Weird workmates

[Cohaagen]

Having just read through the hilarious Weird Flatmates thread again, I thought I'd start one up for the fucking oddballs we inevitably have to work with from time to time.

For a few years I made my living as a printer and finisher. At one of the places I was employed briefly before getting sacked for being unstable, coming in to work with a burst nose, and cracking on to a lesbian customer, I worked alongside a guy named Dave, an American dude from Georgia. He was also, inevitably, a Christian, attending some happy clapping sect based in Leith. Now and then he would approach you when you were stressed and vocal (working in a copyshop is very much a restaurant kitchen type of atmosphere) and proffer a sanctimonious proverb like a Jaffa cake. The weird thing about him was his personal history though. He claimed he'd been doing some sort of boring job up until 9/11, when he'd been inspired to become a "counter-terrorist". He never elaborated on this, preferring to paint his role in dark, oblique mutterings.

The work must have affected him deeply though, because despite the fact that his role basically consisted of photocopying nightclub flyers, printing architect's drawings, finishing off lazy fuckwitted architecture student's projects, and laminating menus, he turned up looking ready for storming the balcony of the Iranian embassy. His workwear comprised a T-shirt (usually black), tan or green combat pants (bloused), and Magnum combat boots. But the best part of this "uniform" was a black fishing waistcoat with lots of little pockets and loops that he zipped up to the neck like a SWAT vest. He kept things like pens, felt-tips and scissors in it, occasionally whipping out a scalpel like Casey Ryback to help out some art student.

I drank quite a lot at this time, and every lunchtime I would walk down the road to the Holyrood Tavern and get as many large whiskies in as possible. This was during the Festival when Laura Solon was doing her show there (which eventually won her the Perrier). I knew I was fucked at this point and would usually stutter in ten minutes late and start ripping the piss out of Dave, asking him if he'd dropped any "Tangoes" recently, and if he knew what colour the boathouse in Hereford was. True to his sappy creed, he always turned the other cheek, but sometimes I wondered if he might grab me like a trout and snap my neck in a weird reverse headlock in front of the gawping ECA Yahs and leave my body spraying piss and jerking on the floor like a clockwork toy.

[Dugald_McCraw]

This thread made me track down this Italian guy, Paolo, I used to work with. We worked at a RBS call centre, I remember he performed for us a Michael Jackson dance on Halloween (he was dressed up as Michael Jackson).  I worked with a bunch of cunts but he was pretty cool. He showed us his short stories which featured a guy called Johnny loser and a time machine, the clique would snigger behind his back.    I googled his name and it turned out he was on a programme called So You Think You Can Dance, he wore the same gear for his performance at RBS but here he's more energetic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV0Z8rdETv4

[holyzombiejesus]

I've recently changed jobs and whereas the last was more of a vocation, working with people that I liked and respected, everyone here seems fucking awful. The worst is the woman that I have to sit next to. I don't really want to hang out or make friends and I've tried hard to just keep myself to myself. One day I was taking a bag of cashew nuts and sunflower seeds out of my drawer when my neighbour started shrieking and saying 'What's he doing? What's he doing?" I quietly explained that I was just going to have something to eat but she then really started screeching "Everybody, everybody! Close the windows and shut the doors!! We have a bird in the office! Look at our new team-mate, Mr. Bird!!! Close the windows or the bird might fly away!"
The next day she caught me eating an apple and again started to shout "It's a miracle!! Mr Bird has turned into a horse! Close the doors in case Mr Horse gallops away!!!" There's about 20 people who work in the office and to have them all turn round and stare whilst this ...idiot was screaming like this was horrible.
It wouldn't have been so bad but I used to have to go for a walk round the dog shit and scratch-card encrusted streets whilst she had her lunch, as the disgusting sucking and smacking noises that came from her mouth while she slurped her way through a bowl of soup or some fruit would turn my stomach. She used to sprinkle salt on her pears as well. She's off sick now because she saw a mouse in the kitchen.

[Beagle 2]

Was it a mouse or was it just you eating some cheese?

