Tales of creepy/obnoxious/weird/etc. co-workers.

I worked at a pizza place part-time to help pay for college, and while I worked there there was this guy "Roy" (name changed to protect the innocent. Or insane...) who also worked there. Roy was ostensibly nothing more than a violently racist redneck, but I learned a valuable lesson by working with him- Never take anyone at face value.

While working there I discovered that while Roy did indeed hate black people and listen to country music, he was a fucking disaster of epic proportions. I swear to you I am embellishing none of the following:

-He was deathly afraid of girls, to the point that if a group of girls drove up to pick up an order or something, he would literally run away. LITERALLY. AS in look at the window, start sweating, and run to the back of the store screaming that he was scared.

- He loved to tell everyone about his bathroom habits. This would vary, as some days he would tell us how constipated he was, and others he would tell us that he had shit himself. Once he told us he shit himself twice in one day, and he needed to go home to change pants. We thought he was joking. He wasn't.

- He had a weird, repressed violent streak. The manager of this place was just an asshole, so you had to let him know that you wouldn't take shit off of him. That meant a lot of yelling and fighting with him. Everyone did it, except Roy. No, Roy would just meakly walk away. This extended to other things, as well. Customers suck, so you've got to be able to stand your ground with them to. But he would always fold and just walk away.

All this culminated when one day, he just gets the shit beat out of him in the parking lot. Some guy he knew just shows up and beats the hell out of him and he never raises a hand to defend himself. Just sits there and takes the beating like he deserved it. So I ask him why he didn't defend himself and his answer-

"I know if I fight back I'll lose control. And I'll stab him. And I'll kill him. And I'll like that."

To which I say to myself "HOLY FUCKING SHIT."

He wasn't BSing, either. He got this psychotic look in his eye when he said it and was completely earnest about it. The only other time I'd seen that look is when my uncle talked about his tour of duty in Vietnam.

- His hobbies included dumpster diving for scrap metal and pawning off the stuff his dad stole off of dead bodies (rings, necklaces, etc.). Again, not a lie, not a joke. His dad is a whole other story, though.

- He had a shooting range in his backyard, where he also detonated the homemade explosives he made (I got to witness this first hand.).

- He was always ranting about how much he hated blacks, but how much he respected Africans. Then one day he told us that if he ever found out he had a black ancestor, he would kill himself immediately. Again, the look in his eye made it more than clear he was deathly serious.

- He (well, his family. He lived with his parents and siblings.) had a huge collection of firearms. Like, ridiculous. He said they were stockpiling for the "race war". They lived in the middle of nowhere, and he always told us that this was the ideal vantage point to "stage attacks" when the "race war" came.

I wonder whatever happened to him.

I work at Kroger and was talking to some of my co-workers at a bar we went to after work to chill and relax. Then I was told this story. Two brothers Matt and Norm (who are just like that Roy guy Cow Puncher was talking about.) Matt came in one day and told everyone that his brother Norm had a blow up doll and that it had a major rip in the asshole part of it

As someone who has lived in Alabama my entire life, I can tell you there are a lot of these people out there. And they all can't wait for this inevitable "race war." Always blows my mind.

I've worked with some weirdos in my time, but none as bad as Cow Puncher's "Roy." That's bad. That's "I need to switch jobs so I'm not around this one person" bad.

Most of my weird co-workers just had small quirks that we'd laugh about. There was this one guy when I worked at ABC Television - he was in our accounting department. You know how some people wind up with little stashes of stuff from delis, like extra straws or plastic forks, ketchup packs, and a few of them wind up tossed around inside their top desk drawer? This guy used to save all that stuff too, and then file them in his file cabinet under the proper letters. "K" meant that in addition to whatever client billing we had under "K", he also had a folder that held ketchup packets. AND if you borrowed from him? He expected you to replace it. Those free salt & pepper packets, free sugar packets? "Hey Bob, do you have any salt?" Yup, under S, and he'd expect you to replace that next time you went to the deli. My friend got her lunch one day and forgot to get a fork before she came back to the office. She asked him if he had one - he goes to the file cabinet, pulls the drawer for "F", gives her a plastic fork and informs her that she has to give one back to him "at her earliest possible convenience".

There was a woman in an office I worked at who had an alcohol problem, and part of that problem entailed, well, basically making the women's room uninhabitable on a regular basis. I had friend go in there and she came out absolutely horrified by the fecal mural this other woman had decorated the stall with. And this apparently happened on a fairly regular basis.

