My colleague is really great at his job. I got the same job recently (there are two of us), and we WFH 3 days a week, in office 2. I come from an office background, he doesn’t.
Thing is he calls ALL THE TIME for EVERY LITTLE THING. And it’s driving me nuts. He will often call and I’ll pickup and say “hey?” And he goes “what’s up?” And I’ll respond “you called me, what’s up?” And he’ll say “nothing much, just going through emails”. That or he’ll call and rant about work. Non stop. And I’ve told him bluntly a million times, I don’t care.
He’s about 10 years older than me and also a SUPER social guy – he loves to just chat with EVERYBODY on the phone and hates texting.
Our job DOES have emergency situations arise, and I’m still fairly new, so I always pickup when he calls in case it is an urgent issue (happens quite often), but on slow days, it’s like he just can’t NOT be talking to someone.
I’m 13 weeks pregnant too and have little energy to listen to someone ramble or rant about work and try to zone him out but it’s really starting to affect my mental health to be called so much when it’s not necessary just to listen to him talk about nothing, or rant about work. (4-5 calls an hour)
Often he’ll call me for a 20 second call that could have been a text.
On Friday it was super slow and I yawned probably every 20 seconds on the phone with him cause I was so tired, and he said “go have a nap, don’t worry” (he scoots out often to drop off his kid to sports) to which I replied “I can’t nap cause people always call me anyway”, and he seemed to empathize.
We hung up and I shit you not 10 minutes later he called me to tell me something so simple it could have been a text. I immediately called my manager and took the rest of the day off just so I could nap and not worry about him calling me again.
I’m at my wits end. I don’t THINK he’s doing anything intentionally malicious, and he’s not doing it because he likes me or anything. He just really likes to talk and rant, and my exhausted pregnant brain can’t handle it. But I don’t know what to say cause I still need him to teach me stuff and keep me updated on what’s happening, just NOT SO MUCH.
I lose sleep over it 🙁 dreading going in tomorrow. I’m seriously considering looking for other jobs when I’m back from mat leave, which sucks cause it pays really good.