[Nobody Soup]

there is a weird girl that sometimes covers shifts here, one time a jokey old man customer said to me "oh you better watch or your wife will be at you." after I'd done something, this was admittedly a weird thing to say, but it's old man humour and fine with me. instead of just shrugging it off this girl burst into hysterics and said "HIS WIFE? I DON'T EVEN LIKE HIM!" so the whole the room heard. bit over-compensatory I think.

that is slightly boring but more feel good than the racist, bitter, hateful arsehole I work with that doesn't cut his nail or shave properly and stinks out the toilet hourly.

Was it a mouse or was it just you eating some cheese?

god, I can stress enough how much I'm laughing at that.

[The Duck Man]

Can't think of anyone who I've worked with who's more than common or garden odd.

I was thinking though that this thread was a good oppurtunity to gather a consensus as to whether David Thorne's posts are legit. I'd like to think so, but suspect not.

[holyzombiejesus]

Was it a mouse or was it just you eating some cheese?

Ha ha! No, it was a mouse. In fact, I've just received an email asking me to

ensure that any food on our desks are stored in concealable containers.

For fucks sake.

[mook]

Was it a mouse or was it just you eating some cheese?

you marvellous old thing you. i want to wrestle you to the ground and kiss you 'til you giggle.

[gatchamandave]

My old boss had a bizarre variant of what I understand to be the psychological condition Munchausens by Proxy, generating crises for selfaggrandisement. Everything that came into the office had to cross his desk, as did everything that went out. Since this could be circumvented by e-mail, his solution was to impose a blanket ban on e-mails and install monitoring systems to ensure staff compliance. Given that it was a local government office and he was importing systems from the likes of the US Department of Justice, he may have been acting outside his remit. Certainly, scarcely a week went by without the whole IT network crashing across all three council offices.

Which seemed to please him  no end, as he could scurry about between offices and IT "troubleshooting", and barking orders at the confused, log-jammed staff.

Since all correspondence crossed his desk, he was able to stick his nose into every and any thing he fancied, the bigger the better. Fully qualified and experienced staff would be called on to justify decisions, and he would usually over-ride them. Afterwards, and without telling them.

Now, decisions made by the flip of a coin have a 50/50 chance of success. He beat those odds and then some. Somewhere in the region of, ooh, 20 percent success at best. Which caused a lot of trouble, which he could then shoot, along with the poor sod who's decision he had over-ridden, often unknowingly.

Weirdest of all, he started cyberstalking me. He somehow found my online ID, googled it, found sites he didn't like me accessing in the workplace, printed off copies of extracts onto glossy A4, bound them into three 2 inch thick volumes and put them, and me, before a disciplinary board.

Sites such as, well, C'n'B. He hated this place.

So, somewhere in a filing cabinet in the Dundee Assessors office lie, for future generations to uncover, 60 pages discussing just how shit season 2 of Little Britain was.

What. A. Maroon.

[Beagle 2]

There was a girl at a place I used to work who did smell an awful lot bless her, and used to eat a raw turnip for her lunch every day. Now I love raw vegetables, so I did sort of admire her for just doing it out in the open instead of the guilty clandestine crunching I am forced to indulge in. She was married to an very elderly gentleman as I recall so perhaps he had lost the ability to sniff out an offensive odour or a lunchtime faux pas. People slagged her off constantly, including once when a colleague sent her an email detailing all the ways in which he hated her to her instead of one of his other unpleasant sniggering friends. It looked like her luck had changed when she won a dream holiday for two to Orlando, but the petty weasel of a boss refused to let her have the time off for it, despite the fact we could have easily covered for her. Poor old turnipy. I hope she got herself a great big turnip in the country.

[alan nagsworth]

I used to work with some right fucking cards at the theme park, before my ceremonious exit. It wasn't so much a spare few oddballs, though, more of a merging of all the most calamitous and otherwise incompatible people into the single greatest team of dickheads you could ever wish to meet. Possibly the greatest person I've ever worked with, nay, met in all my days was my supervisor Greg. A gangly rocker with a sagged and exhausted face that would completely bely his acid flashback mentality that often flipped him from a despondent pondering of what could have been into a mischievous fucking lunatic.