Later, this same woman was having some housing difficulties and one of our co-workers offered her a room in his house with his wife. One day during his shift, he got a phone call from his wife, and you could hear the high-pitched shouting on the other end of the phone. He hung up the phone and just stared blankly for moment, then quietly said, "She shit up my house." Yes, our problem child had an ... incident in their bathroom and had managed to coat every surface -- including the ceiling -- and his wife was essentially threatening divorce if he didn't kick Expulsia out of the house immediately.

I've been a computer consultant for decades, so the list of bizarre/weird/creepy/obnoxious people I've encountered at various businesses could fill up a phone book.

A few highlights:

1) The religious zealot mainframe programmer who stood up on a conference table and screamed demands that two other guys repent their sins because they were discussing "Magic: The Gathering" cards before a meeting.

2) A midget (dwarf? munchkin?) IBM employee who would continuously dig boogers out of his nose and wipe them off on peoples computer monitors as he strolled through the office laughing manically like Warwick Davis in "Leprechaun"

3) The guy who lined up all of the books on his bookshelf with ruler so they were of a uniform, flat forward alignment. Much entertainment could be had by pushing one of the books back to the rear of the bookshelf and then listening to him rant for an hour about disorder in the universe

4) Trekkies! A boatload of Trekkies! Including one who wore a Starfleet uniform to work....always.

5) The guy who had his dog issued an employee identity and took him to all meetings. He would then demand that the dog be allowed a say regarding any networking issues.

6) The guy who carried a loaded 44 magnum in a blue bag everywhere he went. Quickest meetings were the ones he attended, so I actually appreciated him.


Damn I love this industry.

Well, now, let's be honest. That's just plain awesome. In fact, I plan to do the same thing in the near future.

Okay.... so let's take a count. So far, the most normal - meaning quirky, but not that bad - co-worker has belonged to me, the person from NY. Meaning the next person who says NY is full of wackos is gonna get this thread shown to them.

I love this thread - great stories, everyone!

(cracks his knuckles) Oh, the whack-a-loons I've had to work with... every. Single. Job.

Let's start with my time at Great Adventure: My first Grounds Supervisor was this guy we called "Skippy' Dude was 30 years old, skinny as all get out, blond hair, with a skinny porn star mustache. Whenever any of the guys would talk about a date or a hot girl, Skippy would blush start giggling. A high-pitched, loud, Riddler giggle that would last for exactly 3 minutes. One time one of the guys found part of an old Playboy magazine in the Employee Rest Area (probably from the night shift), and gave it to Skippy - he bolted with the mag to behind one of the storage sheds, and this terrifyingly maniacal laugh filled the air. Nobody wanted to go anywhere near the shed or him for weeks.

Then there was Mark, an 18 year old guy who was just so braindead that it was amazing he could put his clothes on without help. He had a weird, slanted buzzcut, like the clippers slipped, and he kept it that way. Dude had this look on his face like somebody smacked him in the back of his head with a shovel. He never blinked his eyes... ever. He was obsessed with kiddie pools. Kiddie pools. Every shape, size, color, variation, etc. - if it was a kiddie pool he HAD to have it. One poor bastard had a sister who worked at Toys R Us, and he gave mark a couple of kiddie pools that were overstock or something - they were getting pitched, the guy wanted to do a solid for Mark, and gave him the pools. Mark fixated on this guy for the rest of the summer, like Romeo fixated on Juliet. When the guy did his last day, Mark was devastated (even though his owwn last day was the next day) - I'm talking hysterical crying, hyperventilating, etc.

Sorry, but NY remains in the running, as the midget I mentioned above worked in Manhattan.

I had this Lebanese structural engineer who hated both Palestinians and Israel (the Palestinians fleeing Israel and taking refuge in Lebanon were one of the cause behind the civil war in the 80's). First-class conspiracy theorist. Every single problem he had on the job was because of one of these two ethnic groups. He even blamed the Jews for his weakening marriage, as a friends of his wife, working in a bank, was advising her to hold her ground and not obey every single lunatic wishes of her deranged husband.

So here's comes 9/11. Oh boy. The news comes up. He kneels on the ground and start yelling in Arabic. Inquiring on what-the-fuck-is-going-on-you-crazy-asshole, he calmly says that retribution has come to the American Oppressor, supporters of Israel, and that soon we will all feel the Wrath of Allah. The boss caught all of this.

