Someone in my department likes to hug people. EVERY TIME SHE SEES THEM. She hugs you hello, she hugs you goodbye. It's insane. Everyone else in the department is exchanging ideas about how to escape her hugs.

Forced hugs from a coworker? Time to put on my cone bra with the little steak-knife points on the ends!

Just hold your hand out in front of you like a school-crossing guard. Either she'll embed it into her boobs or stop. Or maybe "Don't hug me." What's so hard?


I don't get the original story though. How is any of his behavior "jackass"? Fireable for lack of productivity perhaps, but jackass?

My worst nightmare of a boss was micromanager - I had never worked for one before and couldn't understand why he felt that he needed go into every spreadsheet I completed and double-check every last formula and number in every last cell. It was like everything I did had to be done twice - once to get it done, and once to go back through it all again, in painstaking detail, and explain everything to him. And it was much more junior-level work than I had been doing at previous jobs (they over-hired for the position), yet he still didn't trust me with anything. Turns out insecurity is just part of a micromanager's personality.

He was also very annoying in other ways - he was anal retentive about what time people showed up and left each day - a real resident clockwatcher - and was known to chase people down and hound them about something like why they would have a $9.00 phone expense from a place like Target on their expense report. Turns out the person bought a phone card there, but really - for as much money as the pinhead made, he was just wasting money by spending time on such immaterial things, not to mention getting on everyone's nerves.

He was even annoying to look at - a pointy-haired, nerdy little pinhead with short-guy syndrome, who used to bitch about how attractive people had things so much easier for them.

I called him the Hovercraft, because he would hover over my shoulder so often, trying to see what I was working on. It would totally interrupt my concentration, and then I would have to a) choke down a burst of rage, and b) try to get back into what I was doing.

I left the company because of him, and was never so happy to be away from a job.

I miss working with people- it's just me up here on this mountain. Strolling down memory lane, the two women that really stand out were:

1.) Gayle, who was a serious hottie, and then she married "Joey", the 300 pound MIT nerd. All in all they were both very nice, but my second conversation with Gayle was when she came in my office with about 30 pictures of her new baby, BEING BORN! It was like an anatomy lesson and a flip book at the same time. Flipping backwards the baby dissappeared again....

2.) Some A/P women, I forgot her name, who was a Wiccan, but began to dress like the wicked witch of the north. She lived with her Mom, and always talked about her boyfriend who was a model in San Francisco. She would burn incense all day, that smelled like bad clove cigarettes. When the company found out her co-worker got AIDS, she made a huge deal out of it, and refused to work in the same building as he did. So out of the whole accounting department, she got her own little office across the parking lot... she moved back a couple days after Josh died.

And then there was my boss who we found naked in our daughters bedroom after a party, passed out in her own vomit, after a night of Rum and Percoset.... good memories....

One of the guys in my dept thought that maybe she'd quit the hugging if he started rubbing her ass. Not a chance.

PS: Amy, can't wait to see you and W. tonight!

You know, you could just privately tell her (or even e-mail her) that you're not comfortable being hugged, and that you'd like her to stop. If she persists, you can complain to her supervisors or to Human Resources. If the company refuses to do anything about it, you can sue them for sexual harassment.

This is why we have laws about behavior in the workplace. Use them.

Gary,
Then we can read about it on Overlawyered.com.

"you can complain to her supervisors"

That won't be necessary. Now everytime she hugs me, I rub my clit against her pelvic bone.

I thought everyone was going to write in with great stories of jackasses they worked with....

c'mon people!

I was hoping they would. I can't remember many people I worked for, unfortunately.

We're survivors, Eric. We've managed to eliminate them from memory, along with all those icky boyfriends.

My office jackass is a compulsive liar with a bit of an imperious streak.

I work in a chiropractor's office, and he is not a chiropractor, something he needs to be reminded of periodically. He does theraputic exercises with the patients and flexibility.

I came in one day and he had a patient attached to E-Stim and hot packs. According to the doctors' chart, he was to be taken off the hot packs and the E-Stim and just placed on the intersegmental bed. So, I naturally asked him why the patient was on the E-Stim and hot packs (knowing perfectly well that the idiot did this without reading the Doctor's instructions).

He claimed that the patient was in a lot of pain (I asked him later if he was in a lot of pain as I massaged him, and he said no), and he also claimed that we were allowed to deviate from the modalities prescribed under certain circumstances (we aren't).

So, I said, "Did you clear this with Dr. Gars?" He replied, "Yes!" When I showed Dr. Gars his own chart for the patient, Dr. Gars replied that this was the treatment and he never authorized any changes.

And inside I'm seething...WHY DON'T YOU JUST ADMIT YOU DIDN'T READ THE CHART AND YOU MADE A MISTAKE INSTEAD OF MAKING UP RULES AND LYING ABOUT WHAT DR. GARS AND A PATIENT TOLD YOU????

My God, the things people say to just save face. I'd rather admit I screwed up than risk the wrath of a Chiropractor who's just been lied about.

This means, that every single time this idiot tells me someone said something is okay, I have to check and make sure he's telling the truth. And my concerns about him have proven justified. On this same patient (who comes at the end of the day usually), this jackass told me that the patient was declining the hot wax treatment.

I suspected this was another lie. The hot wax takes fifteen minutes and it appeared to me that the office jackass was making something up to get out the door early.

So, I went in and asked him, while he was on my table, "Quiera Usted cera caliente?" (He doesn't speak English.)

"Si."

Oh, gee. Look who's lying again. I haven't been this surprised since Boy George came out the closet.

Not only that. The jerk messed up my back, too, because he seems to think he's a chiropractor. I spoke to Dr. Campbell about an injury I sustained in my neck while working out at the gym. She offered me an adjustment and told the office jackass to put some hot packs and E-Stim on me first.

I told him precisely where the pain was (I had pulled my subscapularis) in addition to a neck vertebrae being out of alignment. As I was laying on the table waiting for my treatment, he came in, and without warning, grabbed my thoracic (mid-back) spine and wrung it. (Twisted each end in opposite directions, suggestive of wringing a washcloth.) Crack, crack. Yee-ouch!

Now, in addition to pain in the C4 area, I have pain in T5, thanks to this idiot.

In addition, he holds forth on every subject under the sun, whether he actually knows something about it or not.

As for the cheerleader, I don't really get what's so wrong with him, either. Maybe that's the problem with him. He's not doing something actionable (like my office jackass is), but he's annoying to some. And what makes it worse is that he's well-meaning.

P.S. Amy, if I wanted a hug from you, you wouldn't start doing the cone bra with knives on the tips, would you? I like to hug, too. But not that much. And certainly not just every one. I haven't hugged a single one of my coworkers, actually. Not that I dislike any of them. I probably would, say, at an office party or something, as I was saying my goodnights.

isn't anal-retentive spelled with a hyphen?

the guy who took over for me at my old job sounds like mr. bowtie. nothing is more aggravating at 6:30 in the morning than someone who's happy to be there and can be heard all the way across the building.

Dawww, cheerleader guy sounds cute. He might take the cake for 'annoying' but 'jackass' doesn't come to mind.

That won't be necessary. Now everytime she hugs me, I rub my clit against her pelvic bone.
Bwahaha! Lena, your comments are as good as some of Amy's posts.