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The other day a friend asked me who was worse, Creepy Guy or the Hateful Harpy? That got me to thinking…

I guess I’m pretty lucky that in my entire career history, I’ve really only been forced to work with or near two really useless, annoying people. Almost everyone else I’ve ever worked with had some redeeming quality, or managed to be somehow useful to someone. Creepy Guy and Hateful Harpy are really exceptions to the rule, the kind of co-workers that you usually only hear about in laughing anecdotes: “Remember when that creepy guy worked here? Oh man was he something else!” Guess I’m just extra lucky.

Creepy and Hateful actually have a lot of things in common. Here’s a quick list:

- Both fat and completely in denial about their weight and their health problems as a result of it.

- Both ugly, though in completely different ways.
- Both useless when it comes to work (interestingly, their supposed “fields” were eerily similar; their lack of knowledge and expertise are discouragingly similar).
- Both fugly dressers.
- Both loud, disgusting eaters/drinkers: loud chewing, open mouthed eating, slurping of liquids, etc.
- Both completely in denial about their own professional failings and regularly shocked to receive negative performance reviews.
- Both go off on vacation, leaving co-workers to clean up their messes/finish (or just do) their work for them.
- Both exhibit strong characteristics of Asperger syndrome — in particular,  lack of social skills; restricted/repetitive interests and behavior (almost like OCD); and difficulty with communication.
- Both exhibit high self-interest and a sense of entitlement inappropriate to their respective work performance (for example, expecting to be sent to expensive training even though previous training has never been put to any productive use and performance reviews are lackluster).

There are differences though. I’d say that while Creepy Guy is annoying and gross, Hateful Harpy was pure evil. Although I firmly believe Hateful Harpy was mentally ill, there was definitely a maliciousness and intent to every awful thing that she did, whereas Creepy Guy does things more out of cluelessness and ineptitude.

To sum up: Harpy was a demonic bitch, but Creepy is just stupid. Who would you rather work with?