How to Unnerve Your Coworkers

If you’re a person who drudges away her working life at an airless, high-strung office job, odds are you’ve taken up a hobby to soothe the corporate sting—reading comic books, say, or knitting, or listening to music. However (as you’ve probably realized by now), some folks’ hobby is making the lives of their coworkers as miserable as possible. Here’s how to take up this infinitely rewarding form of recreation.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Talk as loudly as possible. The vast majority of corporate minions are parceled out in semiprivate cubicles, meaning they have no choice but to listen to anyone yapping away in the hall (and they can get yelled at if they choose to wear headphones). Talk at the top of your lungs, about anything, to anyone who will listen. If there’s nobody to around to talk to, talk to yourself—it’ll make you seem “busy.”

2. Dress to extremes. Wearing an Armani suit to work every day—or, if you’re female, a Chanel dress—raises the dress-code curve to the point where your coworkers will have no choice but to do the same, or look slovenly by comparison. Deliberately looking slovenly, on the other hand, will keep your colleagues at a safe distance. (It won’t unnerve your boss, though—he’ll be impressed by how much more dedicated you are to work than to fashion.)

3. Eavesdrop. There’s one of ‘em in every office—the guy whose head can barely be seen, like the fin of a shark, lurking near the top of his cubicle, as he semi-crouches and listens for snippets of compromising dialogue that can be repeated to the boss. You don’t necessarily even have to listen to what your coworkers are saying; just striking this pose will unnerve them sufficiently all by itself.

4. Come in sick. That gal in the next cubicle—you know, the one who’s getting married in Bermuda next week?—will be so freaked out by your showing up to work with bacterial meningitis that she’ll likely fulfill your “unnervement” quotient for the entire month. Even if you’re not feeling particularly ill, a good, hearty, phlegm-filled sneeze in a main hallway can work wonders for your mood.

5. Stay late. Since you don’t have any knitting, book-reading or music-listening to rush home to, you have no incentive to leave the office early—meaning you can make your coworkers look bad by playing Windows Solitaire at your desk until 7 or 8 p.m. (Bosses don’t care what you do, as long as you stay late. If anyone asks why you’re playing Solitaire, tell her you’re waiting for a call from an important account.)

[enierow]

on 9/11/2007 Not only speak on the phone, as well as, to co-workers loudly, but speak in Spanish non-stop. I'm a writer, editor for my company and sometimes I write "si" instead of "yes" for a Web page.

[HOHNancy]

on 6/23/2007 "Step Four
Come in sick. That gal in the next cubicle—you know, the one who’s getting married in Bermuda next week?—will be so freaked out by your showing up to work with bacterial meningitis that she’ll likely fulfill your “unnervement” quotient for the entire month."

This comment about arriving to work with bacterial meningitis is unrealistic....unless someone's under a rock, the person would've told you to go to a hospital with that disease -- it's fatal.