Every office has one. You know who I’m talking about. That coworker. The poor soul who creates multiple stories for us to judge them on based on their purely outlandish and inappropriate behavior. The following AskReddit users share their best office ‘that guy’ or ‘that girl’ stories.
Source list available at the end.
I used to work with Brian. He was a large man and a pure software geek. He had a full beard like Grizzly Adams. Baths and showers were not on his list of important things to do.
Once, we flew him to our client site to help solve a pesky problem. I reminded him to dress for the occasion. I greeted him at the front lobby and was shocked to see him in a collared shirt that had never been ironed and his tie was TIED DIRECTLY TO HIS NECK! Not under the collar, but it was just wrapped around his neck. When I mentioned it to him- he said, “If that’s my only problem, then we’re in good shape.”
Anonymous
My coworker, who was recently fired, once filed a lawsuit against Papa John’s seeking $350 in damages. He ordered his pizza to be cut into squares not wedges, and they didn’t listen to him the first or second time ordering. He got the manager on the phone the third time, who said he was going to personally do it. When it wasn’t done, he called and raised hell. The manager told him off, so he sued. He also got into an altercation outside of our building that ended with him being struck by the other guy in his car and being driven up on the hood of the car while punching him in the face.
EmperorOfAwesome
I used to work with a guy who was an excellent engineer, but he was frequently subject to fits of rage when things didn’t go well with whatever he was working on. Picture this, a typical cubicle farm with engineers hard at work and the only sound you hear is the sound of tapping on keyboards. Suddenly, you hear the sound of hysterical angry cursing and someone slamming their keyboard on their desk repeatedly. Everyone leaps to their feet in alarm- like a coterie of prairie dogs scanning the room for the source of the noise. Almost all at once, everyone realizes that it’s just Tim having another tantrum, smile at each other, and quietly sit back down. Later, our secretary walks over to his office with a new keyboard, puts it on his desk without a word, and then walks back out.
SamuelLChang
I worked with a guy who put up a very small picture on his cubicle wall of a political figure that killed millions of people. A coworker finally noticed it, and we all started talking about it. Many of us thought that it was similar to having a picture of Hitler. Since we were all mellow programmers, we said whatever and moved on. But every few weeks or so, he would replace it with a slightly bigger picture than the one before. At one point, it was taking up most of the cubicle wall. The guy was a very nice person, so maybe he was just trolling us.
corrupted_one
Years ago, I worked retail at The Sharper Image. Paul was another sales guy who had really phenomenal genetics. He was in his late 30s and looked to be in his 20s in contrasted to another 24-year-old coworker who looked 40. Anyway, Paul lived with his wealthy parents and aspired to nothing more than going out clubbing after work. He was not particularly smart but very well-off.
One time, Paul apparently lost his cell phone at a club. He didn’t bother reporting it or anything and later got a $4000 bill.
We had a dehumidifier for sale on display. On a slow day, we convinced Paul to drink the water out of the dehumidifier. Our manager found out later and just sighed, shaking his head and muttering, “Paul…”
BonesJackson
His name was Steve, and he was “That Guy.” I think he was a veteran. I have my doubts looking back on it all. We worked in a small office of maybe five people. It was my first day, and Steve got to train me, except that he was high as a kite off meds and passed out every 20 minutes with me sitting there wondering what the hell was going on.
He also ate ALL of the food in the pantry (enough for six people for two weeks).
Anonymous
He runs, all the time.
I don’t think anything he does is important enough to justify it but everytime he’s going to someone’s desk he’ll break into an awkward walk/run with his hand to his chest normally clutching a file.
Then when he gets to you he’ll put his hands on your desk and stretch his legs like he’s preparing to run a marathon, I’ve never seen anything like it.
megamaxie
This lady used to steal all of the candy from my candy dish. I never caught her, but I knew it was her. Nobody else had been into my office. So, I bought some habanero jelly beans (multiple colors). They vanished. She left work early claiming she was sick. She was flushed and seemed to be perspiring a bit. My candy was never taken again.
Havoc_101
My good friend Paul works in the warehouse at our company. He’s gotten into every sort of trouble imaginable. He tipped a towering stack of construction materials over the back of our yard’s wall. He slammed the forklift into one of our delivery trucks when he dozed off. He’s gone to the wrong construction site a hundred miles away from the intended delivery site, but he’s a genuinely good-hearted guy, and the company’s had mercy on him. He’s still with us.
