How to be annoying at the desk

Most wall street types are pretty cool. You've got people from all walks of life, all sorts of backgrounds and generally they tend to be smart. You'll find geeks like me, former Olympians, the ex-marine guy, the ex-model, everything. Somehow, here they all get along (this isn't high school any more, folks). Then again, there are some annoying shits out there too. Here are some things you should not do:

• Tapping your pen repeated on your desk. This shows you're not doing anything at the exact same time you're being annoying. That's two strikes for the price of one! More annoying is throwing your pen in the air and having it land on your desk repeatedly (yes, I've had a guy do that next to me before).
  
• Singing. I don't care whether or not you're a good singer. Don't sing next to me when I'm trying to calculate a hedge ratio. Same goes for whistling and any other noise you make that doesn't convey something meaningful.
  
• Asking for specific instructions every single time you do something. Now don't get me wrong, you should ALWAYS ask for clarification if there is something you don't understand. What you should not do is ask for step by step instructions in place of general directions. For example if I say "search for the portfolio GH1" a question like "how do I do that?" after I've helped you pull up the search functionality and there is a drop down window for search type shows that you're just an idiot who isn't thinking while looking at the screen.
  
• Leaving exactly 4 minutes after your boss leaves every day. Yea, this might seem like you're being all clever, but people catch on and realize you're just a facetime guy. There's nothing wrong with leaving early once in a while and staying late once in a while (or even staying late all the time). Leaving as soon as the boss leaves perfectly consistently, however, is just irritating.
• Surfing the internet at work all the time. This one's just stupid. Especially if you're on a trading desk or sharing a cubicle.
• Talking on the phone in a foreign language. Clearly you're not working if you're doing this (unless you're a sales person who covers foreign accounts). It shows that you're not working quite vividly, and it's annoying to those around you.
• Banging incessantly on the keyboard. Banging on the keyboard fixes nothing and makes a lot of distracting noise. Don't be surprised if someone like me throws something at you for doing this.
• Swearing a lot for no reason. Yes, people do swear a lot in banking. Nothing wrong with that because it's usually because something annoying or bad has happened. Just swearing for stupid shit makes you look like a tool though.
  

Well, that's all I've got for now. I was once told at Goldman, "The internship is really yours to screw up. You've already got your foot in the door, so you just have to make sure it's not slammed shut on you." It's very true.