I try never to speak ill of my co-workers, but since I don’t actually work with the gentleman to my left, I can let it fly.  I’ve used my headphones more to drown him out than for actual entertainment for quite a while now.  Let’s call him Mr "O".  I’ve been forced to bear witness to his constant trials and tribulations for the last two months, and I just can’t take it anymore.

I’ve sat and listened to him try to get himself a new laptop out of the client because his won’t connect properly to the wireless network at the hotel, thus allowing him to work without actually coming in.  Also his attitude clashes with the Radio shack guys who sold him three defective wireless routers in a row.

I witnessed him getting a whole new cell-phone because his old one wouldn’t get a signal here.  Here’s a tip… ask the people around you if THEY have a signal before plunking down the cash for an upgrade.  We ALL have no signal down here in the basement.  The phone only rings when he’s not here anyway so that we get to listen to his ENTIRE ringtone over and over and over.  Then he comes back and tries to use the thing to make a call every fricken time, like suddenly today’s the day he’ll have a good signal at last.

I’ve listened to him on the phone with Oracle every day for the last week and a half to the point where today it sounds like they are asking him not to call them anymore.  He didn’t threaten lawyers this time, but said he would inform his manager about their unwillingness to help.  Perhaps a restraining order is next.

I’ve heard him trying to procure a larger monitor by playing the "Oracle guys can’t see my whole screen" card.  This one I can understand, I couldn’t live on a 14" 800×600 screen either, but surely you could buddy-breath off the monitor four feet to your left long enough to get off the phone with Oracle and get on with your so-called life.

I sat through a weeklong tirade with the aforementioned hotel about his expensive cashmere sweaters that went missing after a fire drill.  I heard him threaten to bring out the lawyers when the hotel said they are not responsible for items left in the room.  I’d be mad about it too, but a week after he changed hotels, someone called to say the sweaters had been found down the back of the dresser drawers.  We wouldn’t know about any of this if he hadn’t shared it with us, of course.  Imagine the gall of these people trying to make it look like his expensive cashmere sweaters weren’t stolen after all!!!  Good thing the maid put them back in the room after he left, eh?

Right about now I’m thinking that he is about the most clueless waste of space I’ve ever had the misfortune of sharing air with, and I’m going to have to rip my entire CD collection in order to survive it any longer.  Why couldn’t he have had a bigger monitor and no phone?  That would have suited me just fine.