Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Fish Out of Water (please throw it back)

We all know one. A certain co-worker who is a bit awkward. Wait, awkward doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what kind of person they are. “Socially retarded*” might be a better choice.

There are a few people I work with that fit this category but no one so much as, well, I’ll call her Cathy.

Cathy is generally a nice person but I have about as much in common with her as I do a can of Diet Cherry 7-UP. She is one of those people who I find myself trying to avoid at all costs because it is just painful to have to interact with her. Here are some of the reasons that I will duck into an empty cubicle instead of speaking with her:

- She is one of those people who likes to go on tangents. For example, you may mention that you saw a robin this morning. She would reply with something along the lines of “My grandson loves Robin and perhaps even Batman more. Did you hear about how he died of a drug overdose? My grandson doesn’t do drugs. Except his asthma inhaler. Poor things wants to play football but he can’t. He’s got a metabolic imbalance that probably won’t make people want to date him either. Hell, you’re single, right?”

- She gets easily confused by technology even though she works with a complex computer system every day

- While in group settings she likes to randomly shout out things which she thinks are funny but just make people squirm awkwardly instead of laugh

- She owns more Christmas sweaters than any other person on the face of the planet

- One of my biggest pet peeves – she has no common sense. She likes to make grandiose suggestions while planning fun activities. If we have a budget of $100 for a party she will want to get everyone custom made shoe horns with the company’s logo on them.

- If she hears someone say something like “I think most people would want that” she makes a point of saying how she has never liked the item – be it alcohol, water, breathing, motorized transportation, modern medicine or a paycheck.

Sadly since she works in my office I can not cut out communications with here completely.

But you can’t fault a girl for trying.

~The Office Scribe

* I know, the use of the word "retarded" is not really PC. But sometimes it is the best word for certain situations. Don't beieve me? Head over to Mattress Police to see what the wise Diesel has to say about the topic.

5 comments:

brookeamanda said...

I have a co-worker that goes off on tagents, too. And she starts her stories in the middle, so I've learned to just nod and pretend like I know what she's talking about.

Lis said...

This is a perfect summary of her. Man she drives me crazy too!!!

Unknown said...

You get such characters in abundance in my workplace , sometimes it does help lighten up the mood but most of the times they are best avoided

Shawn said...

The tangent thing is the worst. I used to work with a woman with whom there was literally no way to get her to shut up other than to simply leave the room mid-sentence. You would be walking down the hall, the door closed behind you, and you could still hear her prattling away about some inane subject. Kind of like this comment.

robkroese said...

I like how people are linking to that post as a shorthand way of saying, "Yeah, I'm not supposed to use this word, but f--- off." :)