So he got fired on 9/11. His exit was grandiose, blaming the Jews, of course.

I used to work with a guy that spoke fluent Klingon.

Hmmm... okay. But just so you know - one booger-smearing midget does not a "Kiddie Pool Mark From Great Adventure" make.

Don't get me started on this topic. I could write a novel. I may post some stuff this evening.

Put it this way, I worked at a carwash for four years and met some of the strangest, scariest, and weirdest people in my time there.

A lady in my office recently returned to the company after being out of engineering for a few years. She looks like the Joker. I'm talking carbon copy of campy 60's TV Joker with a bit wider face. An engineer commented on how she obviously had some work done, and tracked down an old photo from a Christmas party.

She definitely had a LOT of work done. She also apparently went through breast cancer. Of course I'm not going to fault her for this...but, oh God but... She was discussing going through this ordeal and having the breasts removed with another lady in the break room (definitely a sewing circle) and that she had implants. I'm standing there while heating my food, and she...God I need some soap to wash my eyes...

She tells the other lady what a good job they had done, and lifts up her shirt, revealing all, to anyone standing in the breakroom or passing in the hallway. She did this like it was nothing. Like people should be proud of her implants. I did not eat lunch.

Recently someone ate a slice of sandwhich cheese from a packet she had left in the fridge. She flipped out and hung up signs saying "You ate IT! You drank IT! IT was NOT yours. YOU ARE A THIEF!!!" If someone takes down one of these signs you will hear her yelling in the morning that someone threw it out, and she will print out more. This has been about 2 weeks ongoing, and there is currently a sign on both fridge doors and doors out into the hallway.

I have a co-worker now who must be the real-life inspiration for Journeyman, because she's constantly asking what the date is. I mean sometimes twice in the same hour. And she sits at a desk with a huge freaking desk calendar on it.

Between my junior and senior year of college, I worked in a jewelry store in my hometown. It was a family-owned store, which meant that a large number of the employees were related and, of course, completely incompetent. My boss was the most magnificent of the lot, though - she was in her late 30s and had been given the job at the store because she was obviously incapable of holding down any work where she wouldn't have family members cutting her slack. As jewelry stores in blue collar towns tend not to get a lot of foot traffic, there were entire days where I would be alone in the store with her. And she was a talker. Some highlights -

~ Shortly after I started working there, her grandmother (the widow of the original owner) pulled me aside and told me that "Jenny" had done a lot of acid and that she wasn't quite right. I had already figured this out, but it was nice to know the reason.

~ She lived upstairs from the store and would still manage to arrive 20 minutes late, leaving me hanging out on the sidewalk, since they wouldn't just give me a key.

~ She chain smoked. In the store.

~ She had been in art school for about eight years and regularly explained to me that I didn't have the special insight into art that she did because of her education. She stored some of her work in the basement of the store. Not so much.

~ She would, at random (in the middle of the day) decide that she had to go to church and pray. Sometimes she would tell me that she was leaving. Sometimes not. Sometimes it would happen multiple times a day. She would then come back and hold forth at great length about Jesus.

~ Oh, and she also believed passionately in reincarnation. She believes that one of her former incarnations was buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (her body is in a museum! She saw it!) and that she was a Russian ballerina. I have blanked out the others. She came up with so many incarnations that it made no sense chronologically.

~ She hated the homos (called them "the homos"). She lived in California for a while and loved to regale me with the story of setting up lawn chairs for the pride parades so she could sit there and make fun of "the homos."

I'll address the freakshow that is working among librarians later. Woo.

About a week before I left, I had a co-worker who walked out of a Daniel Clowes book. She was overweight, had buckteeth, a single giant wart on the side of her lip, and when she wasn't working at Blockbuster she was teaching at bible camp. I'm so glad I left when I did, because it was the kind of tragic-comic that was really difficult to bear, especially because she was so goddamned (over)friendly. To this day I cannot read Pussey! without thinking of that woman.

And of course, there's Jeremy...

I worked for a publications company out of college - my first REAL commercial art job. The cast of characters that I encountered in my 8 years there - damn.