Paul’s an Iron Maiden fan, and he’s always singing while he works. Well, one day, Paul decides to sing a parody version of “Caught Somewhere in Time” with the clever lyrics of “Caught With Shaft in Hand.” So, he’s just belting these inappropriate lyrics out as he moseys over towards the will-call counter. Who should walk in, but one of our sales directors, who is giving a tour of the warehouse to a new (female) salesperson.
Paul rounds the corner, continuing the chorus with, “CAAAAUGHT WITH SHAAAAFT IN HAAAAAA….” and bumps into the sales director. He plays if off like nothing happened and shakes his hand and the hand of the new employee (who are both giving him odd looks). To add to the hilarity, when they finally depart, we notice that his fly has been down the entire time.
p4warrior
We were interviewing candidates for an open position and had it down to two people. One was white and the other was black. We were at a meeting discussing the two candidates, and our guy was asked how he felt about the two candidates. Mind you, our director and CIO were there, plus the whole team of IT staff. His response was, “Well, it depends on if I have Jungle Fever.” The room went quite and one person just said, “I think I need to leave now.”
Booshur
A woman at my company has decided that instead of paying off her student loans, she will simply get more degrees. She’s 40 plus, on her fourth masters degree, and she does nothing but complain about school work all day. She’s probably at least a hundred k in debt.
DigitalLD
I worked last year with the most intense guy ever. He was ex-military and going back to school for his third undergrad or something.
On one particular day, while we were listening to NPR, a story came on about someone getting shot during a home robbery. Apparently, in South Dakota, there is a law which states: “If someone breaks into your house, you can shoot them dead and not go to jail.” I simply stated that I don’t think I would be able to kill a person, and he screams in my face (covering me with spittle), “BUT IT’S YOUR RIGHT!” It became kind of a meme for the other interns.
On one other instance, he went on a rage about how dumb women are (I am a woman) and that their only purposes are breeding and feeding etc. I got pissed, slammed on the brakes, kicked him out of the truck, and told him that he was in a timeout and that I would be back when he was done being ignorant. Best memory ever. It was made even better since we were on an Indian reservation, and he was not very fond of natives.
Easy_As_123
We had a “know-it-all” guy, who no matter what the context was, always had a story. This included the time when we were discussing with some Russian engineers what it meant to stand in a food line. Know-it-all guy tried to answer the question. We’re all like,”Dude, when were you in a Russian food line? Be quite and let him answer.”
My favorite though had to be the discussion of where to go for lunch. The discussion included a couple of H1B guys who were from India. The idea of an Indian restaurant came up. “The food at that place is no good,” they said.
“Yes, it is,” said know-it-all guy (who I think had been the one that suggested the place).
“Not really, no,” they said in a polite way and suggested other places.
Know-it-all guy dismisses the other places. “No, really, this place is the closest to real authentic Indian food.”
Finally, I had enough and said, “Know-it-all guy, listen! These guys were just there a month ago. They have lived there all of their lives! When they say that something is just like mom used to make, they mean it! We’re going to take their opinion on this one.”
dmorin
We had this totally terrible supervisor at my first job when I finished college. She would scream at people in front of the entire office, send out nasty emails to people and cc everyone and anyone on them, and then would cry to HR that people misunderstood her whenever anyone would complain about her.
It didn’t help either that her mother was a close friend of her supervisor, and that she had started her career as a hairdresser (this was an IT department). She would often leave the office for no reason at all, for hours on end, and then come back and scream at us that nothing was getting done. Of course, she was the only one with keys to different buildings, and we couldn’t work on anything without her approval first.
The icing on the cake was when I was assigned to set up a new computer lab. I told her what I thought would be the best way to do it, had my idea dismissed by her completely, and then was fired two weeks later because “You don’t know what you’re doing and have no place working in IT.”
voileauciel
Every tech support group is made up of misfits in one way or another. I did that job for 5 years for various companies. I’m not sure if the job makes you like that, or if those kinds of people just gravitate towards the job. Might be a little bit of both. My first tech support job was for Gateway (at the time Gateway 2000) and man that group of dudes were really, really special.
One guy named Abe spent his entire day on Russian mail order bride websites with an excel spreadsheet doing height/weight ratio calculations, so he could get the “best” one.
gaqua
Don’t discount “that guy” too quickly. An old friend of mine used to share stories about a coworker that would always say and do wildly inappropriate things such as picking food off said friend’s plate in the break room (uninvited, of course). My friend was nice to the guy anyway, despite the annoyances, and he considered him a friend.
