i have the i'm going to slam utensils to let you know i'm unhappy coworker.

I have a co-worker who doesnt listen to the answers of the questions they ask.

• gym teacher manager. Not great at the math and science parts, but believes in his team
• checked out youth. Watches YouTube instead of working.
• checked out elder. He's so close to retiring. He's got stories to tell from before HR was all formalized
• checked out middle career guy. He wanted to fix things. Then he fell into the tar pit. Why bother when a ten minute fix is going to take two research spikes, a stakeholder meeting, a team meeting, a feedback meeting, a sprint planning meeting and so on. Fuck it.
• day care HR. Do they work? Who knows. They seem nice, when you can find them.
• quiet union sympathizer. Got a "talking to" about it, so now he just shit talks management in back channels. Joins meetings smoking from his back porch. Knows where some bodies are buried.

I work at a bad place.

My boss is the clean-cut, captain-of-the-football-team all American type. Imagine Homelander but not evil.

We got a guy in the lab who’s your grouchy but friendly dude who’ll go on all day about how the place sucks but knows every piece of equipment inside and out and will drop whatever he’s doing to help you. Short and majestically bearded. I call him Gimli. But not to his face.

New guy is the quintessential live-off-the-land redneck. He always brings in food he caught or hunted himself. Every. Day.

We got the nerd tech who exudes, “I’d rather be at ComiCon.”

Our manager who is pure, undiluted metalhead. Pick a metal band. He can talk about them all day. Kicks everyone’s ass at Name That Riff.

For a while we had the autistic, terminally online Gen Z kid. He lasted about six months.

The coworkers at my last job were pretty cool actually.

Team leader: a bit of an enigma. Always wanted to do things her way although she wasn't power-hungry. Overly critical, but openhearted. Also the youngest of the team.

Second in command: a typical Gen X urban Finn for whom being a social democrat is a way of life. The kind who reads the local paper (yep, actual paper) for community news she can't get anywhere else. Smiling even less than is usual, but chatty and always ready to talk shit about our customers. Deserved shit, I may add. Never just hating.

The third, who was roughly on my level in the hierarchy was the only one I considered boring, stereo- or maybe archetypical: a woo-woo esoteric mom of maybe 50. Healthy but kinda unhappy? Drinking spirulina+mud smoothies.

My coworker sits under my desk and licks my feet when he’s been fed.

I have a coworker whose first response to any issue is throw AI at it. Their personality is AI.

I have 2 who panic about everything. So. Fun. Lol!

90% of my teammates are moms and that’s pretty much their entire personality. One is a Disney adult so that’s another good one.

Some new tech came up in a meeting?

Barry knows a lot about this topic, and will be sure that everyone knows he knows.