The Annoying Co-Worker

When working in retail, we all have had to deal with that one annoying co-worker. You know who I’m talking about. As soon as you read the word ‘annoying’, their face came to mind. Your annoying co-worker will exhibit most, if not all, of the following behaviors:

• He/she will act super busy and important whenever your supervisor is around, but as soon as it is just you and them, the true laziness begins to show. You: “Hey, I’m really busy trying to ring up, wrap, and bag this customer’s items,  can you take the next one?” Annoying co-worker: “OHHH nooo, nooo, nooo. I don’t want to make them walk a whole foot over to my register! You can take them when you’re finished.”

• He/she will have some sort of terrible body odor and/or a flatulence problem.  If they don’t have either of these, then they will definitely eat only onion sandwiches on their breaks and come back reeking.

• He/she will tell you the same stories about their trip to London or Fiji or Sesame Place over and over and over again. Even when you stop responding, he/she will steep keep blabbering. They are like the energizer bunny. Except a lot less cute, and a lot less well-liked.

• He/she will stand behind you watching as you count your change, help a customer, vacuum the store, eat, breathe, and possibly even sleep.  Every time you turn around, there he/she is…just hovering…watching your every move. Even after you’ve told them plenty of times that their mere existence makes you uncomfortable, there they still remain.

• He/she will laugh at their own jokes, none of which are actually funny. Sometimes you will laugh along at the sheer pitifulness of the joke. Also, he/she will have a very disturbing, dry-sounding, been-smoking-for-50-years laugh.

• He/she will be condescending, especially if he/she had, in fact, been working there longer than you. He/she will pretend you don’t know how to do your job even after he/she made you take care of all of the customers as he/she just stood there hovering.

• He/she will be exceedingly slow, probably on purpose, in order to transfer the entire line to your register’s side.

• Whenever a customer asks a question, he/she will stand there silently staring blankly into the customer’s eyes until you come up to assist, even though he/she clearly knows the answer.

• He/she will spend the entire shift either drawing weird anime onto receipt paper, or making personal telephone calls on the company’s phone. Whenever you pass by, you hear them throw in the company’s name in the conversation to make it act like it’s a business call, but you know it’s not. Not unless the business is wondering what time he/she will be home for dinner.

 

If no one came to mind as you were reading these, maybe you should take a hard look at yourself…

You may just be the annoying co-worker.