UKC

One of my colleagues in the open plan office in which I work has a habit of reading out the more sensational headlines and stories she finds on the BBC News web site during the day. This is usually prefaced by nothing more than "Oh my God...", which I assume is intended to attract everyone attention.

Am I unreasonable in finding this extremely irritating? Is there a good way to persuade her to stop it, preferably without causing offence? She's otherwise a nice person, and good at her job.

In reply to Martin W:
Create a fake BBC news page, full of stories you've made up by copying existing articles and editing them. Throw in some real ones too.

Either change your company's DNS to point news.bbc.co.uk to this (ideal, as your colleage will then find it on their own, but you'll need to be in IT or have a mate there), or host it on an address which looks quite like that and send a link.

Have fun.

(I did this to a colleague, some years ago; she still hasn't forgiven me for making her think civil war had broken out in Thailand just in time for the holiday she'd been boasting about for months. The look of confusion on her face when she saw that she was mentioned by name at the end of the article was the best bit...)

In reply to skog:
That is brilliant!

In reply to Martin W:

Next time she does it, stand up, shout "Christ, how can well all sit here [doing whatever we do] while [repeat content of headline] is going on - they've gone too far this time, this stops here!" and stride out of the door. Maybe tear your shirt off for effect as you go.

In fact, scrub the door. Get up, deploy the ab rope that you've previously anchored next to the window, clip into it with the harness you've got hidden under your work clothes and leave that way. Unless you're on the ground floor, in which case just vaulting out of the window should do it.

In reply to Martin W:

"Would you mind concentrating on your work, and not reading websites all day...?"

<he says, reading UKC during the day... it is 'after hours', though...>

In reply to elsewhere:

It takes a bit of preparation, but it was worth it!

In reply to Martin W:

You can probably find opposing views to anything on BBC News, by going to various tinfoil-hat websites (The Canary is a good one for this as they are very knee-jerk socialist) and then loudly refute all her expectorations. Turn it into an office war

In reply to Martin W:

You're lucky. I've had colleagues that I've spent significant work time on planning their murder because of their nasal drip. And some because they stood between me and the sun.

In reply to Scotch Bingington:

Or sniffing.
Or humming/singing/tapping/whistling along to the music they're playing on their tinny headphones...

In reply to Martin W:

Do the same thing but use the Daily Mail sidebar of shame as your news source. She'll get the hint.

In reply to Martin W:

You could always start reading out headlines from the Daily Mail website, ones like "Kristen Stewart risks wardrobe malfunction as she goes braless under open coat... as she struggles to keep hands off girlfriend Stella Maxwell on shoot"

This may not meet the "without causing offence" criteria" though