We had one girl who claimed she had "perfect breasts'. She worked in our darkroom, and not only gave all the photo crew a good look, but carried on a 5 minute discussion about the magnificence of her mammaries. Topless. She was fired next day, mostly due to the fact that the Darkroom Manager said she'd walk if Miss Perfect wasn't ousted. No, I never saw them.

Then there was (p)Rick who basically showed up every day doing everything he could to get fired so he could go on unemployment. He would take naps, drink beer, rolled and smoked his own cigarettes (not with tobacco wink-wink), steal stuff, etc. Took forever to get that lunk out.

There was a girl who basically decided to use the entire Production Department as a psychology study. She'd attempt to figure out everyone's personality types by basically mind-fucking with everyone she encountered. For me, she faked an epileptic fit/emotional breakdown. When everyone found out she was fucking with us, she quit immediately - for her own safety.

There was Paul, a guy who though there were special rules for him. Dude constantly submitted ads after deadline, often when we were putting books together for printing. He'd blow off meetings, slack off working on ads, couldn't grasp instructions - even when they were right in his face, etc. mostly because he would hang out with one of the company's founders (they were boating buddies).

There was Goth Girl, who was kind of heavy and borderline psycho. She was in love with some skinny geek who worked at Coin Castle at the Shore - she called him "Vampire Boy", and the guy did have a passing resemblence to Max Schreck. She simply wouldn't shut up about this guy - we knew more about this guy then we ever wanted to know (his clothing sizes, what he likes to eat, his favorite movies, what he did at Ocean County Mall last Thursday night, etc.) and we never even met the fuck.

EDIT: Almost forgot Heidi! Heidi worked in Production with me - nice girl, but made some horrendously bad life choices, and smelled like Benson & Hedges, fish, and 35 years of pencil shavings. She once had sex with a boyfriend/father of her kid in our parking lot, during a lunch break. They fell asleep in the car, and she didn't come into the building until 5 hours later, just in time for her shift to end. Another time, she got kicked out of her house by her Mom one morning, so since she didn't have time to take a shower, she washed up in the Ladies' Room sink - even shaved her legs and armpits, as well as her cooter (I know this, as one of the girls saw her do it). She then got the sympathies of one of our drivers, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, and he offered to put her up at his place until she got back on her feet. This happened on a Friday. The following Monday, we found out the guy kicked her out that Sunday. Seems on Saturday, he asked Heidi to clean the house while he was out in lieu of paying rent, which she did, but when she was done, she called an old boyfriend over and they fucked like weasals in the guys' bed and kitchen. The guy caught them in mid-stroke, and kicked 'em out. During this event she got pregnant - she had just transferred custody of her son to her Mom (the kid's grandmother) only about a month before this pecadillo.

She used to call out "sick' whenever the weather was nice - she would take her kid to the shore and cruise the boardwalk. My supervisor was taking a day off that day and happened to be at the boardwalk, and she was busted. Last we knew, she was working as a barmaid at the local go-go bar (obviously not as a dancer, as she was built like a stick figure). One of the sales guys saw her there, and she freaked the fuck out when she saw him. No one knows what happend to her since.

I am telling you, you guys are making NY sound more normal by the minute. I mean, 20 years in the work force, and I've got nothing aside from the condiment filer.

We had a lot of odd people get jobs at the movie theater I was a manager at. What they did at work wasn't nearly as weird or illegal as what they did off the clock.

-Brandon, an usher, had the funniest hair and face. He was a black kid, about 19, and he had a face and hair that made him look like a snow monkey. Here's a look a like:



Brandon worked for a few weeks for us, and after New Year's he never showed up again. I found out it was because on New Year's Eve he was arrested for stealing a police car.

To top it off for me, months later I was looking through some employee applications and found his. One of the positive attributes about himself he listed was that he "loved working with people". Not that you can't do that and still steal a police car, but I was amused.

-Sean, a very thin, pale, creepy looking and acting 19 year old also worked for us for a few weeks and took some time off, telling us that his uncle died and he had to fly out for his funeral.

I guess someone in his family called a week or two later to tell us that the real reason he was gone was he was arrested on drug charges. My boss was so mad that he said he wished his uncle died.

Okay, since I do see that the thread is also for obnoxious co-workers, I've got one, and he's sitting at the desk behind me right as I type this.

