We can’t choose our family, and we certainly can’t choose our co-workers. We see them almost every day, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we understand our office mates. In fact, some of them can be downright bizarre, incredibly strange, and totally baffling. Here are stories about “that guy” in the office.
1. Tie One On
I used to work with Brian—about 230 pounds of pure software geek. He had a full beard like Grizzly Adams. Baths and showers were not on his list of important things to do. Once, we flew him to the client site to help solve a pesky problem. I reminded him to dress for the occasion. I greeted him at the front lobby and was shocked to see him with a collared shirt that had never been ironed. But that’s not all.
His tie was TIED DIRECTLY TO HIS NECK! Not under the collar, just wrapped around his neck. When I mentioned it to him he said, “If that's my only problem then we're in good shape.”
2. A Close Shave
Working in an open-concept office where we used an instant messenger to communicate. One day working late, it's only me and That Guy. He disappeared for 20 minutes then came back, but I didn't notice much. He types to me, "Hey do you like my haircut?" and I look over and he has just LOCKED eyes with me after shaving his head with a razor in the bathroom.
3. Keyboard Warrior
I used to work with a guy who was an excellent engineer but frequently subject to fits of rage when things didn't go well with what he was working on. Picture the scene: typical cubicle farm with engineers hard at work and the only sound you hear is the sound of tapping on keyboards. Then, it would happen. Suddenly, the sound of infuriated, ridiculous cursing and someone slamming their keyboard on the desk repeatedly.
Everyone leaps to their feet in alarm like a coterie of prairie dogs scanning the room for the source of the noise. Almost at once, everyone realizes that it's just Tim having another tantrum, smiles at each other, and quietly sits back down. Later, our secretary walks over to his office with a new keyboard, puts it on his desk without a word, and then walks back.
4. Stan the Man
I used to work in sales. There was a guy there named Stan. Stan was money. He tried so hard to be social but didn't quite know what he was doing, which often led to hilarity. Stan and I were at a co-worker’s place with a few other guys and were having some beers while watching a hockey game, just relaxing.
It was second intermission and Stan was a wreck—he doesn't handle his beer well. He was making samosas in our co-worker’s oven and decided he wanted to make himself a caesar. He took the cap off the mix, turned to talk to me about something, and while talking to me started to shake the juice...with the lid off.
Juice everywhere, but he cleaned it all up and had a mound of paper towels on top of the stove. But don't worry—Stan's insanity was just getting started. The oven dings, his samosas are ready. He opens the oven door, but needs to clear off the paper towels from the stovetop so he can put the cookie sheet down. He stood there staring at the situation for well over a minute, totally confused as to how he was going to get out of this pickle.
I gave him a plastic bag to put the dirty paper towels in, so the stovetop would be cleaned off, problem solved. "Good idea, thanks man," says Stan. Nope. Stan then used the plastic bag as an oven mitt and picked up the hot cookie sheet out of the oven with nothing but a thin plastic bag between his hand and the hot metal.
The bag instantly melted to his hands and he burned himself pretty bad, smashing the sheet against the wall. Samosas everywhere. We had to take him to the hospital, but we were all way too out of it to drive, so we all walked 15 minutes to the ER.
5. The Cheese Stands Alone
After not getting a promotion after his review (there were no positions for him to move into, nor was he anywhere near qualified) this guy created a petition to have our sales manager fired and went around to everyone in each department and asked them to sign it to support him. Nobody signed it except for him.
6. Dear John
"That Guy" at my current company is John. John is a conspiracy theorist, and he believes that the anti-theft RFID things at the doors of Walmart are designed to scan your credit cards and the metal strip in money in your wallet to see how much money you have to spend. John talks about secret CIA trains that run in tunnels under the city.
John used to work for a cell phone company and tells us stories of how he installed scanners on light poles on nearly every major road to scan for a unique identifier that all vehicles emit for government tracking purposes. John believes the building we work in has chemicals applied to the HVAC system that are making us more compliant with government programs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with this guy.
