5 worst types of co-workers

WORDS: BERNICE BURGER

Unless your daddy gave you a trust fund along with the sperm he gave your mom, you have to work your entire life like me. Sometimes, you find yourself in a golden office filled with people who respect the whiskey hidden in your desk, your need for headphones and your ability to take naps on the bathroom floor. But more likely than not, you end up with freaky co-workers who alternate between giving you the evil eye and sending you passive aggressive emails even though you are sitting two feet away from them.

Here are the five types of co-workers that make me want to rip the button eyes off teddy bears.

Bible Thumping Bitches:

I think the single worst person I ever worked with has to be a girl named Ginger with little blonde ringlet curls, buck teeth, and eyes the size of hard-boiled eggs. She would obsessively tell me about how God made her put on a happy face each day, all the guys in love with her “back home,” what she was or was NOT eating, and how everybody else was a bitch/whore/asshole—all said in an accent that grew ever more “down home” the longer she lived in the big city. She spent her time alternately singing Bible camp songs aloud, talking about how Mexicans grossed her out, flirting with the Mexican dishwasher boys, and measuring her fat mass index or some shit like that. She once cried and told on me for not wearing a bra after a Mexican dishwasher boy told her my fat index was lower than hers.

Back-massaging Creeps:

I don’t care if you are a old dude or a young cute girl, suggesting work-related back massages is the sleaziest thing you can do other than licking the pay phone next to the Bushwick projects. Just because we work together doesn’t mean I want you to touch me—in fact, odds are it means I never ever ever ever want you to touch me. Back-massaging at the workplace tends to happen under the auspices of “getting to know you better” but what it really means is “I wanna inappropriately touch you but am afraid of being sued for harassment.” The worst part is that when everyone else is getting one and you refuse, they’ll make it seem like you hate rainbows if you don’t want one. Whatever, I sorta hate rainbows anyway.

Under-sexed, over-eater ladies:

I shared an office once at a fitness magazine with this lady who could not stop stuffing her face with cake, fried goods, and bacon cheeseburgers. Now, normally, I totally respect people that choose to spit in the face of the rules of nutrition, but this woman would eat lunch and then spend the rest of the day calling her friends and crying about how she was so fat and no one would ever love her. At some point, one of these mysterious phone friends must have suggested that she get on a dating service and try and meet someone instead of living in a KFC bucket. Soon, I no longer heard the distinct sound of her ripping the skin off her fried chicken with her teeth. Instead our office—I want to stress there was NO wall between us—was filled with the sounds of calling strange men she met on the internet. “Oh, yessss I look just like a little pussycat and when you rub me I’m gonna purr. You wanna hear me purr? Okay? Purrrrrrrrrrr. HeHeHe.”

Idiotic Interns:

Some interns are like having little free labor angels fall into your laps, but most seem to think that having a lobotomy is a requirement to intern at an office. They wobble around on their heels, make faces of general confusion, and check their Facebook. Simple tasks like building a cardboard box or mailing something become rubric’s cubes of their inability. I know their parents forced them to do, that they are hungover, and that the beach is beckoning them, but all the same they suck to work with because everything takes like a bajillion years to do, robbing me of MY precious internet lurking time.

Out of Touch Old Guys:

The worst thing about these guys is how hard they try to be connected—all their little references to Twitter and rap music, their jokes about Irish Flu when you come in after a slightly too late night at the bar, their emailing trend stories about Williamsburg with subject lines like “Thought of you” or “Our Resident hippie” even though they mean hipster. I had this one Old Guy boss who somehow thought of himself as my mentor (perhaps because his real daughter was a spoiled little princess who never looked in his eyes because she was too busy texting about all the BJs she was not giving). He would always send me encouraging/demeaning emails like “You are so good at writing! You could even be a writer!” The thing was: I was a writer… for him. That’s what he paid me to do. I was never sure if this was yet another lame joke or if he really had no idea what it was I did for him. I’m pretty sure it was the latter.