Sometime in the 1980s when I started work, I was given a tour of the office.

Manager: “Oh, here are the restrooms. Don’t go in there after Two-Coke-Tim.”

Me: “Who?!”

Manager: “Oh, you haven’t seen Two-Coke-Tim yet? You’ll spot him in the break room. He always has at least two cans of Coke, which he chugs and then moves on to get more.”

Me: “Okay, but why would I not use the restroom after him?”

Manager: “One day while I was washing my hands in the bathroom, he walked in, downed a whole bottle of Pepto-Bismol, looked at himself in the mirror for a solid five seconds, and then headed straight into the bathroom stall. This guy already creeps me out, so I noped right out of there before I heard whatever he was about to do.”

I have had many “first days” in my almost fifty-year career, but that was the only one I remember!

My coworker announced that she was pregnant with her third child. This would be my first time working with her while she was pregnant, so when the discussion came about whether we should pool together our money for some baby gifts, I was excited and was all in. We also decided to turn it into a small party, and we would each make a dish for lunch.

The tricky part of this is my coworker is allergic to many things — dairy, gluten, shellfish, tree nuts, tomatoes, certain fruits, and many more things. We have talked about her allergies before when discussing what to get for takeout lunches, but we hadn’t committed the list to memory. Over the course of two or three weeks, we would try to have her allergies naturally come into conversation, and someone not talking to her would write down the good foods and the bad foods. When we were pretty confident that we had gotten enough, we shared the list with everyone in the office.

The day of the party arrived, and we set up the table while my coworker was on her morning break. When she came back, we led her to the table, and she was surprised by all of the gifts. Once she opened the gifts, we started to bring out lunch. We went around the room explaining our dishes and what ingredients were included and/or excluded. She realized we had all made the dishes specifically to fit with her diet, and she burst into tears, saying that it was one of the nicest things that had happened to her.

It was a rewarding feeling, to be able to do something so small as make lunch for someone and get that reaction.

Going forward, we don’t make everything without her allergens, but we do make sure there are at least a few dishes she can have, and we prevent cross-contamination whenever possible.

One of my coworkers is planning a trip to a tropical country where the prevalence of mosquitos has necessitated some vaccines.

Coworker #1: “So, what vaccinations do you need?”

Coworker #2: “Oh… [lists some diseases], and malaria.”

Coworker #1: “Oh, I got malaria when I was a baby.”

Another coworker nearby, our lead programmer, is listening in.

Coworker #3: “Oh, my God! Did you survive?!”

Coworker #1: “…”

Coworker #2: “…”

The penny drops.

Coworker #3: “Look! My brain is full of computer code all day! Sometimes I forget how to ‘people’!”

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

This guy at my last job was hard to be around; even twenty feet away from him, you could still smell him. Thankfully, I didn’t have to sit anywhere near him, but those who did complained all the time to the floor manager. His body odor was so bad. I don’t know if he just soiled himself and kept wearing the same underwear or something, but he constantly reeked like he had just gone swimming in a feces-filled toilet.

It probably didn’t help that the guy’s car was literally filled with garbage; fast food wrappers and trash filled every part of his car except for the driver’s seat. It also probably didn’t help that he ate like a pig — literally. He would literally hold food in his hands and eat from them like he was dining in a trough. He’d get food all over his face and hands, and then he’d wipe his face and hands on his shirt to “clean” them off.

His keyboard was greasy; we could actually see the grease buildup on the keys from all of the crap he ate. The microphone headset he wore was physically turning orange from all the Cheeto dust he’d get on his hands, and it would transfer onto his headset from him handling it so much.

It gets worse.

His cubicle walls were covered in snot and boogers; he would wipe his finger on the walls after digging in his nose while he was on calls with customers.

Human Resources had to talk to him multiple times about his lack of hygiene. Usually, after the HR lady spoke to him, he would at least stop coming in and smelling like he had soiled himself, but that would only last for so long.

Management kept him around because he was good at his job. (He really wasn’t; he just found easy ways to pad his numbers for the help desk.) Once a proper floor manager came in and created a proper metric system, this guy couldn’t pad his numbers anymore, and they fired him.

After they fired him the floor manager and the maintenance team disassembled his cubicle, and they threw out the walls because of how much snot and boogers were all over them.

Now that I think about it, they actually threw out everything that was in his cubicle because of the health hazard that it was.

My coworker and I are in a meeting room, waiting for the other meeting attendees to arrive.

Me: “Just to let you know, I’m taking next Monday off.”

Coworker: “Oh?”

Me: “Yes, it’s my wedding anniversary on Sunday, and my husband and I always celebrate with a big bottle of champagne. I’m anticipating being a bit worse-for-wear on Monday morning—” *laughs self-deprecatingly* “—so I decided it’d be best if I didn’t work that day.”

Coworker: “Is that so?”

She screws up her face as if she’s sucked a lemon.

Coworker: “And here I didn’t know that you were a drinker.”

Me: *Slightly stunned* “Uh… I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but I do enjoy a drink every now and again, yes.”

She looks me up and down, lips pursed.

Coworker: “Hmm. You hide it well, I’ll give you that.”

Me: “…”

That coworker was always cold to me after that. I’m pretty sure that she thought I had a bottle of Scotch hidden in my desk or something.