This kid is constantly talking to me like I'm stupid. Always. And I've called him on it and he acts terribly hurt that I'd accuse him of that. Yet he's always double checking every single simple, ordinary thing I said like he just can't believe it, and he has to confirm it, re-confirm it, and also re-re-confirm it. So it shouldn't surprise him that he got his ass handed to him today by me, because, although I'm not a rocket scientist, if he keeps talking to me like I just had a lobotomy, we're going to have problems.

So I run into one of our bosses today in the hall, and he says to me, "I'm heading out for a few minutes. Ask Bob to call me on my cell." I get back to my desk and a few minutes later, Bob returns. I tell him, "Bob - John said for you to call him on his cell."

He gives me this incredulous look AND tone of voice and says, "JOHN wants me to call him on his cell?" I said "Yes - he stepped out, and said for you to call him on his cell."

"JOHN wants ME to call him on his cell?"

"Yes."

"Why would he want me to call him on his cell? Your sure about this, Lisa? JOHN wants me to call him?"

Finally, I just barked at him, "BOB! CALL.JOHN.ON.HIS.CELL. That's it. End of message."

You are either in denial, or you've been so steeped in paranoia that you've refused to look. Either way, congratulations, m'dear.

I, on the other hand, will say nothing about any of my co-workers. Why? Because I've been a professional musician, I've worked at a library, I've been a telemarketer, and I now work in religious broadcasting.

I got to hold on to the hope that good karma can come into my world at some point, and for some reason.

I swear, I'm not in denial. Honest - I've worked with some annoying and obnoxious co-workers, but no serial shitters or booger smearers. But hey, a girl can dream.

I work at a hotel. Night shift. One night I came into work, greeted the out-going desk clerk, she told me a couple details about some room charges, that was it.

After she leaves I walked into the back office and found a sealed jar with a snake in it sitting in front of the computer. There was a note--in her handwriting--taped to the jar that said "LIVE SNAKE--I'M NOT JOKING!!!"

Somehow she forgot to tell me about the live snake in a jar in the office.

I could write a book about creepy/obnoxious/weird guests I've encountered at work, but that's the only fairly weird co-worker moment I've had there.

The most recent one that comes to mind was an ex-manager who got fired for incompetence. He was always flat out a jerk, hardly did any work, and I don't think it's possible for anyone to be more of a closet homosexual desperately wanting to bust out in show tunes. The most disturbing example of this is when he used to eat an entire cucumber on his lunch break, but not cut it up, he would eat it whole while preforming fellatio on it. It was stomach churning being able to hear the slurping and "Mm" sounds from across the store. It was so bad we had two of our female employees write him up, and a customer complained.

It's hearing stories like these that make me relish my time as projectionist, cuz that's pretty much a solo job (or it was for me), and the co-workers I did have were awesome and relatively normal, at least as normal as fellow cinephiles and a boss who loves rollercoasters can be.

If that's your dream, I'd hate to see your nightmares, Lisa (shudders).

Here's a couple more - but I need to compliment an old ex-employee first.

After I left the publishing job, I got a job working for a coupon clipper magazine called the Marketeer, based out of NYC, but they set up a NJ branch in Old Bridge. I met this guy George (IT guy), who I thought was British (heavy accent) upon meeting. He informed me he was actually Greek - then pumped his fist "Fooled another one!". Guy was a character, and was hands down the nicest fella you'd ever want to work with. A real gentleman, would give you the shirt off his back, and would NEVER ask for anything in return. Give him a Christmas present, and he'd be truly touched ("Oh, you shouldn't have!"). Hardcore MAC guy - he once ran a processor race between a loaded MAC and a PC just to prove to a co-worker how MACs kicked ass. All around great guy.

Well, one day, due to management cahnges that turned the one-time fun job into a shithole, George moved to Germany to be with his girlfriend. Sad day, and we needed a new IT guy as a result. Enter John AKA "The Crack", so named because he was heavyset - so much so that no pants would fit him properly. You ALWAYS saw his asscrack, hence the nickname. Dude never combed his hair, shaved or washed apparently, as his funk announced his presence from two rooms away.

Crack was let go due to stealing. Since he was the IT guy, he reasoned he HAD to have a new computer. He ordered a top-of-the-line MAC with printer, scanner and flat screen monitor and had it delivered to his house in Toms River. After the computer arrived at his house, he suddenly "got sick", and vanished for a month.

