Emotionally Unstable

I am getting a wee bit tired of tip-toeing around the weird girl at work. She's very shy and quiet, and has self-esteem problems, so I've always been extra nice to her.

I now realize that she is bat shit insane.

I work for a government laboratory where everything is meticulously documented and triple-checked. It is standard protocol to review someone else's work and notify them to fix errors, even if it's something minor like forgetting to initial something.

Recently, while working on a project I found that Miss Unstable submitted an unnecessary request for outside services, for an issue that had already been resolved. I sent her a courtesy email to let her know the issue was corrected and I had removed her request.

Instead of reading my email as "Hey just to let you know this was fixed after you sent in the request no worries!" somehow she misinterpreted it to mean "You screwed up and you're dumb! I will review all your work because I am petty! Bwahahaha!"

She stormed into the other project leader's office, literally in TEARS, and insisted I denied the request because I had a vendetta against her, and would rather quit the project than work on anything where I was in charge.

The Project Leader calmly explained that I did not know who had submitted the services request at the time I decided it was unnecessary, and that it was the Project Leader who had looked up the requester and asked me to send the courtesy email to Ms. Unstable, after she concurred that the request was unnecessary.

This did not convince Ms. Unstable. "You don't understand! She's always been bitchy to me!"

This was a surprise to me and the Project Leader, who then found out that Ms. Unstable had been nursing a grudge for months over a perceived slight. The "always been bitchy" referred to ONE other incident of her being bat shit crazy. One time she had to go home early and I offered to finish her part of the project we were both working on since management told us it was a rush job that should be completed ASAP.

Instead of thinking "how nice" Ms. Unstable thought, "OMG. She thinks I'm slow and incompetent."

I am now planning to avoid her like the plague if her paranoia allows her to twist every kind gesture into something sinister.

After her tearful rant in the Project Leader's office was not met with agreement, she stormed out and shopped her "Woe is me" speech around. Everyone's reaction was "If you can't get along with Snark, it's not Snark's problem." I presume she realized she was not winning the PR campaign, because later that day she went back to the Project Leader's office and backtracked. "Uh, I hope you don't think I was angry at Snark. I wasn't implying that at all. I don't want any rumors to start or people to think I don't like her, and you don't need to talk to management about my behavior."

She then sent me an email explaining why she had submitted the services request, and why she would continue to do so. It was politely worded, but essentially said, "I didn't do anything wrong and I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."

The Proselytizer

At my current job there was an employee who made everyone uncomfortable. She left religious pamphlets on desks. When she was told by management that it was inappropriate to do things like that at a government agency, she complained that it violated her religious freedom to be unable to violate other people's freedom to be free from being preached to at work.

When she found out a co-worker was gay she told him it "would be a good idea" if he agreed to go to church with her. Afterwards, we started joking "She wants him to pray the gay away!"

I don't think people would have minded this behavior so much if she hadn't been a crappy employee as well.

She regularly called out sick, or showed up very late, when she was assigned to work on projects or with people she didn't like. One time she told a group of us that she had plans and was going to be gone on Friday. Everyone assumed she had an approved vacation and management had been notified. That Friday, a supervisor told us that she was "out sick." I didn't know it was possible to plan being sick 3 days in advance.

One time I was doing a team project with her and the employee she tried to "fix." While the two of us were working we found she was surfing the internet. When he told her "Um, we're a little shorthanded today so everyone has to pitch in and do their part" she ignored him. A long pause later she asked, "Were you talking to me?"

Management grew to dislike her as well. Since all of us had to go through extensive and expensive background checks and training, we agreed to stay for a minimum of 2 years when we were offered the job. 6 or 7 months after the Proselytizer started working, she quit her job. She revealed that she was planning to go back to school, and had applied a while back. She took the job fully knowing she wasn't planning to stay, and deprived someone else who really wanted the position the opportunity.

On her last day at the job she distributed gifts. They were books written by a preacher known for his "gayness can be cured" ideology. She left them on the desks of people who were nice enough to talk to her (and she erroneously thought agreed with her), and also on the desk of the resident metrosexual.

The metrosexual was very, very mad.

Paranoia

When I started working at my current job people told me about a former employee that had to be escorted out of the building on her last day.

During her time at work it became painfully clear that she had some mental problems.

She would stand outside doors, waiting for someone to let her in (instead of opening them herself) because "they're tracking me."

She once passed a note to a co-worker that said, "I can't talk out loud. They're listening."

I'm not sure if anyone figured out who "They" are.

If she was assigned to work in a particular area for a period of time, she would use a notebook to record how many times she saw other employees walk past her.

On her last day, she sang to herself as security escorted her out.

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Next time: The religious nut.

5 Months?

Someone spammed one of my posts with links to a porn site. When I got the notification I realized it's been nearly 5 months since I posted.

Holy crap, where does the time go?

Since my last post I have been knee-deep in moving, house repairs, cleaning, wedding planning, cleaning, overtime at work, cleaning . . .

The good news is that being busy at a job means new crazy co-worker stories.

A Sigh of Relief

For the past several months my fiance and I have been trying to buy a house.

For the past month we have been dealing with unexpected delays, demands and other issues that have drained me of my spare time.

Before this, I did not know there were so many people involved in the home-buying process that needed to coordinate their efforts. There was a realtor, realtor's assistant, mortgage broker, underwriter, home inspector, roof inspector, home appraiser, title officer, title officer's assistant, processor, notary and probably some other people I'm forgetting.

When I get collected I will write about the comedy of errors.

But right now I am very relieved. We got the keys this week.

We are homeowners!

A Terrible Name for Your Child

A co-worker told me a story about a class he took in college. On the first day, the professor called roll. As he read off the list of names he reached one that gave him pause.

"Um," he said hesitantly, "I'm not sure how this is pronounced so I'll say it the way it's spelled. Is there a Shithead here?"

A girl stood up and said, "Professor, it's pronounced Shuh-theed."

Leering and Staring

At work we had to attend a sexual harassment prevention seminar. The speaker gave a Powerpoint presentation. One of the slides contained a list of inappropriate behavior, such as touching, gestures, leering and staring.

The speaker told us that in a previous class a creeper said, "What? Leering and staring isn't sexual harassment! I do it all the time!"

When met with shock, the creeper asked the speaker, "Come on, don't you leer and stare?" The answer was no.

At the end of class the creeper wrote "If you don't leer you're queer" on the seminar evaluation form, and signed his full name.

The idiot does not work for the department anymore.