A Secret Confession of Your Annoying Co-Worker

I am that co-worker everyone hates.

I am socially awkward without realizing it. I will stand in your office and blather on in an unceasing monologue on a topic of minimal interest, even to me.

You might try to turn your attention away from me.

You might pretend to start working while I’m in your office in the hopes I will get the hint and leave. I can assure you that your efforts will fail. I will continue making myself comfortable in your personal space and continue my one-person conversation undeterred. I will stay until one of our co-workers eventually takes note of this painful conversation, takes mercy on you and calls your phone, offering some pretextual reason for you to abort our conversation.

At least until I come back this afternoon.

At some level, I realize you don’t like me. I know you’d rather be doing something else with someone—anyone—other than me. But while I realize all of these things, if I stopped and listened to this inner voice, I’d have no one left to talk to at all. Besides, if I keep talking, uninterrupted, perhaps I’ll eventually win you over with my effervescent wit.

I know that, in general, every office has at least one person that everyone else makes fun of at the water cooler. Oddly, my office doesn’t seem to have one of those. And if it does, it’s that guy down the hall who talks a little too loudly. I will make fun of him regularly, just to convince everyone that it is he who is the odd duck in these parts.

I’m either incredibly lonely, have poor social skills or am an intractable bore. Possibly all of the above. I would ask you which of these possibilities apply, but you stopped paying attention to anything I had to say about 10 minutes ago.

I spend so much time boring you to tears with my inane ramblings during the workday, that I get very little actual work done. That’s ok. I will attempt to cover up this fact by speaking in painfully overexaggerated detail about every small piece of effort I put forth.

I will also magnify the importance of all my trivial accomplishments, so that you think I am by a large margin the most important contributor to the office, when in fact, everyone else on my floor would see their productivity increase threefold by the sheer absence of my distracting presence.

In an effort to make you believe I am more important than you, I will belittle all of your achievements and magnify all of your failures. If I am for some reason unable to do so to you directly, I will gladly cut out the middle man and address my critiques directly to your supervisor, who also would benefit to hear of both your inadequacies and my delusions of office grandeur.

I regularly take three hour lunches, but make snide and very public remarks about your leaving at 4:52 on a Friday afternoon, even if your workday ended at 4:30.

Even if I left at 2:00.

I magnify any meager development that bears passing resemblance to my own accomplishment, but dismiss your genuine triumphs as routine.

I take joy in prattling on endlessly about subjects that I know you care not about, because I love the sound of my own voice.

I knock on your door, and when you don’t answer, I open it anyway.

If, for some reason, you considered this possible scenario and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door, I will email you to ask if you are aware of this bizarre request to forgo the pleasure of my company.

I am that person in your office. You cannot escape me, try as you might. I will tell you about the intricate details of my fantasy football team, the virtual universe I painstakingly created, that tv show you don’t watch, or some obscure sporting event about which you care not.

I don’t know why I do this. I know you think I’m annoying. Everyone in the office thinks I’m annoying. Truth be told, I even think I’m annoying.

I just can’t help myself. And at least when I’m annoying you, I’m still the center of your attention.

Which is all that really matters.