Traveling with the Colleague from Hell

I was out in Chicago for business earlier this week, and have just returned tired and worn out from the trip. The business itself was fairly pleasant, but I ended up traveling with a colleague who has a rather "difficult" personality. It is incredibly hard to be professional with someone, when you just want to tell the person to shut the hell up. I felt that I was channeling Jack Nicholson in the end, you know, in The Shining, when he starts going psychotic inside, but manages to remain seemingly normal.

I also have developed pet peeves for people who cough on other people, who whisper loudly and rudely about strangers, who always have conversations three or four decibels too high in crowded places, who insist on telling me about how they're constipated every time we eat, who pick at themselves with their hands, who eat at nice restaurants with their hands, who is clearly homophobic and makes jokes about people with handicaps, who complains about how it's so cold that they will surely die from hypothermia, and then, when you turn up the heat, about how it's so hot that that they can't breathe, and who in general have no social graces or sensitivity and kindness to anyone but themselves. You think people like this only exist as grandiose caricatures in movies or books, but apparently not. I was traveling with just such a person for three whole days. It was three of the most difficult days of my life.

On the brighter note, I did end up reading my fair share of books on the trip, finishing up Whats Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal, and Martin Dressler. I will be posting my thoughts about these a little later.