I showed up to work one day to see an Old Bridge police car in our lot. Turns out, Crack was under suspicion of theft (!) so our manager (more on him later - yeesh) and the head of the Sales Dept. go with the cops to Crack's house. There was some sort of agreemnet that if Crack surrenders what he ordered, no charges would be filed, and he could quit. The manager and sales guy come back later that night and put these cardboard boxes that reek of cat piss in the Art Dept. As we were busy getting books out, we tried to ignore the smell from the boxes. The following week, we're ordered to open the boxes. We find tons of old, busted computer parts (NCR/IRX anyone?), and lumpy cat litter and piss stains - cats used this as a litter box! In the days inbetween, Crack, his cats and his girlfriend (!) abandoned the house, and took the new MAC stuff with 'em. Management got fucked over, and I quietly laughed to myself.

O_O...he had a girlfriend?

What is the world coming to?

All that for a MAC, that should be a new commercial.

I know! "Apple: A computer so fucking awesome, it's worth getting arrested and skipping town for."

How Steve Jobs never recruited you is beyond me. Must've been because of your punk rock 'tude.

And congratulations on post # 1000, Lisa! You have officially begun to spend too much time on CHUD!

Story 1 - I worked with a woman who saw the first LOTR movie...and was convinced it was historical fact. Seriously. She swore that Legolas was a son of hers in a prior life. She started buying all this weird Legolas memorabilia shit to "get in touch with her prior life son." We tried to tell her that the movie was FICTION. Showed her the books, explained who Tolkein was, told her that elves just don't fucking exist, etc. No dice.

I owe it all to you guys! The collective wit, intelligence and humor of the Chewers give me absolutely no reason to shut the fuck up!

This is Bob from HR at Nintendo. You are all fired. Have a great day.

More like: "Apple: The favored computer of fat, unwashed, thieving, ass-crack-showing assholes the world over!"...

Wow that sounds eerily familiar to a woman I worked with once. Except her delusion was not that LOTR was real it was that she was responsible for making the LOTR movies. She would tell us that her and her so called billionaire husband met with a down and out Peter Jackson and financed the movies when no one else would. I of course knew better but I let her ramble on for the entertainment value. I found out later that she was never even married!

But by far the weirdest dude ever was when I worked at UPS graveyard shift sorting packages. This guy would tell people his name was Lucifer and nobody really knew his real name. He would dress all in black and he would wear a sleave-less shirt everyday. During breaks he would practice martial arts and punching and kicking. His body funk was truly overpowering he did not wear any deodorant and told me once that it was only for "weak minded" people. He somehow got two different women to live with him at the same time they all worked there also and he called them his wives. He told me once for fun he would spread broken glass all over the floor in a room in his home and blindfold himself and try to "sense" his way out of the room. The last time I ever saw him was during break time someone accidentally stepped on his sandwich and he jumped up and used the guys head for a punching bag. He got fired that instant and no one heard from him again. Sometimes I wonder if he really was the Prince of Darkness and just needed a part time job to make ends meet.

Yeah we could have commercials that start out with someone doing something really idiotic like getting arrested and skippiing town to mexico inan overly elaborate way. Or it could be really fucked up like screwing a fug fat chick and then the next day while their using industrial strength chemicals on their johnson they get a knock on the door. There ominously waiting is a Mac. The guy smiles while the words "All that for a Mac?" appear onscreen.

Then "Fuck Klondike bars".

I once worked with someone who believed to be an abducted. Dirk. Dirk had cellophane all over his car "so they couldn't detect him". Whenever the manager wasn't around, Dirk told various customers of the "impending invasion". He also firmly believed in Satan and repeatedly said that only the devil could save mankind from the aliens.

One day a co-worker saw him in the bathroom, pissing in a bottle. After asking why, Dirk suspiciously said that he doesn't want to leave traces "for them to find" and that he stores his urine and feces at home.

Dirk was finally fired when he attacked a customer - with his teeth.

I once worked at a movie theater with a socially maladjusted guy named Cree. He was a really skinny guy with pale skin and a grating, nasally voice who always slouched and snuck up on you- kinda like a vampire, except I'm pretty sure he worked a few morning shifts. He was at the theater forever, and he never really did anything else in life, hence his pasty skin suggesting an 18 year old (he was actually 27). He had worked at the theater for a long time, but he was so socially inept that he never got to move beyond sweeping the floors and cleaning the theaters.