John will never use his ATM card to buy meals because he doesn't want the government to track what he eats. John calls a $20 bill a yuppy meal coupon. Ice cream is called whipped lard. Eating at Panda Express is eating "an endangered species meal." John once told me about his collection of different sized rubber gloves he has at home. He has a pair that go up to his shoulders for cleaning the bathroom.
John also believed that all major leaders of the world belonged to the same family tree. Also, our building has anti-earthquake devices attached to it so the building shakes gently every so often. John claimed that the shakes were the CIA shooting mind control beams up from their underground trains. John believes the secretary at the front desk keeps a log of when he enters and leaves the building.
Sadly, John quit a few months ago. On the day he quit, he sat in his car in the parking garage for four hours before he worked up the guts to call his boss on the phone and quit. He instructed that his desk be boxed up and sent to his home. No one has heard from John since.
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7. A Stone’s Throw
I worked with a lot of weirdos when I was a security guard—the field seems to attract them—but none of them held a candle to Karl. Karl used to rinse his mouth with straight bleach regularly, would shoot at his neighbors’ houses out his window with a .22, and once said to me, "Someone has put stones in the toilet again." When I asked why someone would do that, he said, "To make me look bad."
8. It’s Lucky He’s Good-Looking
Years ago I worked retail at The Sharper Image. Paul was another sales guy who had really phenomenal genetics. He was in his late 30s and looked to be in his 20s, contrasted by another 24-year-old coworker who looked 40. Anyway, Paul lived with his wealthy parents and aspired to nothing more than going out clubbing after work.
He was not particularly smart, but very well-off. One time, Paul apparently lost his cell phone at a club. He didn't bother reporting it or anything, and later got a $4,000 bill. He just paid it—wasn't worth the trouble. We had a dehumidifier for sale on display. On a slow day, we convinced Paul to drink the water out of the dehumidifier.
Our manager found out later and just sighed, shaking his head and muttering, "Paul..." That was just the kind of guy he was.
9. Iced Out
A lady at work puts salt on a cup of ice and eats the ice like that.
10. Das Weirdo
Easily, Deiter. He was this German designer in our office. He was absolutely bonkers. He was in our office but not in my department. It's kind of unusual for people to be in different department areas. Also note that this is a big corporation, not like an independent studio. So one day I'm working and I hear someone come into my cube.
It's Deiter. He starts dancing suggestively and rubbing his body all over. "We never really think about how it feels for our body to move. We just sit here all day." And he starts gyrating and undulating. I say nothing and turn back around. Then I heard him go to the other cubes and do the same thing. Mind you, this wasn't even his department. That wasn’t all though.
One day, he came in dressed in full lederhosen. There was no reason for this. It was not Halloween or Oktoberfest. He came into my cube and started dancing a jig. I ignored him again and he went around to the other cubes.
11. A Clear-cut Issue
My co-worker who was recently fired once filed a lawsuit against Papa John's seeking $350 in damages. He ordered his pizza to be cut into squares not wedges, they didn’t listen to him the first or second time ordering. He got the manager on the phone the third time, who said he was going to personally do it.
When it wasn't done, he called and raised heck and the manager told him off, so he sued.
12. Read the Room
We were interviewing candidates for an open position and had it down to two people, one was white and the other was black. We were at a meeting discussing the two candidates when our guy was asked how he felt about them. Mind you, our Director and CIO were there, plus the whole team of IT staff. His response was, "Well it depends on if I have Jungle Fever."
The room went quiet, and one person just said, "I think I need to leave now."
13. Revenge Is Spicy
This lady used to take all the candy from my candy dish. I never caught her, but I knew it was her...Nobody else had been into my office. So I bought some habanero jelly beans in multiple colors. They vanished. She left work early claiming she was sick. She was flushed and seemed to be perspiring a bit. My candy was never taken again.