Having one of said hallucinogenic flashbacks and nearly putting his hand in the deep fat frier was possibly the pinnacle of his absurdity but it didn't end there. Bringing a giant penis water pistol in and running amok when the rest of us greasy cunts are trying to serve queues of upwards of fifty starving families, arranging the kids meal dinosaur toys into lewd sexual positions on top of the hot cabinets for all and sundry to see, and always banging on about 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' being the greatest record of all time, he sincerely was a complete burned-out lunatic but he made my stay there more worthwhile than anything else I've ever had to endure.

Other exploits of his include:
- Bringing a big fuck-off badge-making kit in as part of a team building initiative. Jenny the catty scally bird was constantly bleating on like a chicken, so he made a badge with her drawn as a chicken which we had to wear if we were waffling too far into his disinterest.
- Marching into the food court when I was transferred there for the day, with a broken pair of aviator shades and his trousers pulled up to his nipples, gallavanting around to the extreme displeasure of the food court supervisor who was a highly-strung coke-addled wreck of a man. The guy was literally screaming at Greg to get out, while Greg is using the chicken-serving tongs to pinch his backside.
- And one morning, I turned up and thought I was the first in, only to find him there about an hour early, reeking of skunk and painstakingly building a model cow out of polystyrene cups.

The best instance I can recall would be when the standard team jobsworth asked Greg to put his mobile phone in the safe; a request discreetly ignored by Greg. He took the guy's phone to the toilet, had an enormous shit, took a photo on the phone and set it as the background image on the home screen. When he gave the poor bastard his phone back at the end of the day, the guy actually couldn't control his rage and sadness and wept a little bit at this great monster of a dump Greg had archived solely for him. Far be it from me to mock the more sensitive souls in this life, myself being one, but for some reason there's something about a guy shedding a tear over a low-resolution photo of a poo that always makes me laugh.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Let's not pretend every single member of this site isn't being discussed in some other forum on a different 'Weird workmates' thread.

Apart from you unemployed ones, obviously. Or those posting from prison.

[Steve Lampkins]

I used to work with some right fucking cards at the theme park, before my ceremonious exit.

Good one, you had me going. This is just the plot to Adventureland.

[alan nagsworth]

Good one, you had me going. This is just the plot to Adventureland.

[reference not found]

[Saucer51]

A few years ago we had a man called Jeff turn up at our office from an employment agency to begin work. HIs start day was 3 or 4 days before we broke up for Xmas and it was a few weeks work of data input that we'd fallen behind on due to an unwell colleague.

On his first day Jeff overheard us talking about the final arrangements for our office party - we were all going to bring different kinds of food in for us to peck at throughout the day and we would of course be exchanging our secret santa gifts. He offered, with what was to be his typical exuberence and attention-seeking, to be the official present-hander-over for the occasion. We thanked him but said that our absent colleague, the one he was brought in to cover for, was off work and very poorly but would be coming in to do the present-giving for us. We would also be giving her a big scrummy gift because we all loved her and wanted her to join in on our office festivities as much as she could. Any other person, especially someone on their first day at a new job, would have backed off and let it be. After all, he was new, our much loved colleague was ill and we wanted to cheer her up and it had all been arranged before we knew of Jeff's existence anyway.
On Jeff's 3rd day with us, the party took place. He was absolutely welcome to join in but we were stunned when he came in after lunch with a fucking elf costume. We were all adults. None of us were going to squeal with joy at his outfit (thankfully he wasn't wearing it but he'd inexplicably slipped home at lunch time to get it, presumably so he could usurp our colleague who was ill with cancer) He then actually went to our boss and formally asked if he could indeed give out the presents as he'd gone to the trouble of bringing in the costume. He was politely but firmly told no and the reasons why were pointed out to him and although he was able to stop himself from donning that bloody outfit, we were all furious at his controlling and whiny behaviour. He stayed with us for a couple of months and it really didn't get much better.

