Coworkers Behaving Badly
Each morning, when I get ready for work, I try to put on my "game face." When I step in to a client's office, I am as professional as I can be. When I'm there, everyone is delightfully witty, interesting, and their children's pictures are attractive, and I'm super productive. After all, I'm a consultant, and it's just a temporary job -- I can handle anything with a smile.
Well, today, I was having a bad day. A coworker's behavior is irritating me, and hurting my productivity in a major way. I was time to go get a new pair of headphones.
I'd thought I would recap some of things that I have seen my coworkers do during my career, which made me laugh, cringe, or just plain annoyed me:
- A coworker who wrote on a whiteboard in permanent marker.
- Cubicle-mate that was a heavy mouth breather, where each breath would be punctuated by a slight snore. Frequently, he would emit gurgling burps. He also brought in his telephone headset, and he would call his wife at least twice times a day and have rambling conversations about what he was doing.
- An older gentleman that would take his shirt off when he was hot and "getting sweaty." (They turned the air conditioning off after hours). He was an and not particularly fit. [...It really bothered the impish 20-something female software engineer who had to sit next to him, especially when he started to tell her about his sexual conquests].
- Anyone who lies.
- Coworkers who had a very strong body odor.
- A technical lead that would be nice to people to their face, but when they were walking away they would start saying bad things about them.
- A cubicle-mate that would blow his nose constantly, even when he was eating. He would also pick his nose. Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw him eat one.
- A cubicle-mate who clipped his fingernails at his desk.
- A cubicle-mate who's dog died. He actually cried and had tearful phone conversations about his dog to friends and family. The mourning and depression lasted almost a month. He still has a picture of his dog as his windows background and a framed picture as a reminder to this day.
- A consultant who came into work on a Saturday, dialed the phone, and started crying and sniveling about his soon to be ex-wife. As the sorted details of his personal life spilled over the cubicle wall, I felt like I was watching a human train wreck unfold in slow motion before me. After an hour on the phone, he left (I don't think he knew I was working several cubicles away). Its awkward for me to look at him in the face after that.
- A consultant that outsourced his own job to China. He had difficulty in finishing the assignments, and even more difficulty in explaining why he coded the way he did. It was discovered that he was sending and receiving source code and company specifications over unencrypted e-mail to his cohorts in China.
- A consultant who had a federal firearms dealer permit. One day he ordered a book and 10,000 rounds of ammunition, which was delivered to work. He swore it was just a mistake, the ammunition was supposed to be delivered to his home... he was fired on the spot (and walked out accompanied by no less than three security guards).
- At one company, it was detected that someone was surfing the net work porn at night. They placed a security camera to catch the culprit-- they caught a lot more than they wanted. The employee not only viewed the pornography on his office computer, but started to pleasure himself. When they fired him, he started to angrily protest until they slapped the VHS movie on the table. He left without saying a word.
- A coworker in the next cubicle that loudly spent over five hours on the phone talking in a breezy foreign language. The rest of the time he surfed the Internet, except at 4:30 p.m. he would ask some permanent employees questions, but they were only interested in going home at 5:00. When asked why his productivity was so low, he'd shrug and say that the American programmers weren't cooperating or sharing information.
- A consultant that spent most of his time on the phone speaking rapid-fire Vietnamese. Half the time he didn't show up. One day the manager came looking for him, and grew agitated when he was informed he hadn't been there for several days. Worse yet, one of the other Vietnamese coders told everyone why he was one the phone -- he was selling Amway.
Leave a comment with your stories. I'm sure you have some ;)
Labels: Business, Consulting
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