14. This Lady Gives Me Bad Vibes
My sister is a school psych and every week, there is a stupid-long (five hours or something) meeting of just the psychs in the district. "That lady" is into some mystical, energy-related religious bent and she carries on her this crystal, on the end of a ribbon, on the end of a wand. So someone will be talking in the meeting, venting their frustrations or explaining a work-related headache, and the woman will start twirling the wand-ed crystal at the person. AT them.
A "resume speaking while I lasso up your negative energy" sort of service. Doesn't matter if the person wants it or thinks it's weird as heck, she just sits there twirling the crystal at you, and then after much a-twirl, she'll lightly touch it to the person and be done. Negative energy demolished!!
15. Bathroom Humor
I used to work with a gentleman who pooped himself on a regular basis. We used to time how long he had between washing, sometimes it was up to three months, we could smell him at the opposite end of the building. He once had what could only be described as a "Poosplosion" in the bathroom, and attempted to clean up after himself.
When I heard what he'd done in there, I wanted to puke. What he actually achieved was to further smear the matter around with a filthy toilet brush. He would have gotten away with it, except he was the only person in the loo, and we work in a high-security building, with access passes to get in everywhere, and the next person in was a manager, who just looked up who was last in the bathroom. He admitted it, and they made him clean it properly this time around.
He also once requested to go home and change after pooping himself when he sneezed. He was told to wash, change, and come back, but didn't return all day. The next day, when he returned, he still hadn't washed, as he stunk and his hair was still greasy. When asked why he didn't return to work, it turned out that he had sneezed in the car, pooped himself again, and it shot out the top of his trousers and up the seat, and he spent all day cleaning the car.
16. Eating Clean
I worked in a restaurant with a guy, let's call him Don. He was a germaphobe. Once while Don was on break, he ordered bacon and eggs. He was watching when one of the cooks picked up the bacon with his hands and put it on Don’s plate. Don then took the bacon off the plate, found a bottle of Purell, and covered his bacon in it.
Then he poorly rinsed the bacon in the sink before eating it. Complained about it tasting funny. Don was standing next to where we throw the cutlery into the dish pit. One of the girls threw a butter knife in, and it almost hit Don. He accused her of trying to stab him for weeks, and never talked to her again for the rest of his time there.
Don got fired for taking a poop in a garbage can during his shift and leaving it there. The garbage can was inside the staff washroom not even a foot from the toilet. This one still bewilders me.
17. Working on My Night Moves
A woman from my previous place of employment was let go because she was recording adult stuff in the office while working overnights. Upon getting fired, she went to the restroom and pitched her coffee mug through all three of the sink mirrors and was escorted out by officers. I suppose she had an ax to grind.
18. Crazy Dave Rides Again
When I worked at Costco, one of my co-workers was "Crazy Dave." The guy was the earthly incarnation of the emotion of suppressed rage. If you had a break scheduled for the same time as Crazy Dave, you would wait until later to take it, because otherwise you'd be forced to sit there and listen to this man spit profanity and hatred through clenched teeth toward the company, the managers, the co-workers, anything else you could possibly discuss.
One of Crazy Dave's jobs was to use the floor cleaner every night; it was basically a riding mower where the blades had been replaced with a floor buffer. You'd be standing there, re-stocking after closing time, and eventually he'd wander by on this thing at 30 km/h muttering under his breath through clenched teeth wearing an expression of pure rage.
19. A Running Start
When I was 16 years old, I worked at the public library in Miami. We had a girl, let’s call her "Nancy," who worked there. Every day at 5 o'clock, her dad would park outside the front door and honk once. Nancy would come out and they'd leave. One day, good ol’ dad parked and honked. Nancy was nowhere to be seen.
So dad honked again, and again and again. I was sitting at the checkout desk. Suddenly, I see Nancy dashing towards the automatic doors. As I see her running at that high rate of speed, I know there is no way that the doors will open in time. It was like a car wreck about to happen—I couldn't look away. Nancy does not slow down, and hits the door at full force. The doors don’t break, and she bounces back about six feet right to the floor.
