy around closing time.  By Saturday, he was carrying those little 5-hour energy bottles around in his pockets.  By Sunday, he was crazy-eyed and had a perma-grin.

Some Sunday in the first month or so I was working there, he asked me, "Guess how many hours I've been up?"  And without waiting for me to answer, he said, "30 and counting." 

Subsequent weekends, he stopped asking the rhetorical question first and started just giving me the number, plus his Cheshire-Cat-in-the-insane-asylum look: 27 hours.  32 hours.  40 hours.

I think he was actually my favorite manager.

[beat mouse]

One of the dishwashers at the bar I work at is ex-crackhead/multiple concussions so needless to say he is a bizarre ca,t but he has this savant air about him that suggests beneath it all he is totally aware of how weird he is. He'll stare at you across the entire restaurant mouth-breathing with an expression that puts you somewhere between potential murder victim and potential meal, and then bursts into a big dopey smile you would expect a cartoon family dog to have. He also smokes slim lady cigarettes.

[David_Dovey]

(1) the zoo and (2) raves.

I skimmed over the first sentence so I didn't see that you actually worked at the zoo.

I liked the post better that way, all imaginin' this skinny Hispanic dude all boppin' and jivin' all hepped up on goofballs about the zoo for funsies, all havin' the time of his life all marvelling at the wonders of nature before he heads off to the night's rave.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I have a co-worker who has a tendency to adopt the accent of whatever customer he's talking to.  I don't know if it's subconscious or what.

I have a tendency to do that but only if I've been speaking to the same person for more than 15 minutes. I once had an english teacher with a really strong scottish accent and after a while I'd start to think in a scottish accent. I have theorised that this could be something to do with "mirror neurons" being overactive which is actually a thing. It's apparently what makes yawning contagious.

Interesting side note: When I worked at the bottle shop I would amuse myself by having different accents on different days. It would confuse the hell out of the regulars when I would be Russian on Tuesdays but Irish on Thursdays. Sundays I was a cockney!

[october1983]

I hope if they ever questioned it, you claimed you were doing no such thing and suggested that maybe they were a bit too much of a regular at a bottle shop, if you know what I mean.

[BeoPuppy]

I once did one shift with an ADHD kid who told me everything about his exploits with homemade napalm. He burned down his parents garden shed with it. As he put it: the stuff was surprisingly hard to put out and when it got out of hand I panicked and closed the door and walked away. Hoping that if I ignored it everything would be okay.

[E. Spaceman]

plot twist

[Orbert]

I work in an office, and one of the unwritten rules of Dilbert life is that you do NOT have ridiculous ring tones on your phone.  Ideally, it's on vibrate/silent, because when everyone is in constant hearing range of about 50 phones, it can get really, really bad.

Anyway there was this new guy named Arthur who not only had a hideous loud ringtone, but he also tended to just leave his phone sitting on his desk while he disappeared for (seemingly) hours at a time.  One day his phone sat there and rang every few minutes for a good ten or fifteen minutes.  We all listened to this whole stupid song all the way through, then it would play again, ad infinitum.  I finally went into his cubicle and put his phone into his top desk drawer (thus breaking another rule, a written one this time, but I didn't care anymore).  It didn't totally silence it, but it was much more bearable.

When Arthur got back from wherever the hell he was, I could him going "Where's my cell phone?  It was right here on my desk.  Where did it go?  I wonder if somebody took it?  No, that wouldn't be right.  Who would do that?  But where did it go?  This is really weird.  I only left for a few minutes..."

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he talks to himself.  A lot.  As he babbled on and on to himself about how he couldn't find his cell phone, and how weird it was that it would just disappear, and how he wondered where it could be, I sat there thinking "Fuck, this is worse than listening to the damned ringtone!"

"Where could it be?  This is just so strange... I was only gone for a few minutes.  Well, I got lunch and all, so maybe half an hour, tops, but still..."

Finally I yelled over the wall "It's in your top desk drawer!"

Then I hear "Oh, well look at that, there it is!  I wonder who could've put it there.  I was only gone for a few minutes.  Maybe they put it there so no one would steal it.  That was nice of them.  Thank You!  Wow, this place is really different from the last place I worked.  Everything is so different.  I mean..."

I left and got some coffee or something, anything to get away from this babbling idiot.  He was gone by the following week.  Apparently I was not the only person he annoyed the fuck out of.

[nobo]

I believe you can make napalm using just gasoline and Styrofoam. One of my college buddies from Minnesota recounted a high school memory of using napalm to set a snowman on fire.