Cree used to pester co-workers for a ride home because he had no other way of getting there. We developed a friendship because he was kind of a nice guy, despite seemingly living a life of shame. However, I found out that he cottoned to me fairly quickly, and because I was one of the few at that theater with something of a social life, he kept desperately asking how to score chicks and get them to talk to him (I was 20). I found out later that he was a virgin and he had a habit of stalking any girl who worked there.

I learned of one time where he asked for a ride from an ok looking 18 year old girl at work. The next day, she came into work, crying, throwing her vest at the manager and screaming, "I can never work with that guy again!" I wasn't there, though I was wondering what he did that was bad enough that she'd be in tears THE NEXT DAY.

I have a few friends who still work there in promotions and I ask them about Cree every day. He was so uncomfortable, so desperate, and so damn sweaty that I'm just waiting for the day that he murders someone. I know that his neighbors will say the same shit you always see on the news, "Oh, he was a nice, quiet neighbor, just a regular guy," and I wanna be the one to say into the microphone, "You know what? I saw it coming from A MILE AWAY."

I will say this, in defense of these batshit insane co-workers we're sharing stories with...

They sure do make the time fly at work, don't they?

Lemme tells ya about Helena, emphasis on the "Hel", that I used to work with at Marketeer. Fucking snooty, stuck-up, shit don't stink, materialistic, pain-in-the ass Helena. For some reason, she always seemed to have a problem with submitting her ads on time to the Art Dept. Often she'd be in the back, gossiping and giving the stink eye to anyone and everyone outside of the Sales Dept. One time she decided she didn't like a particular layout I came up with for one of her ads, so she decided to let me have it in front of the entire Sales Dept., and being a noob at the time, I had to take it.

Flash forward a couple of months later. Friday morning, putting the last of the books together, and in comes Helena, showering praise and smiles on my co-worker Vito (from Brooklyn!) for an ad he did for her. I figured if she liked that ad, she'd love an ad I worked on to her exact specifications - my chance to make nicey-nice, right?

Wrong. "You, I have a problem with! You screwed up my Tuscany ad!" Oh? I never worked on the Tuscany ad that week, so I told her. She calls me a liar in front of the whole Art Dept. then brings the ad to me. Quick aside - for each ad an artist worked on, that artist had to sign the ad jacket, especially if s/he did any revisions.

Okay, so Helena brings the ad to me, thrusts it in my face, and says "Whose name is THIS? Huh, Tim? Who's name is THIS that worked on this ad?!?"

My answer, as written on the ad jacket - "Michelle". I make sure to say this loud enough so the entire BUILDING hears this.

Now, granted, I'm cute as a bug's rectum, but the facial hair, Adam's Apple, and the fact I have a dick pretty much rules out me ever being mistaken for a "Michelle". I then politely ask Helena if she would like me to make corrections to this ad, which she humbly says "yes". No apologies or anything - just "yes."

I fix the ad, go into Sales and give it back to her, along with a warning - "You pull that shit on me again, and I swear to you it will be my life's mission to make YOUR life a living Hell. ARE WE FUCKING CLEAR, HELENA?"

She peeps out a "yes" and NEVER gave me shit again.

*Holds up tacky, glitter-encrusted "American Idol" style sign that reads, "HELENA SUCKS" in big pink letters*

I really truly love moments like that. It makes it worth going in to work each day.

KABONG, did you ever find out what Cree did to that girl who gave him the ride? Was he secretly an Amway salesman?

Worse. He shilled for Primerica.

*Cues lightening/thunder effect*

I have this co-worker that comes into the men's restroom and monitors and catalogues everyones toilet stall noises and habits and then apparently posts about them on the internet on the basis that there is an accepted set of rules regarding noises your rectum makes while pushing shit out.

Had to add it, Ed - gives me an excuse to use this;



"PRIMERICA!" (lightening/thunder effect/ horse whinny)

Believe me, I've been trying to find out.

Hey, question.

After reading all these stories, has anyone wondered if one of these obnoxious/creepy/weird people could be on the boards right now reading these things? They could even be replying to these things but we wouldn't know because they have only one perspective on things. I really doubt it because what are the chances of them being into movies enough to be on these boards in the first place? There's always what if though...

I'll never forget the first time I met Bubsy, my superior.

Me: Hi, I'm hear about the job.

Bubsy: Come right in.
*Holds up a stick*
Bubsy: This is my afro-american beating stick.