We were all speechless. She gets up like nothing happened, says, "See you guys tomorrow!" and leaves casually.
20. You Are What You Eat
At one of my old jobs, I had this lady who was obsessed with eating, fitness habits, etc. I brought in a container of mashed potatoes and the way she reacted, you would have thought I was feeding on children as the antichrist. Anyway, we had a group luncheon for this training we were doing and I asked her if she wanted any of the leftovers.
She declined, saying there were too many calories in there and again made me feel like the antichrist. As I'm cleaning up, I go to the communal kitchen and I see her spreading butter on crackers and eating them like it's her last meal. There was easily a half-inch of butter per cracker. This wasn't the "I can't believe it's not butter" stuff—it was the real fat-filled kind.
I say nothing. Two days later, I'm at home with the stomach flu, and I get a call on my cell phone from work. This was most definitely out of the ordinary as I was a temp at the time. It's crazy lady calling to see if she could "borrow" some of the crackers I had in the cupboards as she had eaten all of hers. So awkward.
21. Animal Attraction
When I was in the forces, I had a guy named "Jim" who worked for me. I was in charge of the IT/Comms section for a unit of about 120. One day, we were setting up our equipment for an exercise at the field site. We had to get our satellite communications truck connected to the switch inside the building where everyone was working.
So I tell Jim to find the network cable and run it from the truck to the conduit outside the building, and leave for about 15 minutes to take care of some other issue. I come back, and I'm looking for him, expecting the task to be complete. I eventually find him, crouched in the corner of our tent, with a tiny frog in his hand. He was petting the frog. I asked him, "What the heck are you doing?" His reply: "It's a frog."
22. Let Me Sleep on It
We call her "Oompa Loompa." She is about 55, is 4'9" with a bowl haircut and quite honestly resembles one of the Oompa Loompas from the original version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with her midsection nearly equalling her height. Every day she goes to the lunchroom, heats up two hot pockets, then waddles back to her computer with one hot pocket in each hand.
Now, we work in a small medical billing office, which requires calling insurance companies all day. A fun little fact about Oompa Loompa is that she has narcolepsy! Every day after eating her hot pockets, she begins to dial in an insurance company phone number with her stubby arms that barely even allow her to reach the keypad. Then she falls asleep while on hold and wakes up to the insurance guy saying hello.
She then FORGETS WHERE SHE IS, panics, and hangs up on the insurance guy! This happens a few times a week and I don't even know how she still works here. Needless to say, she sure does spice work life up.
23. Joke’s on Him
Halloween. Dude dressed up as a mushroom cloud. Funny right? Then proceeds to force five visiting Japanese business dudes to take a picture with him...in front of his boss.
24. Annoying in Every Language
There's one woman where I work who simply won't address me like a normal person (à la "Hello, Sarah"). Every morning at 7 am, it's a new, odd form of address: "Buon Giorno, Frederica!" "Hi, Miss America!" "Buenas tarnes, colega!" Our cubicles face each other and we have name plaques on the outside, so it's not like she doesn't know my name.
She just chooses not to use it. Oh, and she's one of those "chipper" people, like the "Somebody's got a case of the Mondays" lady from Office Space.
25. Slow Learner
I had to teach him his job again every day. EVERY. DAY. Six weeks he was with us. Had a pentagram on his chin that he covered (poorly) with makeup on a daily basis. Super awkward guy. Someone else I worked with googled his name years later and found him on a mugshot website on the other side of the country.
26. It Runs in the Family
I'm not even sure where to start. We have "that family" working in our warehouse. It's a mother and her son and daughter. The son was recently fired for reasons that I will get to in a moment. They are as white trash as you can possibly be. Think of all the stereotypes and you will have thought of them. So here's the laundry list.
