Magnific

Complaining about an annoying coworker is easy when they’re doing borderline evil things directly to you. But what happens when someone is just oblivious to how aggravating they are? In this case, an employee shares that a number of little annoyances have piled up into an exhausting daily routine with a coworker named Emily.

She has a selection of little habits that are driving her crazy. As Bukowski says, “It’s not the large things that send a man to the madhouse.”

What would you do in her situation? Would you look for another job or confront your coworker?

Read the full story below.

How to deal with Emily

I started a new job over a year ago and for the first 6 months Emily was on maternity leave. I now sit beside her and she just irritates me to no end.

I wouldn’t say she’s doing anything wrong she’s just not the type of person I would be friends with and I honestly try to avoid her as much as possible.

I find sitting next to her to be very distracting. She talks to herself, makes lip popping and sucking noises, moans, and does not have an inside voice when talking on the phone.

Some tasks require focus so when she’s counting out loud and I’m also counting in my head it’s affecting my productivity.

Her coworker’s quirks affect her life on a daily basis.

I’ve had to buy noise cancelling headphones to tune her out and it’s still not enough sometimes.

I also have a program no one else knows how to use so when Emily wants help with her projects she wants to sit with me for several hours being a perfectionist when the task would take 15-30 minutes if she just left me to my own devices.

I also suffer from project perfectionism sometimes but I only impact my own time, it should be avoided when you’re occupying someone else’s.

She tried communicating, but it doesn’t really work.

I’ve told her to just write it down for me and she’ll do that for a few weeks and go right back to wanting to sit with me the whole time.

Because I have this program Emily also asks me to send her cad blocks that she could easily find online herself if she was resourceful.

Emily also waits to have lunch with me which drives me insane because I need the mental break from her.

She will sit at the same table as you, talk to you for 15 minutes, then call her husband on FaceTime to talk to her 2-year-old for the remaining 45 minutes with no headphones.

A couple times a week wouldn’t be bad but she does it every single day.

It’s getting more serious than it sounds.

There was even one time the kid was using the potty while we’re eating.

HR brought it up to our manager, since she sits next to the lunchroom and also finds it distracting, and they said we can’t tell her to stop doing that, to instead talk over her phone calls.

I also don’t even like conversing with Emily because she talks over you and has extremely misogynistic views.

Such as women who come forward with SA claims after the fact are liars, a woman should be hit if defiant to her husband, trans people are weird, immigrants suck, etc. mind you she’s also an immigrant, though she’s white, so she’s just racist lol

But wait, there’s more! Believe it or not.

I try not to converse on any controversial topics because she can’t see any other point of view but her own but she always seems to want to talk about those types of topics.

Another time Emily started yelling in the morning about a work issue she was having and she yelled at me when I tried to help her, so I sat somewhere else that day because I had reached a breaking point.

She expected me to apologize and I didn’t because I did nothing wrong so she didn’t talk to me for a full week. I’ve even asked to be moved and my manager said no.

She wants to know what to do.

This might have turned into a rant but I wanted to list all the examples of conflicts we’ve had. Please share if there are any other options you think I could try.

I ultimately think I need to find other employment because of how close I am to her vicinity and it’s really hard to avoid her.

I just can’t imagine dealing with her until retirement, it’s too mentally draining. I’m open to any ideas that can help ease the annoyance while I search.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

Reddit had some good suggestions.

This one is good.

Another good suggestion.

Someone experienced something similar.

Another reader chimes in.

Yup.

We need to talk about Emily, lol.

She is sitting directly beside her every day, interrupting her focus, following her to lunch, asking for help with tasks, and keeps crossing her boundaries. Imagine having to deal with this for years.

Even after asking management to move desks, that option was apparently off the table, leaving her with very few ways to create some distance.

While personality clashes are inevitable at work, in this case I think anyone would feel the same way about Emily.

Add TwistedSifter to your Google News Add us as a preferred source on Google

Author

Mila Cardozo

Yells her own name like a Pokémon sometimes.

Mila's LinkedIn