Who's the weirdest person you have ever worked with?

Except for those of us who live out on the plains.

 

Worked with a guy who belonged to a wife-swap club in his suburban neighborhood. We hired a married couple (he sales, she graphics) and he tried to recruit them for the club the first week they worked for us.

Worked with an ad salesman who made up a story about his wife being terminally ill. He spent weeks making calls on clients that were far too big for our paper, and reporting progress. Later admitted everything he said was bullshit and that he filled his time in the bar.

Worked with a woman who ran out of the building screaming when her husband called to tell her their elderly, very ill cat had died. She missed an entire week of work grieving.

Worked with a woman who had some sort of chemical imbalance and had the foulest body odor imaginable.

Worked with a guy who wouldn't open his Christmas gifts until about Dec. 28 when no one else was around the house. He didn't want anyone to see his reactions.

 

Worked with a guy who hung out at the shower areas of public pools, offering to teach little boys how to put on a condom. Last anyone heard from him was when he was writing letters to former co-workers trying to find a place to live because the terms of his release forbid him from going near his own children.

Worked with a guy who covered his minivan with massive cartoon murals of Jesus. And when I say massive, I mean he could only see out the windshield because the other windows were painted over. He found Jesus while in prison. (Thanks to him, I'm one of several people in the newsroom who ended up on Tony Alamo's mailing list. Fucker.) Got fired when management discovered he was living in the storage area just behind the newsroom, as his wife had kicked him out months earlier when she got tired of the beatings.

Worked with a swinger, which was sort of amusing because (A) he and his wife were quite milquetoast personalities and decidedly unattractive, and (B) he was the weeknight weather guy for an network affiliate.

Worked with a guy who figured out that since his shift straddled two normal shifts, he could arrive two hours late and leave three hours early and no one would realize he was only putting in a 3 hour day. Two of those three hours were spent sleeping on a couch in someone's office. After a few months managers caught on to him and confronted him; he responded by screaming "LIES!! You're all LIARS!!! LIARS!!!!"

 

I seriously hope you are in therapy after all that.

 

Given what has already been posted on this thread, I have only worked with normal people.

I have only one thing to say and there is probably only one other poster on this site who will get it.....Corn!

 

I worked with a guy once who was an actual nudist. Both he and his wife. Once another coworker was invited over there for dinner and arrived to find the dude and his wife completely nude. He, of course, was clothed. And stayed that way. The nudist did wear clothes to the office though.

 

I once worked with a composing person who was arrested on deadline. Of all the excuses any desk guy gave for missing deadline, this one was probably the most plausible.

Another composing person was involved in a domestic dispute. Her boyfriend kicked in the front door of the paper, brandished a weapon and threatened to use it.

 

I worked with a guy who smoked dope on the clock with the mailroom folks, but that pales in comparions to all of the stories on this thread.

 

We had a guy who got arrested while driving back to the office from an assignment on his first day of work. I have no idea why he was arrested, but it wasn't a major charge. He was let go fairly quickly, but since they confiscated his car, someone from the office had to go pick him up so he could finish his story.

He wasn't fired until months later.

 

BBAM. He likes soccer, which makes him weird.

 

Before journalism, while in legal publishing, I worked with several members of a family straight out of "The Mosquito Coast."

The father claimed to be an inventor and said he'd been robbed of many of his inventions, which included the Fiero automobile. (Spelled differently, that was the family's last name.)

They didn't believe in doctors -- the mom, who was the main one I worked with, had a noticable hard lump on her stomach and, in the eight years I worked with her, she never got it checked out.

They hated America and believed New Zealand was the promised land. Didn't know anyone there or anything, though. Just clung to that belief.

I've repressed most of the stories, but I do remember when the (now-ex-)wife of the really whack job son told me he held a gun to her head as he spoke to his mom on the phone, saying, "I'm keeping her," in reference to his wife. Some kind of argument.

That couple, straight out of hippie land before the ugly divorce, didn't want to name their child when he was born, saying the child should be able to pick the name. State law required a last name to be able to go home to the hospital, so they gave him "Zachary" as his last name and nothing else.

At some point, the daughter-in-law got out of the marriage and won custody of the son, whom was then abducted by the father.

There's lots more, but I might have to enter therapy if I dwell on it too much. But when a coworker compared them to the family in that movie, I rented it and it was pretty much spot-on, except Harrison Ford was a lot younger than the father.

The mom eventually left the office but never actually quit. She just stopped coming to work. Years later, she finally emerged to get her pension, or whatever it was.

 

Hijera Henry