Smoke and Mirrors

EXCELLENT! I work with someone who isn't so much of a slacker as they are chatty and nosey. If I open up something in my office to eat for breakfast this person makes a b-line for my office and starts commentating on it. If that's not bad enough they have a high IQ and it's like living on the Discovery Channel. Actually its more like 'Know-It-All' syndrome. Which makes everyone run and hide when they come around. It makes my neck tense up.

This person you describe sounds like a first rate ASS!!! But you have to feel sorry for them because 1) they obviously have no social life or they wouldn't be scanning personals 2) I'm sure they don't get many repeat dates from those responses 3) they just don't get it. At some point they'll get theirs.

You guys call him Percy...that's TOO FUNNY! :-)

I too, have a co-worker who insists on taking a trip to my cube at the first mention of lunchtime. What is it about food, that makes people decide that they can come to your cubicle and comment on your meal? Ask where it's from? Did you cook that? How much was that? It's LUNCH! What were these people planning of doing to feed themselves in the first place? This is my MAJOR pet peeve.

At my job, my co-worker gets on my last nerve no matter how hard I try to get along. I guess I've always second-guessed her personality (although from the very beginning, she's been a thron in my foot). She's the type of person that loves to have people think she knows it all. When she first came into our office though, I've been the one training her since day one. She picks my brain constantly on how to do this and how to do that. I am not her supervisor in any fashion. We each have to answer to the same person. I try constantly to get my work done, but I am always interrupted by her (purposely, I now know) by her chatter or picking my brain. She has to have someone hold her hand every inch of the way through a process. While that didn't bother me at first, I now know that she refuses to READ anything. She is a verbal/visual learner. The problem with that is she also will not do anything, no matter how small, on her own. Now that she's gotten so much out of me (albeit now I've got loads of work undone), she is an "expert" it seems in everything, often regurgitating facts back to me that I taught her. Problem is, she acts as if she learned everything all on her own because she's such a "gifted" learner and a "pro" at everything she does. Often, no one understands how much I feel like a hostage in the back room with her. We've been before the supervisor on several occasions because of our not getting along. It is always the smallest things that set her off. Basically, if I don't chat with her and listen to her gossip and her problems or her business questions, she gets upset and accuses me of being anti-social. I do feel anti-social, but it is only because of the situation that I am always behind in my work and therefore seem to be losing all time, including social time with other coworkers. I find myself not going to lunch or staying late trying to catch up while she raves about how much work she's completed and acts as if she's the one managing the office we're in. In my gut, I know that she belittles me behind my back because she belittles me in front of people while I'm right there. And yet, the way she words things is so twisted that I find myself defenseless in fighting back or worse I wind up looking and feeling stupid because she's pressed my buttons again and I just say the first thing that comes to mind. I used to get along with everyone before she came a year ago (yes, I've allowed this to go on for a whole year). I feel like I'm losing co-workers and other outside office employees' respect. I hate this feeling because I've worked here for a long time now. I don't want to leave because I feel like my name would be dragged through the mud by her because she would get my job, and I deeply feel that she won't necessarily be able to handle it right away and any problems she has, she would blame me for them. Even though she was new to the office a year ago, she's had her hands in a lot of things. The way she goes about getting her kudos is interesting, even admirable on some level, but on another level, I know she doesn't work as hard as she claims she does, and I don't like that. She's constantly on the phone, or gone on long breaks, or runs home to use the bathroom, or out of our office talking to others. The other ninety percent of the time, she's talking to me. How can she really get work done like that? I have come 30 minutes earlier to work just hoping that I could work for three hours without interruption until my lunch break at least. That worked for one day. After that she realized what I was doing and started interrupting me every chance she got. Meanwhile, she's completing her work and I'm not. In fact today I was home earlier mainly because of her. I planned to finish all my work yesterday and was very near to completion. I had already cleared it with my boss earlier yesterday that I would like to not come into the office today if I got all my work done yesterday. I kept that information to myself all day until about an hour before closing. It wasn't a problem since I knew I would stay about an extra hour for overtime. But then I mentioned to my co-worker what I was trying to do, and she talked to me the whole time. She asked me during that conversation if I would ever be out of the office a whole week (something I have never done in all my years working here) and I said I didn't know. She kept encouraging me to not come in tomorrow and that I needed to take a break anyway (mind you, we both have the same deadline, so why is it okay for her to stay and not me?) I tried to finish but couldn't. I still had more to do. I came in this morning, hoping to finish and be done by the end of the day and leave with that feel-good feeling you get when you've actually accomplished something. I had one appointment to leave for, but it would be during my lunch break. So I thought I could get everything done by then if I really focused. It was too much to ask. My co-worker interrupted me the whole time, knowing that I needed to leave. If you haven't already guessed it, my boss does not yet see the problem that I've had with this co-worker. She doesn't understand just how much she interrupts me and wastes my time. That is why I stopped complaining to her. I once typed into my computer the actual time on the clock every time I was interrupted by chatter from my coworker. It happened on an average of once every three to five minutes. Although lately she acknowledges this is a problem because she likes to talk, I still don't think she does this with anyone else but me. In writing this post, I know it seems like I may talk a lot, but believe me I don't when it comes to my job. I've just had so much pent up frustration because I've been fighting this for a year, and I feel like I'm really getting to the edge and not sure how I might react to her one day. OFFICE RAGE! By the way, I'm not the only person in the office that has had a problem with her. Many of us have (including the boss) but I am the one that has to deal with her the majority of the time, so I see a lot more. There are loads more that I could tell you that are a part of her personality. It's not just the talking. But I couldn't even make a dent in the problems I have with her.