Anyway, long story short, my friend died suddenly one day after he’d quit his job with “that guy” a while back. The guy was on his Facebook friends and ended up producing quite an outpouring of feelings and sympathy with the family and friends of the deceased. He would note every time he drove by my friend’s old house or anything and not obnoxiously, but in a very genuine and caring way. He was very kind and supportive to all of us that were grieving. He obviously was a very caring and friendly individual, just totally socially inept.
The moral of the story. Some of those guys are just totally weird, but some are actually really nice people that just don’t know how to interact well. Give them a chance and you might make an invaluable friend for life (and death). This guy was far more loyal than the trite of “normal” people that my friend had worked with, some of which made brief and non-sentimental remarks on his death. “That guy” seemed to be the only one that was really, truly affected by it.
Serendipitee
Work with this guy who porters patients from the emergency Dept to the floors when they are admitted to hospital. His standard speech while making small talk with the patient and family goes like this, “You’re in a good place. In no time at all they’ll have you feeling as good as new.” He says this to every patient regardless of whether they are going to a surgical, medical or palliative care floor. Yes he has been asked many times not to say this to the palliative patients.
[deleted]
First day as a pizza delivery boy (18 years old)… go out training with Bob. My boss tells me before we go out “Bob’s nearly been fired every month for the past year, but he’s been here longer than me, it’s all he’s got…just…be careful.” yikes. So, Bob’s like 50, missing some fingers. Ok, cool. He immediately lights up a joint, telling me he bought it from the 15 year old girl that makes the pizzas. Next he shows me the loaded pistol he keeps in his glove box – 95% of our deliveries were to suburban more-than-safe neighborhoods. He proceeds to drink 2 beers while driving the 30 minute route, we get back, boss says “Everything good?” with that “I know what just happened.” look in his eye. I respond with a nervous “yes…” and promptly figured the rest out by myself.
The other story of note was when Bob “found some steaks” (not like in his freezer… like found them) and brought his Dallas Cowboys “keg grill” to the shop to cook us all steaks. Still haven’t gotten a hepatitis test, can’t bring myself to do it.
tigol_bitties
Worked tech support for a large company. That guy was Ned. Ned would take 60 minutes on a ticket that could be solved in 5. But he was really good at his job, and could make even the most complex issues simple for the technophobes. Ned would never talk to anyone, when you said hello or tried to chat with him he would ignore you, except if you talked to him about comics.
One night working late second shift, about 7 people are in a large office that seats 50. Me and the girl next to me start hearing this noise. This goes on for 20 minutes. Finally I get up, walk over, and there is Ned, with about 15 bowie knives spread out sharpening and polishing them one by one while on the phone.
And the kicker is this, he worked there for another 8 weeks because no one wanted to be the one to fire him. He was not insane, I just think he was so socially awkward that he did not think it was wrong or creepy as hell.
Other then that he is a nice guy, I see him at my local comic book shop all the time.
Ralod
“That girl” from my work is possibly the most ridiculous person I have ever met in my life. Let’s call her Frodo, since that’s who she most closely resembles. On a daily basis, she tells the most ridiculous lies ever, including her now having cancer… She tells us “facts” that she knows are true, because her “boyfriend watches the news.” One such fact being that one is guilty until proven innocent. (We live in Canada). She tells us stories about stabbing her step-dad and then him going to jail, all the while she is holding a knife. She has tried on numerous occasions to get everyone fired and to sabotage them too, then blatantly denies it when we confront her. She believes she can become a manager one day and also that she is better than everyone, even though she didn’t make it past the 7th grade and can’t even write or spell properly! (She makes other people make notes for her). She’s so terrible!
HankHillll
We totally had “that girl” at a coffee shop I worked at years ago. Three stories come to mind in particular:
-One of the first encounters I had with her, about 2-3 days after she started working there, she shows up on her day off with a bunch of friends dressed in lingerie, fishnet, and chains as part of her bachelorette party…
-On my second shift with her, after she got back from her honeymoon, she starts telling me about her husband’s occasional problems with impotence. Obviously one of the most awkward conversations I’ve ever been a part of.
-One day, after her shift, I watched her walk out to her car, open her trunk, and proceed to change clothes right there in the parking lot by an extremely busy road.
Eventually everyone who worked there had similarly awkward stories of their own.
RealSnoopDoug
I work at a sports equipment store and so every fall, we receive boxes and boxes of the new collections of hockey sticks. Unfortunately for us, this also means we have to put a ton of price tags on all this new merchandise. Seeing how it’s the same task over and over again, we decided to let one guy price all the hockey sticks. “That guy” priced all the left-handed hockey sticks as right and vice versa. We had to redo all of them. There were around 250 hockey sticks that year.
