You will no doubt work with people whom you dislike, but as a professional, you must do your best to tolerate them. Because if you throttle them, you will go to prison.
We’ve all worked with those people—the ones we can’t stand. So here’s a tribute to the insufferable men and women I share an office with, and some of my most insufferable experiences with them. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the parties involved.
Margarette: the worst carpooler in the world
My work is very out of the way, I do not have a car, and biking there would take hours. The solution? Carpool with fellow coworkers. There’s Kevin (the driver), Audrey, myself—and goddamn Margarette.
Margarette is known to complain that the music is too loud, and then talk on her phone for the entire ride. And this isn’t idle chitchat; this is blowout arguments with her boyfriend. He calls her every few minutes and asks where she is. Everyone in the car has to sit there and listen as she screams into her smartphone. It’s become a twisted game to count how many times homeboy calls her. The highest was 10, and that was just about how she ate all the cinnamon rolls.
The days when she is absent are wonderful. Everyone in the car is cracking jokes, and it’s a very pleasant atmosphere. Our carpool is so fun, we could make a podcast about it. It would be called The Kevin, Audrey and Kelly Show, and it would be so hilarious. But on the days when fucking Margarette is there, everyone is just silent as she clears her throat like a horse in between screaming into her phone.
Luke: the mini-fridge snipe
The work break room is a place of sanctuary. The mini fridge is sacred. And any person who pilfers said fridge is a lowlife.
Upon the hiring of a man named Luke—who is from New York City and won’t shut up about it and talks with his hands like a Muppet—coworkers would start noticing little bites taken out of their food. My coworker Kyle (a lovely gentleman) had stowed a slice of pizza in the fridge. Luke was present and once again talking about New York City. Kyle left to start his shift and came back two hours later to discover that someone had taken a massive bite out of his pizza. One. Massive. Bite.
“Man, couldn’t they just eat the whole thing? I mean, this is just an insult,” said Kyle sadly as he dropped his soiled pizza slice into the trash with a wet slap.
Finally, at a staff meeting the subject was brought up. “Hey, so … don’t eat other people’s food in the mini fridge,” said the manager. Everyone turned to Luke, who was chewing on his fingernail.
Confession: OK, once I ate the taquitos of Janette from HR, but for a good reason—she had written me up for something trivial, like not reading the work email feed. Revenge is a dish best served in the staff microwave, Janette!
Glenn: the obnoxious 18-year-old
Glenn is a child-man — the kind of child-man that goes to Europe for two weeks (with his parents, of course) and comes back to work with a fucking British accent. “I was hanging with me mates that I met outside a pub,” he’d say. “I spent so much time with these blokes that now I speak like them — some bird I met confused me for Keanu Reeves, and it was bloody mental.”
One day, I was sitting in the break room early in the morning when this minor barges in, spouting about how he studies martial arts and how he was — I kid you not — “trained to kill.” Really, Glenn, you were trained to kill? Where?! The Tae kwon do class at the goddamn YMCA?
When Glenn wasn’t talking up his lethal prowess, he monologued at great length about how he is going to buy a mixing board and other nonsense with his paycheck. Fuck you, Glenn. My paycheck is instantly vaporized by rent and bills, and you live with your parents for free. Take a look around at your grizzled coworkers — we all wish we could blow out checks on extravagant items like glockenspiels and platform shoes with fish in them, but we can’t.
A. J. (a.k.a.) M.C. Bacon Bits: the wannabe rapper who wants his coworkers to go to his “shows”
I’m not Mr. Hip-Hop by any means. Sure, I can appreciate the Wu-Tang Clan and a Tribe Called Quest, but would I go out of my way to go to a hip-hop show? Probably not. Nevertheless, M.C. Bacon Bits keeps handing me flyers to go to his performances.
It got exhausting having to think of excuses on the spot to avoid seeing the Finest Hip-Hop Artist Straight out of the Mean Streets of Petaluma, California, with such classics as “Meet Me at the Arby’s” and “Son of a Public Bus Driver.” He went on tour once, and by “tour,” I mean he went to three open-mic nights in one night.
“Yo, yo, yo, K-Jelly [that’s what he would call me]. I’m throwing down at a show. Should be ill!” Then he hands me a flyer.
“Uh…” I desperately search my mind for any bullshit excuse, but I come up with none. “Yeah, OK.”
“Sick, breh...so the venue gave me 30 tickets to sell for five bucks a piece. Can I put you down for two?”
So, yes, I bought two tickets for a show I had no intentions of attending. The 10 dollars I spent was the cost of shutting him up. Oh dear, M.C. Bacon Bits’s show is starting, and I’m at home drunk watching garbage on YouTube. If only I could muster the energy to put pants on and take a bus for 45 minutes to the community-college cafeteria where he is playing.
Six months later, he somehow amassed $5,000 and recorded an album. He accosted me in the break room and hand me a CD. “Yo, yo, yo. I just recorded an album about Sacramento.”
“Wow, cool, thanks.”
“So I’m selling albums for five bucks a piece for close friends.”
God dammit.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Alexia Tsotsis, former co-editor or TechCrunch. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
