Fun in the office...

At my day job we have a volunteer who comes in once a week to do some menial tasks that would be completely unnecessary if our IT people would build a database. Basically this volunteer’s job is to take information from 3 or 4 different calendars and put it onto one big master calendar. Not the most difficult work.

Normally this guy is stationed further away from me and I've never really observed him, but yesterday for some reason they plopped him down at the desk right next to me. Not a big deal right? Yeah, I didn’t think so either… After sitting there for about 5 minutes I heard him mumble something. Thinking he was talking to me I looked at him and said “excuse me, what was that?” He mumbled again while looking at his computer screen and I realized that his mumblings were not directed at me, no he was talking to himself.

Then he apparently ran into some difficulties with the task at hand because he began to get upset and his mumblings turned into such annunciated phrases as “what the f*ck? This makes no sense??” and “god damn it!!!” and my favorite “oh SH*T” while simultaneously taking his hand to swap at his monitor. Keep in mind he’s not doing anything A) all that important and B) all that difficult. Yet we have him right next to me having a panic attack and freaking out.

He began to quiet down, but his mumblings continued. It was clear that this man’s inner monologue has mutated into an outer dialogue, and it was one that made me uncomfortable.

Finally he finished up and was getting ready to leave.

He closed down Excel and said “goodbye” and waved at the computer screen.

He closed down Word and said “adios” continuing to wave.

He clicked -shutdown- and said “au revoir” and continued to wave until the screen went black.

Now this may be unchristian of me, but I am going to request that he never sit next to me again.

(iPod update - she's seems to be improving. After futzing around with my computer - uninstalling and reinstalling both iTunes and the iPod software several times - things appear to be working for now. I'm holding off on saying she made a full recovery until more time goes by without any further problems)