Are We Really Furious Enough?

I work with a gentle snowflake. He works rather near to me and for purposes of reasons we will call him Dennings. Dennings struggles with things. Dennings writes things down during meetings, asks questions, send emails, takes additional notes, and then asks more questions. He never appears to take a break from his mental deliberations.

Things got a bit treacherous yesterday because we were actually working on something that couldn’t possibly matter less in the grand scheme of things, and this only appeared to magnify Dennings’s frustrations and confusions. 

Like most passive aggressive people I have worked with he follows the usual pattern. He asks me a question about his work because you know I’m not just here to do my work I’m here to help other people with their work and I wear a sign that effect, obviously. He then, in the usual fashion, finds my explanation confusing even though it couldn’t possibly be more clear, and then proceeds to reposition the question with a slight variation and pretends to be even more confused. He then (and I really should say he/she since the behavior crosses gender lines in all, but the rarest of instances) goes to the boss and asks the same similar question.

He spends the rest of the day roiling in frustration muttering something about how nobody knows what they are talking about.

What really slays me is he tears himself apart about situations that haven’t even arisen. Merely potentialities and he basically wants to know how he should act in the future if a possible situation x arises.

‘Hey, so what would you do in this situation?’

‘Are you in that situation?’

‘No, but if I were, what do you think I should do?’

‘Can you think of any instance where you might be in such a situation?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘Do you think it might be more appropriate to ask me that question at a time when it might be pertinent to our work, or even our lives, or anyone’s life?’

‘Well it just might be good to know.’