Tell us about your worst co worker ever?

pinkshoes

My previous manager.

Me me me, oh, and now let's talk about me... So tedious.

He played the friendly manager, but would not hesitate to lie or backstab to cover up his incompetence.

He also promoted people based on their paperwork qualifications, rather than how good they actually were, hence an office full of highly qualified but useless staff in senior well paid positions, and those who could actually do the work but lacking a degree so lower salaries and lesser job titles.

duchy

I've had some interesting bosses but the one who took the prize came to us at a well known bowling company from the bingo industry.

He was hopeless - I used to drive past work on the school run -If I was opening up I could drop my son and still get there in time to open at 9. He lived 20 minutes drive away and I'd often have to stop on my day off or when I was on lates as I could see the staff still standing outside. I'd open up and find stuff to do in the office until he rolled up often after 10 (opening time but manager needed to be there at 9 to let staff in for lane prep etc) or rang in and would claim he overslept. This happened up to four times a week every week <eye roll>

In the office one day I heard an enormous crash and I and one of the supervisors dashed downstairs and he was just standing there. I asked him what the noise was and he said "Oh I noticed someone had thrown a flyer away in the bottle bin instead of the normal bin so I lost my temper and threw the bottle bin across the bar@. Said bottle bin was massive....and he'd thrown it several yards (it was at this point the supervisors and I decided no-one was to left alone with him in the centre.) . The staff disliked him but were afraid of his temper (except one who used to wander around whistling "Who ate all the pies" as he was rather fat. )

He resented the fact the customers didn't like him and would come to me to resolve issues ....... Senior management didn't want to know and eventually I was sacked for organizing a staff party on the premises after hours that I hadn't organized but his predecessor had - after I left he got an 18 year old staff member pregnant (He was much older) and lost an awful lot of business. In fact the day I was appealing my dismissal my witness got a phonecall (he was also a keyholder) from the staff saying he hadn't turned up (this was 11 am so 2 hours late) yet again and they were all locked out. Naturally we mentioned this during the meeting !

Soon after he realized he wasn't suited to the industry and thought he was really clever emailing his resignation to the area manager on the first day of her holiday so he'd be gone before she returned. Bit of a miscalculation as she was a workoholic and hadn't yet left and went absolutely nuts at him. I'm guessing that put paid to a decent reference.

I believe he went back to the bingo halls - no wonder they are in decline

He was the worst boss ever - even worse than the bi-polar manager I had at one job- at least there was a reason for her behaviour !

Owain_Moneysaver

FredG wrote: »

Worked with a colleague who was a lovely guy but absolutely calamitious. Sent a printer engineer to Sunderland instead of Stoke because the lady who called to report the fault had the surname 'Sutherland'.

Could have been worse.

He could have ended up in Dornoch.

GlasweJen

I had a manager who would lie about everything, I mean everything! He used to rhyme off these tall tales like how he went to Wimbledon and sat in the royal box, Andy murray's mum is apparently a total b!tch. He spoke about how he was friends with loads of famous people, you'd think he was Perez Hilton with all his stories - all made up of course.

The funniest was one day he came in from work talking about how he was out and bumped into his old friend "quite famous in certain circles scottish comedian" last night, they went for dinner and had a great night boozing - the guy is my uncle and had been in all the photos from last nights family party that I'd just been showing to the girls I work with!

He also had "gang connections" and an uncle who is a dirty cop (surely a retired cop if he's his uncle and the manager was in his 50s?). He knew everything about gangs in Glasgow but somehow knew nothing. His stories sounded like prohibition America stories.

He drove his sons mobility car and left it parked outside the shopping centre for 10 hours a day then b1tched that his sons college were refusing to pay for specialist transport as his son could drive and had a car.

He used to steal money, if anyone paid cash it was fair game for a skim. I reported to payroll that my bonus was wrong since he started and caused a massive investigation to be launched and he tried to pin it all on me.

He promised a member of staff my promotion when I lost the use of my legs, this came from him and not the manager who actually had the authority to promote people! He then had a cheek to complain that no one would give his wheelchair user son a break when it came to applying for jobs.

In the end he was sacked, but only after every other member of staff left.

engineer_amy

GlasweJen wrote: »

I had a manager who would lie about everything, I mean everything! He used to rhyme off these tall tales like how he went to Wimbledon and sat in the royal box, Andy murray's mum is apparently a total b!tch. He spoke about how he was friends with loads of famous people, you'd think he was Perez Hilton with all his stories - all made up of course.

