Friday, January 27, 2012

The Walker, and other people at the office who drive me bananas

There is an old, weird dude who works in my office.

You know the type; seems perfectly nice, decent worker - but he just has that weird vibe about him and he does these odd, idiosyncratic things that make you want to hate him.

Well, this afternoon a new wrinkle was added to my growing case against this guy: HE'S A WALKER!

If you work at any mostly sedentary office job, you're familiar with the group of people to whom I refer. These are the older, out of shape employees - who range from slightly overweight to morbidly obese - who spend their lunch breaks on "walks" to stay active and presumably drop the pounds.

They are also the same people who believe this walk entitles them to the extra bag of BBQ Fritos that didn't get eaten at a lunch meeting in one of the conference rooms. Look here jackass, either get serious about losing the thunder thighs or just admit that you're fine with being fat - stop the charade, cause it's pissing me off.

Anyway, normally I can somewhat deal with the walkers because I don't have to see them partake in said walking. But today it was raining out, so Old Weird Dude has spent his entire frigging lunch break doing laps around a group of cubicles - AND I'VE REACHED THE TIPPING POINT!!! I swear to all things holy that I'm tripping his turtle-necked, mustachioed ass on the next pass and then beating him to death with an industrial printer cartridge - SO HELP ME GOD!

However, this has gotten me to thinking - who are the other people in the office that secretly drive a rational, free-thinking, normal human being completely ape-shit?

Now, for clarification, I'm not talking about the people who outwardly drive their normal co-workers insane - like the middle-aged lady who has a 45-minute conversation with her "girlfriend" at maximum volume every day at 2:25 that only ends because those in the cubes around her have elevated the volume of their ahem-ing and harrumphing to the point where it can no longer be ignored. What I'm focusing on here is those people who you are otherwise all right with, except for the fact that you secretly want to bash their skull in with a sledgehammer for some completely inane reason. If that explanation doesn't make sense to you, you haven't worked an office-job for long enough.

So far, I've got the walkers, the "hipster aunts" - you know, the middle-aged, childless women who will routinely try to connect with their younger co-workers and prove their hipness by recanting stories about the "cool" things they have accompanied their nieces and/or nephews to (note that there are NO "hipster uncles") -  and the otherwise not bad chick who wants to educate everyone about reducing their carbon footprints and saving the environment.

But I know there are more I'm leaving out, so I'm asking for your assistance. What you got?