[The Plunger]

- And one morning, I turned up and thought I was the first in, only to find him there about an hour early, reeking of skunk and painstakingly building a model cow out of polystyrene cups.

I'm struggling to convey with the written word how much this image is making me laugh.

[alan nagsworth]

Heh! I know I keep posting Simpsons screengrabs on here of late but this one is pretty much on the mark, except with a much more sallow-eyed look of concentration:



To be fair to him, the cow was fucking amazing. It was held together with drinking straws and brought to life with permanent marker drawing, not to mention standing on its own little patch of turf. It stayed with us for quite a long time and even ended up making its way to another kiosk on the other end of the park where it remained for the rest of its life. Can't remember what its name was though.

[Small Man Big Horse]

When I worked at Blockbusters one Summer whilst at Uni one guy there had an incredible passion for working for the company, despite having little interest in films. His favourite story was about how one time he'd worked for 12 hours in a row, and that by the end he was so exhausted he'd fainted. And he'd tell that tale with such pride that it was impossible to mock him, however much I wanted to.

I'm definitely the weird workmate to some, especially in my Sainsbury's days when I was 16. I hated it so much, and when one guy started bullying me, I was struggling not to quit. But then one day, inspired by a scene in the classic John Cusack comedy Better Off Dead, when he made a joke about me I burst out laughing, pretending it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. And whenever I saw him for the rest of the day I'd laugh again, and mutter about how it was the most hilarious thing ever said on this planet. He steered clear of me after that, as did nearly everyone else, so it was a win win situation.

[Artemis]

Where I work, I am the weird workmate. I know this, not just because of the sporadic "you're weird" declarations from my colleagues, but also due to an innate pre-knowledge of my weirdness. I should add to all this, that I couldn't give a fuck.

My workplace has fast become, of late, a kind of graveyard of outwardly dull people who have been given the impression that they need to obey an unsaid rule of workplace behaviour in order to fit in, and - I assume - in their heads, have a better chance if keeping their jobs. The reality is that this culture has been brought about by a change in management from somebody akin to a cunt.

The Cunt keeps us all sending her reports to ensure we are assuring her of things we get paid to do anyway. We are given deadlines to do this, which gets in the way of what we would otherwise be doing, which ironically would ensure we'd be doing better at our work. The result is a mass resignation, staged after consultation between those of us resigning, over the first three days of this week, so that just as they hold their umpteenth emergency meeting, believing they have a handle on it, somebody else hands in their resignation also. Fuck 'em.

I digress. To ensure I keep a state of sanity for myself, I crack jokes, most of which wouldn't be appreciated by my colleagues - not because they're offensive but because my colleagues don't have a sense of humour. So I announce the punchline and chuckle to myself. Other times, I'm listening to music on my computer through headphones and tapping away, sometimes tapping fairly complex rhythms to beats nobody else can hear. Again, fuck 'em.

I'd like to think I'm more irritating then weird, but either way, I don't care.

[Goldentony]

I worked at a solicitors for three days back in 2008. This was at the absolute height of being undiagnosed with diabetes so by this time I was barely functioning as a person. It was only for three days because by the Monday after those three days I could just about crawl to the clinic down the road, which was better than the last day of that job which looking back on it now as I read this thread - I was the weird workmate. BUT to be fair, I couldn't really help it because as I say, I was barely conscious at this point. At this point of the year and my condition, it was the absolute worst it could be. I could just about move and mutter sentences. Some of this is going to be in a weird form because it has no rhyme or reason -

The second day, I was rimmed by the office manager for lying on the sign in sheet. He was right to - I'd been there a full day so far and I was already lying to them. He prattled on and on about how the girl I was working with had already got here from over the water and had managed to get to and from the secret solicitors post office by the time i'd got there. I sat there and took it because I wasn't listening for a good amount of it because I was focused on the agonising pain in my legs from muscle disappearing and the permanent heartburn I suffered from. I got up, apologised and went to read I Am Legend in the bog for a few minutes.

I also turned up on the first day with a huge plaster on my head after a large boil over the top of my ear had its shit ruined. Rather than keep it quiet, the guy asked me if i'd been brawling over the weekend.

