interesting coworkers…

So, I had an interesting night last night. My team has this guy who has been with the company for about 25 years. He is an old TM employee (about ~45 yrs old) and he’s been a datacenter manager for the most of his days at TM. Since he is old, he also has that old school thinking and can’t adapt to new environments very well. In *his* hey-day, he was very very good at what he did. He was part of the “center” of TM. Everything TM did revolved around him and his team.

During his TM hey-day, he always had a private office. He had the comfort of doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He’d play his radio very loudly. Make personal calls all day long. Etc, etc….

Unfortunately, since he didn’t change with the times, his responsibilities became lower and lower. He also “lost” his position (or maybe gave it up) — not sure on that one. So, now he’s on our team as a project manager (HUGE change for him). Not only that, he doesn’t have a closed office anymore. He moved to our corporate office and it is an open office (no walls). It’s a very nice office, but it’s open, so you don’t have the privacy anymore.

So, now comes the funny story. He brings his radio to this open office. At night, he turns it on to listen to the game. Well, I’m sure you get where i’m going here.. but it starts annoying everyone. Especially, people who are nearest to the radio (he’s not near the radio). He sits a little aways from the window where the radio currently resides and there are other coworkers closer to the window than he is.

One of the coworkers then finally musters up some courage and gets up and talks to him:

Annoyed coworker: “Can you please turn off the radio? It’s a little annoying to me and I need to get some work done.”

Annoying coworker: “Come on, Andr—… You gotta work with me here.”

Annoyed coworker: “I need to get some work done and the radio is not helping me concentrate.”

Annoying coworker: *ignores annoyed coworker*

Annoyed coworker: “Can you please turn off the radio?”

Annoying coworker: *ignores annoyed coworker*

The annoyed coworker then talks to his direct report and asks him to do something about it. Now, the thing is, we are all annoyed by him and it has been going on for quite some time. The annoyed coworker’s manager gets real angry but calms down enough to talk to him:

Annoyed coworkers manager: “Can you turn off the radio? It’s annoying Andr– and he really needs to get some stuff done.”

Annoying coworker: “I’m just listening to the game. Can’t I just listen to the game at night?”

Annoyed coworkers manager: “Well, you’ll need to turn off the radio. I don’t want to escalate this and Andr– really needs to get his work done.”

Annoying coworker: *grumbles* “Oh ok.. turn it off…..”

Annoyed coworkers manager: *turns off radio* “Thanks.”

Then, the annoying coworkers packs up his stuff and leaves pissed off. It was really odd. If someone asks you politely to turn off a noise that is happening, you really need to turn it off. It’s an open office environment and you can’t just start making all sorts of noise that has nothing to do with the business. He also does a BUNCH of personal phone calls all day. I mean he talks about his football pics, his condo assocation, his stupid DSL, or his flight that he couldn’t book online because of some “online error” and he would lose the $50 savings. What the fuck.. he just spent like $200 on the company dime on that phone call.. not to mention lost work since he does no work at the office (or pretty much no work).

Anyways, the point being…. in life, you can never know who you run in to