I like a good rant as much as the next person, but my rant is about someone who rants far too much! There are three of us in our office, my boss, my equal colleague and me. My colleague suffers very badly with stress. So do I, to the point of needing counselling, but I can't see what's so stressful here really.
Before and at the beginning of each semester it is pretty busy here, and it can get a bit stressful when we are busy with complicated problems and people are constantly interrupting with inane queries. I have been known to have the odd outburst. But I feel like he's constantly on the lookout for something to whinge about.
From the moment he enters the office, almost every word out of his mouth is negative. It's bad enough when he moans about people just between us, but he's rude on the phone as well. He makes this sighing noise and instead of just dealing with queries he always interrogates people.
Our boss has noticed it too, but she finds it very difficult to speak to him. He's old enough to be our father, which I think makes it harder, plus I think she's afraid he'll go off sick.
It's got to the point where I'll only speak to him when it's absolutely unavoidable, and when he starts ranting I don't reply. I'm afraid he's damaging the reputation of our office.
What makes it worse is that we have very good working conditions, with very little to complain about. The pay is crap, but our boss is great, most of the people we work with are ok, our office has the best view on campus, we can walk in and out of the office when we like (within reason), and we all manage our own workloads.
I've already snapped at him once this week and had to fight back tears. I guess I'll have to tell my boss that I can't bear it much longer. I've been avoiding it because I know she finds that kind of thing tough, and I don't want to put her in that position. But then I guess that is part of her job...