[Lunchbox]

Yeah you melt the styrofoam in the petrol. It's pretty easy. I don't even think you need any sort of ratio. My boyfriend used to do and then go out to the swamp and set the bucket of it on fire.
Ah, those days.

[beat mouse]

3 parts gasoline to 1 part motor oil, and like 4 cans of frozen orange juice concentrate, then mix in as much styrofoam will dissolve into it. you can also shave 2 bars of soap into the mixture and you will get a noxious mix that burns for a good long time.

just dont get any on you.

[celticgeek]

On this fine Saint Patrick's Day, I remember a coworker who always wore an orange shirt on Saint Patrick's Day, to remind everybody of which side he was on in this conflict. 

[Inlander]

It's good to know that there's always someone doing his level best to ensure that we forget our differences and see peace in our time.

I'm talking geological time, obviously.

[Boro_Bandito]

The only really weird cokworker I can think of is this guy who worked at the same pizza and sub shop that I do for about 6 months, who insisted on being called G-Lo at all times and firgured himself to be a famous rapper who had yet to be discovered. I listened politely a couple times to his god-awful attempts at it and then after a while switched the subject every change I had. He had a really huge gap in both his top and bottom front teeth, and left his work clothes at the store for so long that the closet they were kept in started to smell, and the manager made him keep a schedule for washing them at least once a week. He eventually quit because of some stupid argument with the head manager about how he was wearing his apron too high (she's a bitch and it annoyed her, no one else really cared, that was the least of his issues), she was going to write him up for it but instead he quit on the spot, cussing her and everyone else out along the way. To this day about two years later I still get texts from him on most major holidays wishing me a happy whatever (I never gave him my phone number).

[Johnny C]

i worked with a pimp who had a missing finger

[Johnny C]

it was severed in an accident on an oil platform in alberta

[Johnny C]

later, he stripped the skin off it and turned the bones into a necklace

[Wasteroo]

The flute repair tech at my music store lights himself on fire on a weekly basis. I am getting so good at using fire extinguishers.

[A Wet Helmet]

During my stint in the Army I had occasion to witness more than one person have mental breakdown.  One guy spontaneously grabbed his head, fell down and started screaming that he had just gone blind.  Ambulance came, took him away, found out later there was nothing (physically) wrong with him.  Another dude who, after receiving probably the most mild criticism delivered by a Sergeant in the history of the military, started scratching his face --hard enough to make it bleed-- then started banging his head on the side of a truck while yelling "STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID".   We all kind of stood there with our mouths open for five or six seconds than gang-tackled him and held him down until the ambulance could get there.

Those guys had sudden issues with reality that needed to be resolved, but even in terms of just straight weird fuckers, the military can't be beat.   I've been saying for years you meet guys in the Army that you will never meet in the civilian world unless you're doing time somewhere. 

[Rizzo]

As is always the case, the weirdest ones have been in call centres.

I used to work for ticketmaster and they had the weirdest staff I've ever seen in my life. The entire call centre with the exception of one guy and myself had really shit tattoos in obvious places, hands, neck, whatever. Like... indian ink and sewing needle bad. One dude was stealing tickets and selling them on the local equivalent of ebay under his own name. He was surprised when they caught him...
Another dude was the IT guy and was a huge racist. He ended up smashing a table at the Christmas party during a fight with an African American guy from New York who had just started. The only cool person there left about 2 weeks after I started so I made sure to get out quick smart. I had another friend end up working there and apparently all the staff are still there, making $13 an hour...

[KharBevNor]

later, he stripped the skin off it and turned the bones into a necklace

This isn't 'the most awesome co-worker you've had' JC. Jesus.


@Rizzo: obvious, tasteless tattoos is one of the top reasons to work in a call centre.

[spoon_of_grimbo]

my floor manager at the supermarket i worked at weekends during high school was mental.  dude would instigate games of bowling with assorted fruit, randomly insult staff in a weird yet funny way (example - "you're a disease...  a faeces upon this earth!"), and i once walked into the back storeroom to see him with a bottle of cleaning fluid between his legs, squeezing it in huge arcs across the room.  all this, not to mention the massive drinking sessions he instigated on shift....

[Sox]

This isn't 'the most awesome co-worker you've had' JC. Jesus.

He isn't actually Jesus Christ, but he DOES have the same initials.

[David_Dovey]

He also has a beard.

Wait hang on are we sure he isn't Jesus? It's all adding up

[Lines]

You never know, he could be Jesus 2.0.

[RallyMonkey]

Nah, he's just the dude who stays home and does the dishes.

[Zingoleb]

They'll fix that in Jesus 2.1.

[A Wet Helmet]

I'm debating between putting this here or on the vitriolic letters thread.

