The moment he starts answering himself, I'm outta here

[hepcat]

So I sit next to a coworker in a cubicle environment during the day.  Over the past year, I've noticed a worsening habit on his part of talking to himself.  It started off innocently enough.  A few curse words here and there when frustrated.  

But lately it's growing profoundly worse.  Now he's up to full sentences.  They're not loud.  They're like inner voices that he's taken to voicing out loud.  Whispers that almost sound like they're under his breath...but just louder.  He does work under probably one of the more tyrannical department heads in the company and I know that that guy seems almost proud that he once brought on a full blown panic attack in the poor bastard while at a client site (not intentionally at the time, just through having to explain to him in slightly harsh tones how he'd messed up a project that had been assigned to him).  So I'm wondering if it's just a sign of stress?

...but the moment I hear "Yes...yeeessss...they ALL need to pay!" coming from over the cubicle wall, I'm just going to quickly and quietly grab my things, turn off my laptop and walk out the door for the day.

[Soulchilde]

I share an office with a nurse and she is a sweet woman and a very hard dedicated worker, but she has the annoying habit of talking to herself when she is in very deep thought when auditing charts we are preparing for Medicare appeals.  She knows she talks to herself cause we’ve talked about it

Thing is she gets annoyed cause I work with ear buds  in, so when she starts talking to me I never hear her.  I told her . “ Jo, if you didn’t talk to yourself I probably wouldn’t listen to music.” He response,” oh yeah..”


She holds entire conversations with herself.  It struck me as weird as first, but it is who she is

[Blackjack]

"I feel bad for Hepcat. Doesn't that remind us of that guy Jeff we worked with at the newsletter company in Maryland?"
"Oh yes, back in 1993. We remember that guy. He would get angry and frustrated, and start having these long conversations, apparently either with himself or thin air. This was loooooooong before cellphones and Bluethooth earpieces, by the way."
"Yes indeed, Jeff was scary."
"So are you the part of Blackjack responsible for ordering the iPhone 5 this morning? 64GB model? Are you insane?'"
"We may be insane, but you're just as responsible."
"What are you talking about? What are you accusing me of!"
"You know it. We both know it. We all know it."
"Wait a minute. My phone's ringing. Are you calling me?"

Sorry. Just having a conversation with myself about Hepcat's situation.  

Jeff was pretty scary, if ultimately harmless. It seemed to be mostly motivational self-conversations like, "You can do better than that!" or critical ones like, "You screwed up again, Jeff." We just tried to give him a wide berth, and not interrupt his self-conversations. 

[Bullwinkle]

I work at home by myself, and we think he sounds like a nice, normal fellow.

[Crawley]

I have a co-worker like that too. Sometimes when he walks by you can barely hear him whispering things under his breath. When you ask him "what did you say?" he'll deny he said anything. It's a bit spooky. He has a bunch of other vocal quirks too. Like he has a habit of starting a conversation in his head but doesn't vocalizing anything until he's part way through it. So he'll begin talking to you and you have no idea of what he's talking about as he's begun in the middle. Very confusing.  You're constantly asking him "what are you talking about?" or "what's the context?". But even then if he's really stressed (he's just normally stressed all the time) it can take him two or three go's before you get what's talking about. He'll also do the opposite where he'll start a conversation, usually with a query, but will quickly trail off leaving you hanging there. Like he'll say something like "You know..." and then silence. Am I supposed to respond? Was that directed at me? Was he just thinking outloud? No idea. Usually I'll just let those go.

He also sometimes does the cursing thing when he gets really upset. It'll be quiet in the office and then you'll hear him yell "Fuck!" or "Shit!" which on occassion is accompanied by a slam on the keyboard or desk. Its startling but we chalk it up to being the stress that comes with programming work. We're a small team and have known each other for years so we're used to everyone having their own quirks and we'll playfully rag on each other about them. Just part of the fun of going to work.

[hepcat]

One of our gaming group members here in chicago has a tendency to start conversations when he's not really paying attention and then lets them trail off into silence.  Some of us like finishing the sentences to see if we can get his attention...it rarely works.

He'll start with the usual..."And...you know...let's see...I think..."

And we'll finish with "...I can have sex with a monkey if it's dressed as a human and it's not a crime against nature!"

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

I can be that guy. I talk to myself a fair amount when alone and when I'm stressed it tends to happen regardless of my location. For my part, I'm only imagining the deaths of all of those around me, I'd never actually do it.

Probably.