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

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Oct 28, 2008.

  1. Big Buckin' agate_monkey

    Big Buckin' agate_monkey Active Member

    YOU SONUVABITCH! I was going to say you or ... what's the other guy's name on here, you know, the one we know?
     
  2. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    Sneaky work there, dools, posting about yourself to try to avoid detection...
     
  3. Dirk Legume

    Dirk Legume Active Member

    Newsguy at the first station I worked. While he was in the newsroom reporting the news and we would go to commercial, he would mutter all kinds of odd things to himself. People would hear him through door. Not tourettes type stuff. But something like "yeah, I think tacos for dinner tonight, might be time to get my jacket out, roast beef is good for lunch" all in kind of a stream of conciousness kind of way. It was odd.

    He would wear the same clothes to work 4 or 5 days in a row. He had clothes, he wouldn't change them. We would even hold up signs saying things like "day 3 on the shirt...how long can this go on". Never altered his ways.

    At newsconferences held at restaurants or where food was being served, he would wait for the Q and A and then wander around picking things off the plates of people who had moved closer to the speaker. He also like to just suck down the little jelly packs at restaurants.

    The day after we let him go, he showed up for work and he had to be told that being fired meant he didn't work there anymore.

    Of course, he now works for a much bigger station, in a larger city than I. Maybe I'm the weird one.
     
  4. lono

    lono Active Member

    The worst part of it? The amount I've left on the table.

    I absolutely cannot publicly mention the person who by far is the biggest whack job I've ever worked with, because I would surely out myself, but the stories are remarkable.

    And given that I'm currently sober, I'm sure I've repressed some memories of the heinous and scary colleagues I've had over the years. Let me get a couple of drinks in me tonight and maybe some more memories will bubble to the surface.
     
  5. mustangj17

    mustangj17 Active Member

    Charlie Brown.
     
  6. Big Buckin' agate_monkey

    Big Buckin' agate_monkey Active Member

    Damn you people work with some fucked up individuals.
     
  7. Big Buckin' agate_monkey

    Big Buckin' agate_monkey Active Member

    Now that I think about it ...

    Gotta dude we call "Pork chop" at our place. He's a janitor who reportedly stole an elderly woman's pork chop she brought for lunch, hence the name. He was later seen eating leftover pizza from the sports department trash can.

    Gotta another guy who messed his kit on a football Friday and returned to work with miminal clean up. This story has been told more than once at SportsJournalists.com, and provided my shop the phrase, "trouser chili," which we still enjoy.
     
  8. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I snuck you in there, too.
     
  9. nmmetsfan

    nmmetsfan Active Member

    Worked with a photog who was in his 50s and had lived with his mother his entire life. I've got numerous stories about him.

    For one, he only worked at night. He slept during the day. I mean, he'd bitch and moan if he had to cover something that required him to be up before 4 p.m. I was working for a small afternoon daily at the time, so it's not like there was a night shift. He also hated garlic. Not kidding. We called him the vampire.

    He had two shirts that he wore, a light blue polo and a light brown polo. They both looked like they were 15-20 years old and were not a flattering fabric so his man-boobs were always perfectly shaped.

    The guy would spread gossip like nobody's business.

    The best story was when we were were covering a state tournament and stayed together in a hotel for a couple nights. I met up with a couple other sportswriters and we went to a strip club one night, asked the photog if he'd like to join us. He looked at us like we asked him to kick a dog or something and he declined. We go to the strip club and enjoy ourselves and don't think much of it. When I go to check out of the hotel a couple days later there's a charge for porn that he had rented the night we went to the strip club. I still shake my head when I think about it.
     
  10. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    I also had a coworker who owned about two shirts, three tops. Not sure why he worked at our podunk paper, he claimed to have tens of thousands of $$ put away. Sure enough, me and a coworker peered into his subcompact car one time and the floor was covered with uncashed checks from the paper, some several months old.

    On one instance he had to take a plane for a story, one of the local players was making it in the big leagues. A photog went along and reported back later that the guy showed up at the airport with a trash bag filled with his clothes and personal items. No suitcase or knapsack. A trash bag.
     
  11. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    That almost sounds reasonable, but I'm guessing your guy was fired for something unbecoming.
     
  12. I once worked with an agate clerk who used to shake down the local Little Leagues before he'd put their scores in the paper.
     
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