Most of the weird happenings of an office setting have been exaggerated and made fun of on “The Office” or in “Office Space”, but the incredibly scary part of it all is how close to true most of those characters are. The other day I was at work wondering if all offices were as weird as mine, or if I was just deemed “special” at some point and granted the privilege of working with such remarkable people. I came to the conclusion that the workplace is truly a cross section of society – but you just notice stupidity and incompetence in more detail because, face it, you would never associate with these people in real life long enough to get to know them. You’re just forced into a 6x10 cube and asked to somehow mesh with these people.
It’s the ultimate twisted anthropology experiment, and most of us spend over 50% of our waking hours with these crazy SOBs – more than our own families! So if you’re going to spend so much time with them, you might as well get to know them. But seeing how we’ve already established that the office is just a cross section of society, these can apply to anyone you encounter in your everyday life. You’re just lucky enough to have the privilege of actually getting to know them more:
The “Way Too Happy to Be at Work” Person – this person is usually the first in the office and already two cups of coffee deep by the time you get to your desk. Similar to Medusa, eye contact with this person may reduce you to a puddle of goo. This is why on your way to the coffee pot for that all important cup number one, you look straight to the ground and count the carpet fibers as you pass his/her desk. Of course it usually doesn’t help. Not only will that son (or daughter) of a bitch still give you a hearty “HAPPY MONDAY!” but they’ll decide it would be a good idea to accompany you to the kitchen for that first cup. The conversation will usually go something like this:
Crazy Coworker: “So, what did you do this weekend?”
You: “Nothing.”
Crazy Coworker: “Awesome! Well on Friday I went home and made my wife a beautiful dinner and then we played Yahtzee with Hank Mardukis and his wife Yolanda for hours on end…We got a LITTLE CRAZY and finished a bottle of wine between the four of us so around 9:00 it was time to pack it in and call it a night…On Saturday we took the kids over to the pumpkin patch and little Joey got his picture taken with a pumpkin that was the runner up for biggest pumpkin at the county fair two years ago – real big moment for us…I spent the afternoon working on the new caboose for my model train set…On Saturdays we like to treat ourselves to a nice night out, so we splurged a bit and went to Swiss Chalet for dinner, and followed it up by checking out the new Billy Crystal movie…Sunday was a lazy day for us – we spent the day watching a marathon of Antiques Road Show and baked all different types of cookies.”
If you made it all the way through that story without zoning out, this lunatic will probably ask you again what you did this weekend, forgetting that you started off the conversation by keeping this information to yourself. Imagine the look of terror on their face if you told them what you really did this weekend – got blind drunk, stayed out until 4am, and went home with a fat girl, only to wake up the next day at 2pm, watch porn, and eat Cheez Doodles all god damn day while watching a Rocky movie marathon. Who knows, maybe a story like that would keep that nosy bastard at bay.
The “Dieter” – always the fattest person in the office, but sure to let you know they are on a diet at all times. When the birthday cake comes out they exclaim “OMG Calories! I can’t eat that I’ll blow up like a balloon!” Well guess what waste-of-life, you’re already as big as the damn Hindenberg, so I don’t think another thousand calories will hurt. After the other fat bitches in the office urge her on, she decides, “Okay, okay, just ONE little piece…ooo I’m being BAD today!!!” and walks back to her desk with a slice of cake resembling a giant wedge of cheese from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Apparently The Dieter didn’t realize that there is only one meal during the workday either. Their meal schedule usually consists of some monstrous sausage sandwich for breakfast, and as an afternoon snack, a bucket full of chocolate covered pretzels. It’s all okay though, since they go with a “light” lunch in the middle – a nice salad! Well, guess what, fattie? It’s cheating if you throw six cut up BBQ chicken fingers and a gallon of blue cheese on that salad. If this pig is eating like this in public, imagine how much time elapses between the time they get home and before they’re on the couch, two knuckles deep in a jar of Nutella.
The Proud Mother – ah yes…pretend to be interested in pictures of her ugly alien baby lying in a crib. Even if you manage to avoid the constant picture exhibition and cell phone videos, you’ll still be forced to overhear the same story of the baby waking up and crying in the middle of the night because there’s an ear infection going around while it’s told to six different people by lunchtime. The amount of child pictures in Proud Mother’s cube borders on pedophilia. She also seems to be constantly breeding in order to use the maternity leave to its full benefit.
Proud Mother has also mastered the art of using the child as a crutch for time off. At least one Monday a month you get, “Thurman is sick with the chicken pox! I need to stay home!” Meanwhile that dirty liar is probably running around the mall going shopping while the kid is as healthy as can be drooling all over some crayons at day care. There also always seems to be an emergency at 2:00 on a Friday afternoon – “I need to leave early! The day care center is on fire!” No one ever second guesses Proud Mother’s time away from the office either. She’s like Gandhi – completely immune from criticism.
The Creepster – Usually a guy in his late 30s-early 40s, single, and incredibly smelly. I always picture Creepster’s apartment looking like Ray Finkel’s attic from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Blood on the walls, an old tv just playing static, and garbage everywhere. His desk at work isn’t much different. There may be a dozen coffee mugs growing mold because he’s too lazy to bring a few home and clean them, and maybe some dirty socks hanging out under his desk from that time he showered in the bathroom sink. Speaking of the bathroom, he also likes to spend 20-30 minutes on the bowl, two to three separate times a day, while the other males in the office are left in horror as they walk into the bathroom to witness sounds and smells similar to the scene in Jurassic Park when they’re helping that injured, moaning Triceratops lying next to that 6 foot high pile of dinosaur shit.
Even though The Creepster is left out of invites to office happy hours, he still manages to sniff them out and hide in the corner staring at people. The women in the office are terrified of him. One of the only times of the year he will engage in conversation is the day before Valentine’s Day, when he will ask the women of the office if they have any plans. This effort to catch some desperate, pathetic tail usually doesn’t work, so the women are left in fear staring into their rear view mirrors on the drive home hoping The Creepster isn’t following them.
Of course there are many more office characters, but I’ll stop here. Do you have any you’d like to add? Feel free to post them below.