Anyway, here goes:

We hired a sales lady a few months ago.  We don't do simple sales, this isn't some schlep-rock walking up to you in a store and saying "those shoes look great with your bag, can I get them for you in your size?"   Naw... this is complex sales.  Federal Government stuff.  A quick sale in this arena takes 6 months.  Most cycles are started 18-30 months out, and sometimes we go as long as five years from start to finish, just to get a sale.   Seriously, there are so many companies trying to get some of Uncle Sam's money that the competition is like being a fish amongst a school of piranha.  If you're a little minnow, you're going to get eaten.  You have to be a piranha yourself and jump into the feeding frenzy if you want a bite of food.  If you're not on your game, you're going to lose.  Period.

Anyway, we hire this lady.  Right off the bat she seems kind of dumb.  Like... If you've been doing this as long as you say you have, shouldn't you know some really simple things, like what basic acquisition acronyms are?  She throws a very pretty power point slide show up on the screen and tells everyone she created it.  I looked at the properties and discovered it had been made six months earlier by someone with a different name.  Oh... she stole it from her last company.  Ok, whatever.   Then we find out she lied on her resume.  She doesn't have a college degree despite having said very plainly on her resume that she did.   Then she totally fucks up a proposal.  Fucks it up so badly that we never should have sent it off.   Then she did it again with another one.  Partnered us with a company that literally, by law, cannot be given the award because they don't meet some fundamental criteria for doing business with the Feds.  Does she get fired?  Nope.

The whole time, she's got a shitty attitude.  Writes some RUDE emails.  Is very bossy and very nasty.  We have conference calls where she can't say something without making sure she says "I" in every sentence.  "I did this" "I won that" "I know so-and-so".  One particular call it took everything I had not take the phone off of mute and call her a liar.  I got a really good friend of mine an interview with our company.  Everybody has to be interviewed by at least three people, so somehow she got selected to interview him.  He told me she spent 90 minutes talking about herself and didn't even ask him any questions.    Just said things like "I see from your resume that you are like me, I... blah blah blah".  He literally came out of that room with his mouth open and shaking his head.

Now I've been told to support her.  She's got these two really hot leads, she tells us, she's going to get us  a goo-gob of cash, and it's practically a done deal.  I get told to be her technical support.  To be the solution architect, and to close the deals.   Yay me.  

So now I'm getting the shitty emails and the bad attitude.  She won't even address me by name on the conference calls, only by title.  For one opportunity, she gave us two documents that she claims she created to send to the customer.  It took me 90 seconds of googling for each one to find the original on the web.  Straight. Up. Plagiarized.  And she claims the shit his her own.  So I start researching one of these opportunities because I've been tasked with closing it, right?  It's for a particular branch of the military.  She made a huge scene on Friday about how she won this for her company the last time it was competed, and that she knows this person and that person, and how she's partnering us up with the right companies who are going to close this thing.  But she has credibility issues with me, so I have my doubts.    I've got my own due diligence to do so I start researching the previous contract.  Turns out, her presentation on the previous contract that was awarded was plagiarized too.  Found it word for word in the first source I looked at.   Then I start doing a little more research and find out that this particular base is currently in the process of being assumed by an entirely different branch of the military.  

Wait.  What?

Yeah, this particular base is being assimilated by an entirely different service.  Call me crazy, but I don't see them spending money this month so that someone else can take it over three months down the road.  Even if they are, how did this little fun fact escape the briefing that she gave everybody?  I don't know.  I thought she knew everybody and had an inside track?  

The other opportunity is in Germany.  She talked a bunch of shit about someone she knows over there and how the money faucet is going to get turned on for us because of her, and we say ok, cool, we've got some questions.   So me and some other technical folks compiled them, discussed them, and then I sent them to her.   To be fair to her, she wasn't party to all the behind-the-scenes discussing that we had as a committee regarding the questions we've got for her "contact".  So she turns around at eight o'clock this morning and asks all the same people to look them over and get back to her today so she can send them to her customer.  Her quote: "Its Thursday over there and I would like to get this out to them prior the weekend"

Uh, actually, we're GMT -4 right now, and they're GMT +2 which makes a six hour time zone difference.  If you're sending me email at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, it's 2:00 p.m. Wednesday afternoon for them, not Thursday.   How fucking dumb do you think I am?   More importantly, how many "calls" and "skypes" have you had with this person if you don't even know what fucking day it is?  The bullshit keeps piling up and it's going to make me have a stroke, I fucking swear.


TL,DR; I work with a lying bitch who I hope dies painfully.

edit:typos

[Sox]

So, with everything you've just told us, you have enough information to have her fired, right?