17.1.08

Of workmates and weirdos

There's this girl at my present office...let's call her Ms X. Now, she's the kind of person you hope you never have to confront because she is sort of like a gangster, seriously! She walks like she's on a mission to beat someone up, her arms rigidly swaying as she takes big strides to her destination. And the way she talks could make even the most patient Buddhist monk want to throw his prayer beads at her. She talks as id she is constantly angry...even when she's happy. It's almost like aggressive shouting. And the way she talks to clients...it makes me cringe! She badgers them for whatever it is she is chasing them for. Ok, to her credit, she's not doing an easy thing. She calls up our clients and reminds them that we have not got their payment. But honestly, if you had a girl scolding you, would you want to pay as soon as possible? Remember, you're the customer and we need your business...

Anyways, the reason i decided to blog about it is that after working in a few places, I've come to realize that every office will have at least one weird person working there. It could be their sad attitude about work in general or the way they do their work...but you can tell almost straight away, that you have to watch out for them.
At my first job, there was this Aunty (she was way older than me and she acted like one anyway) who had a notorious reputation for being the fire starter. She goes around poking into everyones business and then at the opportune moment, she lets it all out and watches as the people around her fight. She then just sits back and plays the role of an ignorant git who can't seem to understand what all the fuss is about. Needless to say, after getting burned a few times, me and my workmates realized that nothing can be shared with her...not even the wedding of one of our workmates! Boy, was she pissed when she found out about the wedding...
Then, at my last company, there was a guy (Mr K) who was a pure nightmare to work with. He had his own way of doing things and it just SUCKED! He would never follow the SOP's, he'd take ages to complete even the most simple task and he'd even bug others with silly questions to which he should have the answer to already because he's one of the most senior staff among us! He would somehow always find a way to create a mess of things and leave just in time for someone else to have to deal with it. He also made some of our clients really mad with his ridiculously bad phone manners (I was at a Call Centre, btw). He created so many problems that just before I left, I heard that my manager had asked that he give in his resignation. Scary!!!

Now, back to Ms X. My first day at this new job, she was given the task of taking me out to lunch. After getting our food and sitting down to eat, there was utter silence. I tried to break it by asking the usual questions but within 5 minutes, I had reached a wall. I spent the rest of the hour in silence and she was mostly staring into emptiness, dreaming about goodness knows what. A few days later, the rest of my workmates decided that we should all go out to lunch together. She came along too, but whilst everyone else was talking or at least participating in the conversations around, she just stared into emptiness again.

Since then, I've noticed that she has lunch by herself all the time and more recently, she takes away lunch and has it at her desk. Now, before you think we're ostracizing her, we do actually ask her to join us. She just chooses not too. So, lunch hour these days has turned into a b*tching session for everyone to pour out their problems relating to her. And somehow, every new day seems to bring with it new situations in which Ms X pushes the patience envelope of both the clients and office staff.

*sigh*...the drama of working life.

2 comments:

Bren said...

One of the signs of growing up: cribbing about colleagues. :)
My problem is:
A senior colleague who talks down to us juniors and tries to push work to us whenever possible. Unfortunately for him, the dynamics of our dept is such that seniority doesnt really count unless u'r the dy director level n above, so we give him no quarter. He's been bitten a few times so more careful with us now.
Second problem is a boss who is DAMN showy, even my friends in other depts are complaining and asking, "how can u work with a boss like dat?" but i hv to, so my new resolution is not to let him annoy me and "use" him to get my work done when he would be of use e.g. getting ppl from other depts to give me what I want.

nemesis-on-fire said...

u know my work drama :P personally!! todsy he's uhhh.... off to a 'meeting' again and won't be in the whole day :P