Will you please just SHUT UP??!

I work with someone that I would love to nominate for the Worst Coworker of the Year award, if such a thing exists.

Let me break it down for ya.

When I first started here, things were a great deal different. There were no radios allowed in the plant, so it would be just me and him in the lab, doing our various work things. Fine, right? Sure. Then he started whistling. I believe the song is called "Annie's Song", the only thing I associate it with is a scene in My Best Friend's wedding when all the boys suck helium out of balloons and start singing it. Anyway, because we had no radio, every day, at least four or five times a day, he would start whistling. I would have to leave the room because he would just do the first part over and over and over. After a few months I couldn't take it any more. So when he would start whistling, I would start whistling along. He would usually stop.

Besides this, he's a big talker. He likes to be the center of attention, so he always tells extravagant stories about his friends. They all have tons of money and tons of cool things, so every day he has to mention at least one of them and the cool stuff he did with them last week/month/five years ago. Today it was about a friend of his who died when he was only 26, "he just made too much money too fast for how young he was.. he was making $50,000 a year, and this was back in the 70's, you know, that was a LOT of money, we'd go over to his house and drink 3 or 4 bottles of $40 wine, that's like $150 a bottle these days." Other days it's how he went out on "the boat" with his friends, or maybe his friend who lives on a boat in Florida and lets him stay there for a week for free if he's down there on vacation, or his friend with the business credit card with no limit who took him and his buddies out for dinner at some fancy restaurant and bought them sooo many rounds of drinks. Or his friend in the wheelchair who doesn't have to work, he just sits at home all day and plays around with his computer, and my coworker goes over there now and again to take him out (at his friends' expense, of course) and relieve the monotony for him. The guy could go on for hours.

I'm long past the point where I thought any of this was interesting, or cool, or whatever. I make noncommital noises and nod my head when appropriate, but he still just keeps going. Never realizing that after 8 (almost 9) years, odds are I've probably heard that story before. More than once. I'm just stuck in here day after day, desperately hoping for laryngitis or at least my own office.

And the whistling? That never stopped. Except now we've got a radio in the lab, so he'll whistle to that instead. Oh, but he makes his own tempo, he'll whistle the chorus in the middle of the verse, and heaven forfend there might be commercials because he'll be stuck on the same part of the last song that played until a new one comes on.

The Whistler. Reason 1 of many why I REALLY need a new job!