Looked at the fax machine for a good few seconds and said to the girl I worked with "Fuck, how do you work this god damned thing"

While stood in the lift of a law firm told her "I look so fucking terrible in this mirror" and "These lights are too fucking bright" to no response

Left the office with her on Friday at 5 with the post and jokingly said "I used to finish at 5 on a Friday, it was great" but delivered in such a dry throated world weary way that she believed I was lamenting that extra half hour and went on to explain that only our manager got to leave at 5

Stood with her in baffled silence with a tray of empty cups in the upstairs kitchen and told her "I have no fuckin' idea how to make a coffee" but with no hint of it being a joke.

Insisted on going the shop for a bag of crisps as the closing time neared on the office, with a fuck off pile of letters waiting for us that had to be sent out by the end of the day.

Most embarassing one - bought too much milk on the second day from the Spar resulting in having to get a refund for fucking milk

Refused to go to the dinner time celebration of the girls birthday because I could not be fucked moving or eating, resulting in possibly the only chance to socialise with people who worked there at one time being lashed in the bog and pissed on. By this time I liked to drink water or milk and eat sausage rolls because they were the only thing that didn't shit me up or give me heartburn. This reminds me - I had two of thise big Evian bottles on my desk for the whole of the first day and finished both of them as far as I remember.

Called the manager a twat after two of the girls I worked with - one of whom is the one I have mentioned a lot already - started discussing the row he had with one of the audio typists downstairs. I agreed with the girl he had a fight with because despite me being useless, the guy was an absolute fucking belter. I didn't realise that the girl I worked with had a pretty good working relationship with the guy as she was normal and could function and could do her job well and could generally walk and do things. Anyway, I called him a twat and the conversation ended pretty abruptly.

Sat at the foot of the stairs for ten minutes because on the Friday I had no strength. I couldn't walk up those stairs and couldn't handle the weight on my legs.

I got on really well with the girl who had a fight with the manager. She was really nice to me and went out of her way to speak to me in an office where everyone was stressed as fuck due to it being law and generally too busy to bother, or move from their desk or generally was never in. The boss made conversation that extended to ringing his teacup with a spoon like a bell and raising his eyebrows to signify he wanted to stuff more tea down his giant guff.

Anyway, I was a penis, and could not do the job physically at that point. We mutually agreed to fuck it off on Monday and when the job came up again three months later, I applied again as a 100% fit and well person, and never heard back.

In short - don't work in an office with people

[Mr Eggs]

Code Select Expand

Most embarassing one - bought too much milk on the second day from the Spar resulting in having to get a refund for fucking milk

Milk surplus? You feckless cunt. That has to be the ultimate failure of an office male....Why the fuck did you have to get a refund? How many gallons did you buy to overwhelm them and their tiny fridge?

[Artemis]

Come on. Most of that was made up.

[Goldentony]

Shut up, you rat or I am going to fuck you

Why the fuck did you have to get a refund? How many gallons did you buy to overwhelm them and their tiny fridge?

I bought one of those four pint jobbies. This was never going to get used by the weekend apparently so I had to go back and buy one pint of green top milk with the refund I got from the 4 pinter. One of them insisted on red top milk for whatever reason. I didn't want to have my arsehole angrily eaten out that day so I got a taxi to be super early and make a good impression. Farce!

[Mr Eggs]

I bought one of those four pint jobbies. This was never going to get used by the weekend apparently so I had to go back and buy one pint of green top milk with the refund I got from the 4 pinter. One of them insisted on red top milk for whatever reason. I didn't want to have my arsehole angrily eaten out that day so I got a taxi to be super early and make a good impression. Farce!

You poor,poor little fucker. I thank all the gods in heaven that I've never had to work in an office.

[Utter Shit]

One of the women I work with is a gentle, lovely and kind soul who inexplicably has some really quite offensive turns of phrase, seemingly without ever meaning to be offensive. For example she was describing a recent day out at Thorpe Park and mentioned that there were 'a lot of dykes there'. No judgement on her part on homosexuality, just a simple statement of fact that for some reason used quite a horrible word rather than just calling them lesbians, or not bothering to mention it at all.

