I’ve only really worked with one person who was very strange. He was ten years older than me.
He had a seizure at the office when he was fairly new and I used to have seizures as a young teen, so when he returned to the office I checked in on him. He was feeling really embarrassed about it and I reassured him that he was fine and shouldn’t feel that way. After that, he became a bit clingy with me. We worked in an office of 40 people and sat at completely opposite ends of the room, so there was no real reason why we would have any interaction. He kept finding reasons to come over to me. He would regularly ask how things were going with my then boyfriend. I feel as though he had a fair bit of social anxiety or just didn’t understand how to be naturally sociable. He would linger a bit too much really. There might have been a mental health issue, but I can’t say for sure.
One day, a few of us went out for after work drinks and a team mate of this guy said that he had found crazed scribbling in this guy’s notepad. It was a story all about murdering a woman who rejected him and in a crazy scrawl. He had photographed the story and was showing it to us on his phone. It was creepy and knowing this person, none of us thought it could be made up for a prank. Nobody reported it to HR, although we definitely all went back and forth on it.
Six months later or so, I got a new job at a building three streets down from where I worked. The day after my last day, he messaged me on Facebook to say good luck etc. I said thank you and after that he sent me three hardcore porn videos. I didn’t open them, but I told him in no uncertain terms that he is disgusting and should eff off. I blocked him on all social media.
Shortly after that, I noticed that this guy would start turning up outside my workplace and follow me to the car park or bus stop. He got braver eventually and started trying to shout my name to get my attention. He would wait outside shops I was in on my lunch break or after work. It was incredibly creepy. I would ignore him and not make eye contact. One day on my lunch break, he was there again, waiting for me to come out of a cafe. He was saying my name louder and louder and I guess he got frustrated that I was ignoring him. He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me backwards. I screamed at him to never touch me again and that if he did I was going to go to the police. I made a statement to the police anyway and they raided his house, taking his phone and computer. The police decided that it didn’t amount to harassment but I reckon it definitely did. Luckily, after the police went round, he left me alone almost immediately.
On a separate note and I can’t say for sure, but I’m fairly confident that I got a dirty phone call on New Years Day from a man I used to work with. His accent is quite distinctive and he knew my name. He was asking me if I liked all sorts of sexual acts, I hung up on him. He’s also business friends with my boyfriend. He had some pretty crazy views on women, including that he would slap his teenage daughter around the face for being out late and would regularly cheat on his wife when away on business trips. He would make sexual jokes with lots of women around the office. He made a lot of us uncomfortable. I reported this to the police because it made me feel really violated and also scared as it was an anonymous number that knew my name. I didn’t say who I thought it was but basically, get this, until you get three phone calls, the police don’t think it is worth their time to pay your phone network to trace the call. I feel like these creeps know this and just regularly change who they do this to. Yuck.