The Mother: Married to a guy that has dementia and 13 stints in his heart. They have filed medical bankruptcy three times. Most recently, her husband tried to off himself but ended up only shooting himself in the shoulder. She always wears t-shirts with sayings that she thinks are clever like, God Don't Make No Trash and My Give a Darn is Busted.
To really put the icing on the white trash cake, she smokes Pall Malls. She and her children commute to work together but every other month their car gets repossessed, so they end up getting a new bad vehicle. No one is sure how they pull that off, what with all the bankruptcies and other bad credit issues.
She watches EVERY reality show and wants to talk about them with anyone who will listen and doesn't understand when you tell her that you don't watch whatever it is she's talking about. Sounds like a piece of work right? Well strap in—we're just getting started. The Daughter: She smoked through all four of her pregnancies, claiming that her mother smoked when she was pregnant with her and she turned out fine.
She lives in a trailer but gets angry if you call it a trailer because it's on a permanent foundation. She has a Tourette’s-type head twitch and blinking thing going on, kind of like Jose Canseco. Come to think of it, she sort of looks like Canseco. She has no neck; just a head that suddenly becomes shoulders.
She is constantly broke but spends every available penny on sending her two daughters to beauty pageants and then makes everyone in the company look at the pageant photos. Surprisingly, they have actually won a few. I would hate to see what the rest of the competition looked like. We know she has some sort of psychosis because she has to be medicated at all times. When she doesn't take her meds, things get scary fast.
She sees and hears stuff that isn't there. This has led to her hiding under her desk, screaming and crying. She also has some other medical condition that causes her to always to be on her period. We know this because she makes us uncomfortable by talking about it all the time. Once, her husband showed up at our office and while he was waiting for her, he told us that if he had known how crazy she was, he would have never married her, let alone had kids.
To boot, she has four wiener dogs. One of which she claims is an attack dog that actually fended off a burglar. It was a very elaborate story that ended with a wiener dog launching himself off of the couch and into the burglar's face, drawing blood. No one was apprehended so if you see anyone with the tell-tale signs of wienie dog attack please notify the authorities.
And after all that, somehow, the Son is the worst: He always has the worst gas known to man. He was inside of a shipping container unloading products with some of our other employees when he kept farting, which ultimately made them all throw up. It was that ghastly! While talking to him one day, he stuck his hand down the back of his pants and said watch this.
He then stuck his finger under his mom's nose and told her to sniff. He had apparently stuck his finger in his butt because his mom threw up. He then repeated the process with his sister before she could be warned. He had to miss a month of work due to a riding lawn mower explosion. He claimed he had been "blowed up."
He lives in a trailer on his mom's property but doesn't have electricity, so they just run extension cords from her trailer. He had a boil on his arm that was believed to be a staph infection and his mother lanced it with a box cutter. It was disgusting! He had a habit of wrecking our forklift and one day drove it off the loading dock.
The forks went into the asphalt about 10 inches and we had to get a special wrecker to come pull it out. A short time after that, he backed into one of the support beams in the warehouse, knocking it completely out from under the roof. The beam was at least 30 feet long and it's amazing that no one was injured. Sometimes I would find him sleeping, hidden behind pallets in our warehouse during work hours.
Eventually, his sister ratted him out for being drunk on the job all the time, which explained all the forklift mishaps—and that's when he finally went too far. When confronted by his mother about the drinking, he went crazy and tried to beat her and his sister with a baseball bat. Other employees intervened and we called the authorities. He took off on foot and was apprehended later that day, vowing to get even with all of us. Needless to say, he doesn't work here anymore.
27. Girls, Girls, Girls
Todd. He stood about 5'6", or 5'9" if you measured to the top of his mullet. Laughed like a donkey. Was physically incapable of talking quietly. He also could not keep his cool around attractive women. At least once every shift we would hear this high-pitched "ohymygod!!" from the other side of the store. That was the sound of Todd noticing a woman.