OH ALSO I can't remember if I've posted this before but I suspect not. On another forum I made a thread about something that happened at my work in July last year, so these are basically live updates of a really quite odd thing to have happened in the course of an average day in a language learning centre. I've edited bits of it where I've replied to other posters so that it remains coherent. Well, as coherent as can be given the circumstances...

What would you do if some fucking mad middle-aged woman turns up with an injured/dying/dead seagull in a box, plonks it on your desk and says that she's found it being attacked by another seagull and rescued it, but now has to go as she has to go home and she decided you were the best person to give it to.

I've never even seen her before, she got my name from someone in another area. So I'm left with a fucking dying/dead bird sitting on my desk, stinking out of the place, and I'm suddenly responsible for the bloody thing.

She's still here talking to someone else about it, how on earth have I assumed responsibility for this?

Oh she's off now, "thanks very much for your help" she says. It's not "helping you" if you just lumber me with it and fuck off, that's just me doing the job for you.

She fucking dogged me down to one of my colleagues who was feigning interest/compassion as well, pointedly saying "it's nice to see someone who cares about animals". Absolute liberty.

There's no noise or anything coming out of the box either, chances are it's dead. So basically she's just dumped a disgusting smell on my desk and told me to take care of it. I'm not staying beyond 5pm if that's what she is thinking.

Still at least she helpfully wrote 'seagull' on the box before she fucked off, so I guess we're 50/50 on the effort front with this one.

The poor fucking thing was almost certainly dead when she brought it in anyway, at least if it had been ignored it would have died in battle with a bit of dignity instead of getting put into a box and left to rot like an unwanted pair of smelly wet shoes.

It's gone now anyway, driven to the RSPCA. So now this dead bird is getting passed around like an unread chain letter, no one wanting to deal with it but no one wanting to be the one to say "hang on, this is fucking stupid" and just throw it away.

In retrospect it makes me laugh but at the time I was fuming, as you can see from all the unnecessary swearing. I just could not comprehend how this mad woman had come to the idea that a language centre would be the appropriate place to drop off a dying bird. I think I'm right in saying the bird wasn't actually dead though, so 'my bad' on that count.

[Cerys]

Why did she write 'sexgull' on the box?

[Inaniloquent]

I had a manager who probably would consider me a weird workmate - she really didn't like me but I could never quite figure out why - I liked her, she was nice, I was normal. I did my job and I smiled and I thought I was doing things correctly. She eventually wrote up my performance with criticism like "needs to involve herself in team conversations even if not interested in the subject matter."

I clarified with her: she said sure, I was nice and chatty when the subject interested me and I talked and made jokes and people thought I was normal and fun, but then when it was not a subject I could join in with, I didn't.

And I should.

Hang on. That's not good behaviour. That's being a twat. Am I supposed to start shouting "You talking football, eh? I know fuck all about it lads, ha ha, offside and all that eh?" or perhaps "Jordan, eh, ladies? Skank bag, setting back feminism sixty years. Right shame. I don't know much else about it though. TV show? Not seen it. Tell me about it, from the beginning."

I really fought with her on this, because I refused to sign the form declaring me wrong for not butting into people's conversations and sticking my uneducated oar in. I wasn't entirely sure why my social chit-chats were part of my performance review anyway - does the job well but needs to improve knowledge of Heat Magazine? In the end, she took out the statement, I moved teams and she simply never spoke to me again.

--

Only truly weird colleague I had was a girl who pretended she was really rich, which was mostly sad (she wasn't, she was quite the opposite) until she began to then insult the rest of us who weren't as 'rich' as her. So if we talked about where to eat on a team night out she'd sneer "Oh, God, Pizza Express? That's so cheap and nasty" or if people picked up their dinner from Tesco she'd be "Ew, Tesco? Disgusting. I only shop at Selfridges." Just seemed an odd way to spend the time, I guess. The manager could have had a field day picking apart her social skills instead!