.

We have one of those! at least until the end of the week when she finishes her notice period.
Nearly every word out of her mouth is a lie, everything is a constant drama, she is an attention seeker. She told us all about her boyfriend hitting her and we were all sympathetic, however I know her mother socially, and it came up in conversation, she told us that our colleague (her daughter) was a compulsive liar and was actually undergoing therapy for various mental issues. Of course this was confidential and I couldn't let my other colleagues know, but now I believe nothing she tells me.
She would be quite manipulative as well, acting dumb around the men in the office and asking for help with office programmes, however when she was on her own or there were only females in the office, she was perfectly capable of doing every thing herself. Also she was never to blame when anything went wrong with her work, it was always due to someone else.


The issue had been resolved as a new manager saw straight through her and put her on notice

BigAunty

My manager let me have the say in recruitment and I chose the part time MBA student who said their main area of interest is process improvement. Her CV was littered with big qualifications and big experience. The interview was all about her pro-activity and quality management.

When given the simple responsibility to collate a management report from a number of individual submissions, she seemed utterly incapable of quite simple data entry and it was littered with mistakes despite being trained twice how to do it (and it was really just a copy and paste job into a template anyway).

Another colleague told me she'd stomped out of her previous contract when challenged about the quality of work (which was left off her CV). I started to think that her CV was a total fake as she pitched herself as an experience management consultant but wouldn't have even made the grade as a junior clerical assistant.

She just seemed to be continually stunned and dense. In meetings and business conversations, she would just say the most silly things. I have no idea how she spent her time as her assigned activities were rarely done and done poorly if undertaken at all. She should have been leading initiatives, instead she needed constant supervision.

Finally, I had a chat with the manager to say that I could not get her to do simple tasks to any degree of quality and that when I went on leave and briefed her to complete a management report, it simply wasn't issued.

My manager confirmed that she was experiencing similar issues - namely that we each had a list of quality improvements to complete, and she had done none. On each occasion, when she was asked about progress, she always gave a positive update that it was nearly done - none were ever completed.

When my manager had a chat with her about her lack of progress, she went berserk and stomped out. She was so hysterical that all the office heard her shout at my colleague and she slammed the door. So that's 2 contracts in a row that she has walked out of after being challenged for poor performance.

However, according to LinkedIn, she is now a Senior Management Consultant and Business Analyst and, according to a University website, did complete her MBA (which I had assumed was a fiction but I was wrong) and is studying for a Phd.

So my worst ever colleague, the thickest, laziest and emotionally unbalanced colleague I have ever had, probably earns around £400 a day and is on the cusp of being regarded as a business academic...!!!!!!? She couldn't even update a spreadsheet or take accurate minutes or send an email without a spelling mistake....!

fairy_lights

I had a supervisor once, who on my first day in the job took me to one side and said: "I try to model myself on Ricky Gervais' character in The Office". He wasn't kidding.

kaflinkle

I had a colleague who would use the company wifi to download movies illegally. He got fired for it by the manager the day after the manager copied the films for himself.

I've worked with some real backstabbers in my time. Unfortunately it makes one cynical.

I worked with a person who would know every deal regarding food, for instance he'd know how to get vouchers, know if Tesco were having a deal on certain foods...it was amazing how much knowledge he'd have about this.

directdebiter

My ex colleague used to constantly fall asleep at his desk. Too much night clubbing. We all found it very funny :rotfl:

fish89

When I was a supervisor in a factory, we used to hire agency staff at Christmas. My department got 2 so there was 4 of us in total including me. One was a grafter and the other spent his evenings smoking funny cigarettes.

One morning he was so laid back as we stacked pallets that I confronted him about his drug habit and told him how I knew and wasn't happy about it. A couple of days previous I told my managers who despite declaring they would conduct random tests over the Christmas period didn't want to know so I took matters into my own hands. As I drove through the entrance on a forklift I saw said drug addict on his phone and I shouted at him to put it away. My other 2 staff were getting annoyed and with tight deadlines I couldn't afford to carry passengers so I recommended that he went to see a manager at break so he could buy a locker to put his phone in.

At break his dad came to collect him and he never came back. I never got an extra staff member all Christmas but our output was far higher without the stoner!