This was followed by the supervisor aggressively tracking him down to contain the situation. I'm not sure if it was the union or something else that kept him in the job, but he was working there a long time before I was hired, and I like to imagine that he's still there today.
28. Picture Me With You
I worked at this movie theater with this girl Liz. Something was a bit off with her, but not intellectually, she was just off. She would develop crushes on male co-workers and constantly harass and be suggestive. She would also create very detailed picture books with characters that looked exactly like the guys and had names that were like one letter off from whoever her crush du jour was.
After I got a job as a pizza boy in the same plaza, I found out she had created a book called “confessions of a deranged pizza delivery driver” that featured me and her involved in a lot of very weird stuff and ultimately ended with her character stabbing me. So yeah, that was Liz.
29. Ladies’ Man
I used to work at a grocery store. We had a guy who was a utility clerk, so he basically just pushed carts and stocked shelves. Well, this guy would only stock the feminine hygiene aisle. He would stock the tampons about five times a day and he would smell each one as he put them on the shelf. He would also clean the girls’ bathroom and only the girls’ bathroom three times a day, which wasn't even his job.
30. Doggone It
At my first professional job, I worked with a 28-year-old woman who might as well have been 10. Her parents picked her up and dropped her off, she had to have them constantly reassure her, and her mom handled most of her affairs for her. I honestly never really understood why the office tolerated her incredible childish nature.
The top two moments for me: She got really emotional because a baby bird fell out of a tree outside. Her mom had to come pick her up, while her dad tried to put the bird back in the nest. Then, I shared that my family dog was going to be put down, as he was 19 years old and his quality of life was nearly zero.
This caused her to enter a screaming fit where she locked herself in the bathroom, and then she couldn't figure out how to unlock herself. We had to call a locksmith via building management. Wherever you are, Sarah, I hope you are okay.
31. Naughty Naughty Lulu
I had a co-worker who knew every episode of the Teletubbies by heart. He was like 30 years old with no children.
32. In Good Company
Coworker talks to herself as well as inanimate objects and responds to herself as if it’s an actual conversation. I can tell what she ate for lunch based on what barnyard animal noises she’s making when she returns from break. She gets on her hands and knees and barks like a dog at random. I’m the only person on staff who isn’t terrified of her.
33. Nobody Likes a Snitch
I worked with this girl who just stopped caring about certain aspects of her appearance. Every single day she wore makeup, but she didn't appear to wash the makeup from the day before off before applying today’s. She stopped combing her hair and ended up with a massive dreadlock on top of her head (she was white).
When she leaned over you, dandruff would fall all over the place. She'd wear flip flops daily and you could see the dark marks around the straps from where she hadn't washed her feet in a couple days. Once her feet were purple for three days. But that's not even the weirdest part: On top of all that, she would go shopping and buy all these nice outfits and wear them into work.
So she cared about her appearance somewhat—except one day a week when she'd wear a too-small white tank top that had dirt stains on it. She also kept a log in Excel of when people would come and go throughout the day and use it to try to get others in trouble; she would email my boss every day to let him know that I had come in "late.” Once I wore glitter nail polish and she reported me...we had no rules about nails or their colors.
34. By Popular Vote
I worked in an office with four other men. One day, after a mass shooting, I wondered out loud which one of us was most likely to come in one day and harm the other four. For fun, we cast ballots, each of us writing down who we thought would do it. All five of us wrote down Pete—which means Pete even voted for himself.
35. I Get by With a Little Help From My Friends
Probably the guy who brought an escort into the office. Not sure what his motive was, probably wanted us to think he was a hit with the ladies. He had reception buzz “his girl” in, and she came up to his desk and led him out in full view of everyone. Procedures were changed shortly afterward…it’s not like management had expected that.
36. Don’t Ask
I'm a science teacher, and in my teacher prep program we had this woman who argued that we shouldn't teach students to ask questions because when they get into real-world labs, they'll just be expected to follow the instructions of their supervisors, and to not question it. Yep, she’s gonna be a great teacher someday.
