I gotta rant for a sec.
Meet my ✨creepy co-worker✨
He's still relatively new at my work place and has unfortunately made it his personal mission to camp at my desk whenever the opportunity arises. He doesn't even work on my floor and most of his time is meant to be spent downstairs repairing stuff but he somehow manages to linger at my place and talk about god, the world, and whatever pops into his head at the very moment. When I once hinted "don't you care if the boss sees us talking all the time?" he just went: nahhh..." Dude, that was not meant to be an encouragement. Shut up.
When my boss and supervisor realized that he was spending a lot of time hanging around there, they often stepped in reminding him of the work he had to do, which should also have given him a hint. He. did. not. care.
Then came ✨the tea phase✨. He always makes himself a cup of tea before coming over and every single time he asks me if I want it. He has a type of humor only he himself understands. When I finally asked in a way to avoid an uncomfortable silence (because what the hell do you reply to that??) "why are you constantly trying to sell me tea? What did you do with it?" his swift answer was: I dipped my wiener in it." 😐... seriously?
But oh, he wasn't done. After that I often kept asking him "don't you have any work to do?" whenever he came over but... to no surprise that didn't stop him.
Once, after we briefly talked about horror movies the day before, he comes up to me and hands me a USB stick. No explanation, just "you'll see" and places a cup of tea in front of me that he made for me. There was no way in hell I was plugging that thing into my laptop at home. Lol my brain immediately went to worst case scenarios of what could potentially be on that stick. Turns out it was a bunch of horror movies he told me about the day before that he liked, including one about a killer tire. (Yes. A tire. Rolling around murdering people. Peak cinema performance.) Apparently I was now obligated to watch them all.
Naturally next week he came back awaiting my review. I told him politely I had no time, apologized like the people pleaser that I am and said that I was busy watching an anime instead. Big mistake. HUGE. He immediately returned with a sticky note listing his favorite animes. 😮💨
And today THE LAST STRAW, was when another coworker who's still on maternity leave visited with her new baby, the little guy was looking at everyone with the sweetest toothless smile and big blue eyes. When he looked at me once, his mom joked "aww, are you flirting with her?" wiggling his chubby baby arm. Then our creepy tea guy states in front of everyone: Yeah, I bet he sees more than just a pretty face." 🚨 HR, come get your man. 🚨 PLEASE I BEG OF YOU
Anyway, silver lining is that I talked to my supervisor because yes, even though I can talk about it in a funny way I do feel very uncomfortable in his presence. My supervisor let me know I wasn't the first one to come to him because of it and that he'll most likely be let go the next few days because he wasn't doing well at his job either. Looks like the tea service will be closing down soon, lol. 😭🍵
edit bc i remembered smth else:
instead of taking the readily available utensils (scissors, pens, markers etc) at the desk with the printer he comes to my desk to take my scissors to cut smth out. (I HEAVILY DOUBT he had no scissors at all on his entire floor below so he'd have to come up all the way to borrow MY scissors.) that's where I started to get rougher with him. I asked him: you know you can take the scissors from over there right? you don't need to take mine all the time." 😐✂️
He wasn't responding. That's when I snapped (a bit). "Did you hear me?!" I asked in a sharper tone and he was like: alright alright, I guess not then." put my scissors back and walked over to the other utensils.
since then I've been trying to avoid eye contact and acknowledge him as little as possible. 😮💨
last edit:
oh and I gave him the USB stick back today. I asked another co-worker to put it on his desk bc there's no way in hell I'm walking downstairs to be alone with him in a room handing it back to him. and how ELSE SHOULD IT BE HE NEEDS TO ASK ME ABOUT IT. before I got to leave work today he comes up to me "so did you watch them?" I was so annoyed I was like "no, I didn't." he looked hurt but I hope he gets the note now
can't imagine I was contemplating wether I'll finally stand my ground or if I'll waste my time actually watching them just to make him happy OR if I would watch a YouTube summary to PRETEND I had seen them.
don't waste your time on men. be more blunt. but fuck me, I'm way too nice.
does this already count as workplace harassment? I feel like it does. goddamn.
