Oh, my gosh! Strange co-workers! How much space and time do I have here to tell you about my "strange co-worker"?
Ironically, my strange co-worker worked with me last year for several months. What a psych-job! She was a piece of work, let me tell you. First, she tried to glorify her talents with an impeccable resume and supposedly had all this experience with PowerPoint and Excel, yada yada. Well, we selected her from the pool that was sent by the temp agency, but the very first time she had to use Excel and PowerPoint, she couldn't even perform the most basic of functions.
Right from the beginning, I think I knew we had a problem. She started telling me about some stuff going on in her life, and she mentioned that she hadn't gotten her mail in about a month. Huh? Apparently, she had financial problems and just figured that if she didn't get her mail, she wouldn't have to pay her bills. She also told me that she was on medication for depression. Egads!
Not a day went by that she didn't disappear for 10-20 minutes to go to the bathroom -- sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. She'd always return to her desk sniffling and looking as if she'd just cried. After a while, I began to wonder, though, if she was doing more than just crying in the bathroom, because her eyes were usually severely dilated upon her return. Maybe the sniffling was from nose-candy, and not crying? She displayed erratic behavior, often going from loopity-loop happy to psychotically angry or depressed (this ties in with my theory that maybe she had a drug problem).
And she sang right out loud at her desk...not humming, not just singing a couple of bars...but singing as if she was on stage. I had to ask her several times to please not sing, because it was very distracting. Then she'd sit there and snap and pop her gum like it was a cud and she was the cow. It was like a bowl of Rice Krispies sitting next to me: "Snap, Crackle, Pop".
She was the biggest nuisance! And she was always "preparing to work" but never actually working. She was always "getting organized" but never did anything of substance. Her file folders were all color-coordinated and impeccably labeled, but half of them were empty with no hope of ever having anything filed in them. Most of the other folders only held one piece of paper. Meanwhile, her boss's expense reports were over $2,000 short, meaning she'd filed the reports, but somehow had missed over $2,000 of expenses, so that when it came time for him to pay his corporate credit card bills, he didn't have enough money. It took over 2 whole working days after she left for us to reconcile his expenses.
I could go on, but you get the picture. It was so bad with her that I was fearful that after we let her go, she'd be one of those people who'd show up with a weapon and start shooting people. Scary!