WittyIdea
We have this guy that seems a bit nerdy, but you can’t tell how dim and completely socially awkward he is until you start talking to him. Or, if you talk to him once he’ll follow you into the break-room and waste your entire lunch/break/whatever trying to make conversation with you. If you are on the phone, he’ll stand and hover and try to make small talk while you are in the middle of your call. My boss often complains to me about him.
I would think he has some sort of autism, but he doesn’t have any fixations… nor does he seem Asperger-y. He will sit there and talk about politics, and if you imply that you’re not of that political party and try to politely change the subject, he’ll treat you horribly until he eventually forgets you said something (takes about a week.) He also gets stuck in logical fallacies.
maristar87
Jeff was “that guy” where I use to work. He was the typical, “I served in Special Forces” type. Telling stories to anyone who would believe. He was out for a week for knee surgery. He said he was going to be in the military hospitable for active military. We found out later it was a baseball injury.
We found his baseball college career online. It gave dates from when he graduated high school and every year he played. Including the year he had a knee injury. I tried pointing this out to one of his friends who believed all of Jeff’s BS. He had apparently told his friend that he had never actually played baseball during college, and it was all a “cover” for going on special ops. Jeff went as far as getting a tattoo of the special forces logo on his arm.
Jeff was a temp at the company for awhile. When a full-time opportunity became available, he and another more qualified temp (a female) were applying for it. Before interviews were set up, he went to HR and claimed the female temp was sexually harassing him. The hiring manager believed him and refused to even interview the girl. She almost got fired for it. In the end, Jeff got the job. He struggles with it everyday.
Aedora125
Had a guy at work that is convinced the government is about to fall apart and the first thing that will happen is there going to round up all the guns.
So he has stashed away thousands of dollars in guns and ammunition in the dessert somewhere and has modified his car to conceal automatic rifles and such. And because there will be food shortages when this all goes down he has 1000 dollars in beef jerky stashed in his car for the occasion.
All around though he is a really nice guy but does provide a lot of laughs around the office.
Lifeweaver
He’s a talker. “Good morning, Bob.” “Well, I’m not sure if I can say it’s good. It’s definitely the morning, I’ll give you that, but good is a bit of a stretch. It’s Tuesday though, which is one better than Monday! Just being honest, hahaha, because you said good morning, and I thought, ‘Well I’m not sure if I can agree with that.’ Seriously though, good morning.”
krebstarpatron
I work in an open concept office where we used an instant messenger to communicate. One day, I was working late. So, it was only myself and “That Guy.” He disappeared for 20 minutes and came back, but I didn’t notice much. He types to me, “Hey, do you like my haircut?” and I look over, and he has just LOCKED eyes with me after shaving his head with a razor in the bathroom.
missnixon
A guy at my work, let’s call him Roger, claimed you can get “high octane racing fuel” by mixing 89 Octane and 93 Octane gas in your tank.
Roger told me, on my first day here, 7 years ago, that if I wanted to know any good asian massage parlors nearby, he’d recommend the “good” ones with the happy endings. First day at work.
He used to watch webcam girls from the Philippines on his desktop at work – stripping, doing other unsavory things, etc. Then he went over and married one and now she lives here. She’s half his age and probably less than half his size.
He took a co-worker to see his buddy’s band at a local bar – turns out it was a biker bar frequented by a lot of some kind of Aryan Nation-style bikers. The co-worker told me that there were signs up extolling the virtues of white supremacy, and that everyone was glaring at him the entire time he was in the bar. When he pointed it out, Roger just laughed and said “I come here all the time it’s no big deal.”
Roger snores through meetings.
Roger at one time had some kind of narcolepsy or something, and would fall asleep in his cube. Co-workers frequently threw things at him to wake him up.
The weird thing is – he’s actually a pretty nice guy. If you got arrested or something, and called him at 3am to come bail you out, he’d do it, even if he’d only met you once, for like 10 minutes. He’s very friendly and sociable – he’s just really strange.
gaqua
A direct quote: “I woke up on an old mattress next to my boyfriend’s brother, in an abandoned church, wearing a bikini, in Tuscaloosa. And that was the first time I’d ever done Xanax.”
She also brought a pink briefcase full of dildos to work (at a law firm) because she had a sex toy party to host later in the evening.
She lived in a house that didn’t have a kitchen. She has 2 pet squirrels, and her husband plays in an awful nu-metal band.
DavidisGoliath
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