37. Secret Stash
I worked at a software company with normal people and a kitchen with shared dishes and cutlery. It started getting harder and harder to find forks, and after two weeks they were all gone. A few weeks later, a relatively new employee got fired. I had the luxury of cleaning out his desk after he was gone.
Lo and behold, in his drawer were about 25 forks. Like what??
38. Live to Work
When I worked at Taco Bell, there was this older woman who seemed to hang on every word the manager said. She would show up on off days in her work uniform and had her family photos taken in her Taco Bell uniform. I don't think she had any other clothes. I was a little sad for her, but honestly, she seemed super happy.
39. Digging for Gold
Current co-worker. She does a lot of weird stuff that is mildly annoying. But the one thing I cannot handle is she always has her fingers up her nose. You'll be talking to her and she has her hands on her face (on her cheeks Home Alone-style), then her pinky starts moving towards her nose and then...fully inside and poking around.
40. Having a Laugh
A guy I sat next to at work was quite strange. The thing that stands out as the weirdest in my mind is how he'd say, "May I joke with you?" when he wanted to tell me something funny.
41. Bicycle Bill
I worked with this guy in the kitchen of my college who we called "Bicycle Bill." Bill was a non-traditional student, mid-40s, lived with his mom when he wasn't at school, short, and a bit stocky. He lived in the dorms his freshman year with an 18-year-old dude—who was shocked, to say the least, when he saw his new roomie.
We called him "Bicycle Bill" because he had a muscular disease that caused him to randomly lose control of his limbs, yet he still chose to ride a bike everywhere. He wrecked it at least a couple of times a week. He also wrecked his car, his mom's car, and his roommate's car, in a matter of one month. Bad month for Bill.
However, the weirdest thing about Bill was he would carry around a 64 oz jar of peanut butter around to eat with his hand. His hand was constantly covered in peanut butter goo.
42. A Man of Few Words
I worked briefly with this guy, Alan, at an insurance company who literally never spoke, except for his first day when he announced to the office that he'd been in a movie as a zombie extra. After that: not a word. Even when we had to drive around together for 8+ hours trying to sell insurance, he never talked once.
To make things weirder, sometimes he would just wander around the office looking at a blank folder. Then he got fired, making him probably the first person ever to get fired from a pyramid scheme company. Sorry Alan: your experience as a zombie is not relevant in the real world.
43. No Going Back From This
For me, it was a girl who was really quiet most of the time. Then one morning, she phoned in saying her son had passed on. We were devastated. We called her mom hoping to get an address to send flowers. Instead, we found out the grandmother didn't know he passed on. She phoned back about 10 minutes later saying the son was alive and well and the girl just wanted a day off. We never saw her again.
44. Blood Brother
I worked at a summer camp during college and had one fellow counselor who turned out to be weird as heck. One day, we're taking the kids on a hike up a mountain to camp out for the night in a big lean-to. Just as we get there, I tripped and gashed my knee open on a rock. It was deep, and immediately started pouring blood.
I ask around to find out who has the first aid kit, and it turns out to be this guy who I haven't worked with before, let's call him Dave. So Dave, rather than giving me the first aid kit, insists on treating my wound. Blood is flowing all the way down my leg at this point, so rather than argue I just sit down so he can take care of it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is where it gets disturbing.
He takes a wad of cotton, wipes the blood off my leg, and then puts it up to his nose. He takes a deep whiff of the blood-soaked fabric, his eyes closed in what appeared to be pleasure. That in itself was bad enough, but then he opens his eyes and looks directly at me. I'll never forget what he said next: "The smell of blood is beautiful."
45. The Bald-Faced Truth
We hired this girl. She was completely bald. No biggie, I assumed cancer. Well, one of my other co-workers took the plunge and asked. Her answer? "I woke up one day with a bad hair day and said that since I make as much money as my husband, I shouldn't have to deal with this." And then she shaved it off herself.