[Steve Lampkins]

When I worked at Blockbusters one Summer whilst at Uni one guy there had an incredible passion for working for the company, despite having little interest in films. His favourite story was about how one time he'd worked for 12 hours in a row, and that by the end he was so exhausted he'd fainted. And he'd tell that tale with such pride that it was impossible to mock him, however much I wanted to.

Good one, you had me going. This is just the plot to Clerks.

I hated it so much, and when one guy started bullying me, I was struggling not to quit. But then one day, inspired by a scene in the classic John Cusack comedy Better Off Dead, when he made a joke about me I burst out laughing, pretending it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. And whenever I saw him for the rest of the day I'd laugh again, and mutter about how it was the most hilarious thing ever said on this planet. He steered clear of me after that, as did nearly everyone else, so it was a win win situation.

Good one, you had me going. This is just the plot to the classic John Cusack comedy Better Off Dead

[23 Daves]

My favourite weird workmate was a man who used to work in the Council offices where I was also employed. He looked a bit like Michael Winner and believed himself to have a way with the ladies, to the extent that he'd occasionally keep pictures of his favourite female coleagues on his desk and on his screensaver.  He'd call them his "Beautiful Dolls" (even as I'm typing this right now, I can't quite believe it happened unchecked.  It was by his own confession a bit of a joke, but it definitely creeped a few of the women out).

To be completely even-handed about this, he knew he was being weird most of the time, and would use it to his advantage.  When our particularly dragonish line manager would demand an answer out of him about what work he had done that week, he would give a vague reply.  Then when she asked him to be more specific, he would make the reply still more vague, with added bits of irrelevance thrown in.  This technique would go on indefinitely until she just roared: "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??!!!!" at which point he'd try not to laugh, and she'd usually just give up with an exasperated sigh.  If you asked him for help, you'd occasionally also be greeted with the excuse: "I can't right now - I'm really sorry, but I need to go for a shit", a reason I suspect he thought couldn't be argued with (and it never was, to the best of my knowledge).

He also came up with my favourite ever excuse for being off work. "I had to go to hospital to have my tongue extended, because at the moment it's not very good for kissing ladies with".  It turned out this was true, he had had the operation in question, although whether it's because a woman had ever actually criticised his kissing technique we'll never know.

Council offices seem to be like lodging houses for the odd.  A friend of mine's council office had a legendary bushy moustache-sporting employee who had no concept of appropriate behaviour or any work ethic at all.  On his return from a holiday in Blackpool, he brought in several blown up and framed pictures of himself and his wife riding donkeys on the beach, and tried to hang them on the walls of the official Council Chamber.  Naturally, the Director didn't see the need for this addition, and upon being told he had to remove them he went into an almighty sulk.  "I was only trying to brighten the place up a bit!"

The very same man claimed to be a Buddhist, and once told a shocked office that anything bad that happened in their lives was obviously deserved in some way - and upon being met with outrage, he added that it was OK to say this, because it was his religion.  "So if a woman is raped, it's her fault?" yelled an upset lady. "Yes it is," he replied bluntly.  "Sorry". 

Sometimes when I reminisce about some of the people who have been allowed to earn a living, I feel less worried at the prospect of any possible redundancy from my present job. 

[Buffalo Many Times]

In retrospect it makes me laugh but at the time I was fuming, as you can see from all the unnecessary swearing. I just could not comprehend how this mad woman had come to the idea that a language centre would be the appropriate place to drop off a dying bird. I think I'm right in saying the bird wasn't actually dead though, so 'my bad' on that count.

I had that about a month ago, I was visiting my friend who has a studio in some council estate and was having a smoke outside the building when some woman clutching a box beckoned me over (by shouting "Excuse me! Excuse me! Are you from here!" while I was on the phone), pointed at a crippled pigeon on the ground and told me she had to get it in the box for the RSPCA. I obliged, holding the box while she lowered the poor, dazzled bird in. She then turned to me and said "I need to do some washing. Keep an eye on that will you" and fucked off inside. It was my birthday. It was also the closest thing to a present I'd been given.