Telephone manner
Once again, a DSS related tale. This one goes back to 1995, when I'd just received my first permanent promotion. Only one problem - it was 50 miles away, in Berwick.

Fuck. I come from there, and know what some of the people are like. Only when I got there, I soon came to realise that some of the staff were just as odd. Actually, that's a slight exaggeration, the staff were mostly OK. But there was one woman who had been there since (I would imagine) the initiation of the Welfare State, and showed no sign of slowing down. She looked well past her retirement age (Christ, she looked well past her decompose-by age), with deep set, yet strangely bulging eyes, skin like a dehydrated Boxer dog, and and widely spaced teeth.

She also had a fondness for cakes.

Cream cakes.

Big, gooey, squidgey cream cakes.

Of which she would bring in a box of half a dozen a day, and place precariously on the edge of her desk (think 'Bambi' episode of the Young Ones).

Why was this annoying, you may ask? Well, the simple answer is, it shouldn't have been. But it was. For the main reason that every time her phone would ring, she would answer it.

Er, yes, you may say. So she should. Ah, but, before she answered it, she would immediately take a bite from a cream cake and proceed to greet the caller "Hellmmmpho, hmoow mayahhelph oo"? With, for added effect, fresh cream squirting between her tombstone teeth.

It just annoyed me greatly. I have a thing about good eating manners anyway; this just really pissed me off (and turned my stomach).

Sorry. A bit off topic, but I don't care. Most of the people I have worked with have actually been OK, so it's hard to think of examples of real twuntishness.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Tue 29 Jan 2008, 20:54, 3 replies)

God! I cant wait to be old like that
Sitting around all day eating cream cakes and not worrying about my weight.

I'm desperate for a devonshire scone now or an apple and cream turnover.

Bring it on - a little senility would be nice also, a bit like being high for the rest of your life.
( girlinthehole, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 21:15, closed)

It's when
you are forced to watch it happen every day that it gets annoying but strangely almost irresistable to watch. One of my colleagues used to eat her sandwiches by pulling out the ham and eating that first, all covered in marge. Lovely girl, just didn't enjoy the sandwich dissection spectacle!

Was amused to think of the old lady's cream cakes poised to obliterate miniature people!
(Ovaltina, Wed 30 Jan 2008, 2:03, closed)

I hang up on phone chompers
As an IT Techy, I get a few phone calls in a day. And the worst is,

Hello IT miggyman speaking."

"chomp chomp click, crunch, gulp.. oh hello.. -CRUNCH!-... ive -Crunch Crunch- go' a 'roblem wi' my 'ompu'er. gulp.

OK whats hap..

"-CRUNCH!!!- chomp chomp chomp"

"oh call back when youre not eating a bag of crisps" CLICK.
(Miggyman, Wed 30 Jan 2008, 11:51, closed)