She was fired a few months later for offering to sleep with the owner of the company for favors.
46. Many Swings, Many Misses
He asked literally every female in the office to go out with him. The married ones were told that he was great for problem marriages. Lesbian women were told he could "straighten them out." The office at that time was fairly strict. His behavior was so over the top, it went past unacceptable and into parody. Everyone was just too stunned to really take him seriously.
Several of the women joked about what they were offered to date him and mockingly feigned insult at how "low" they ranked on his date-meter. HR finally took action when he started aggressively pursuing one woman. He had flowers delivered to the office with a note that said, "I can make you happier than your husband."
47. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
As I walk into the bathroom one day, all I see is my co-worker pooping in a urinal. He sees me and we just awkwardly stare at each other for a few seconds before I walk out.
48. Ninja Level 100
I have this co-worker who is known around the office as "Ninja" because he's extremely stealthy all the time. He's generally very quiet and doesn't like to socialize unless he has to. I saw him at a bar once and he was having a laugh riot with his friends, so he's not really antisocial. He also asked me not to mention that he was seen at a bar to anyone, which I thought was very weird.
He has a habit of sneaking around and popping into co-workers' cubicles to see how long it would take for them to notice him—and one time, this habit took a dark turn. He scared an older co-worker of mine so badly that his chest started to hurt. Luckily, no heart attack happened, but it was pretty scary. His behavior is getting more stealthy as time goes on. He'll be at his desk, but look away for a second, and he'll be gone. It's really weird. I swear to god he knows how to teleport.
49. Roger That
A guy at my work, let's call him Roger, claimed you can get "high octane racing fuel" by mixing 89 Octane and 93 Octane gas in your tank. Roger told me, on my first day here, seven years ago, that if I wanted to know any good Asian massage parlors nearby, he'd recommend the "good" ones with the happy endings. First day at work.
He used to watch webcam girls from the Philippines on his desktop at work—stripping, doing other unsavory things, etc. Then he went over and married one, and now she lives here. She's half his age and probably less than half his size. He took a Filipino co-worker to see his buddy's band at a local bar—turns out it was a biker bar frequented by a lot of some kind of supremacist-style bikers.
The co-worker told me that there were signs up extolling the virtues of ahh let's say, what he thought of as the master race, and that everyone was glaring at him the entire time he was in the bar. When he pointed it out, Roger just laughed and said, "I come here all the time, it's no big deal."
Roger snores through meetings. Roger at one time had some kind of narcolepsy or something and would fall asleep in his cube. Co-workers frequently threw things at him to wake him up. The weird thing is, he's actually a pretty nice guy. If you were in trouble or something and called him at 3 am to come bail you out, he'd do it, even if he'd only met you once, for like 10 minutes. He's very friendly and sociable—he's just really strange.
50. Pass It on
Oh, sweet Jesus. I used to work at a women's clothing store. One of my first shifts, I was closing with a young supervisor. She seemed okay until the manager left. Then she sat on the floor, took out her phone, and started texting people. Whatever. We weren't busy. After about 20 minutes of this, she suddenly stops texting, looks at me, and asks me if I'm “Okay with intimate stuff.”
I didn't really know what she meant at first, so I just kind of shrugged and tried to keep myself busy. She asks me again, only the second time she actually elaborates and asks me if I'm okay with talking about bedroom stuff. Once again, first time I've EVER MET HER. Being the new girl, I didn't want to rock the boat, so I tell her that yeah, that talk doesn't bother me.
Turns out, I had made a horrible mistake. As soon as I tell her I'm okay with it she starts loudly talking about how she recently got intimate with a friend of hers, and now she has chlamydia. This was her favorite topic of discussion for the next four weeks or so. Her chlamydia. She made it total common knowledge. She even told some of our customers—which two of us found out one afternoon when an older woman approached us and asked us if we could help her instead because “that girl over there won't stop talking about her STDs.”
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