Worst colleagues you had to deal with?

happy_2008

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Found this topic from another forum and I found it quite entertaining. So what was the worst colleague/boss you had to deal with?

Mine was a Nigerian colleague I was working with a few years ago. She was lazy and despite me helping to resolve her queries for her clients, she always fobbed me off with the classic "I get back to you in a few days". Obviously days turn into weeks and nothing ever got done until I escalated it. To make things worst she had a strange habit of using her pens to always scratch her head and had quite bad body odour :(

To tip things off she would always call your office phone to ask for help despite the person was sitting directly next to or opposite her. She did give me the LOL during that time
 
Long time ago now, but worst boss I had was a right little dodger.
Final straw was when he called me one Sunday, when it wasn't my on-call weekend, and asked me to do a job.
When I politely advised I had plans and it wasn't my on-call weekend, he went on about 'bad attitude' etc.etc.
He then completely blanked me the whole of the Monday, but left a warning letter on my desk when my back was turned and he'd left for the day.
It turned very ugly on the Tuesday morning.
I didn't finish the day, or return.:D
Oh, to not have the responsibilities to allow me to do that again....:rolleyes:
 
I once had an Apprentice who only started working at 4.30 when it was time to clear up!!

I once caught him in a closed bedroom on his phone with a hammer in his hand tapping the floor occasionally to make it look like he was working.

Apparently he drives a Bus now. Perfect job for him being sat on his 4rse all day.
 
My old manager at a certain Waste Company that shall remain nameless. Complete and utter See you next Tuesday!!!!

Completeley unreasonable. Had worked a 92 hour week on callout and had spent all weekend out trying to fix an engine. In the end i had to get a specalist out from the company who built the engine and he couldn't fix it. Got home at two in the morning. Left a message with my manager to say i was on sleep time only to get a call at 7 saying that wasn't acceptable. Cue big argument. So in the end went in found him and said i was reporting him to health and safety for not allowing me my sleep time. He turned round and said he was putting me on a gross misconduct charge for using the company van to go to the shops to get lunch when i had been called out and didn't have anything to eat with me. Handed my months notice in there and then. He then still tried to fast track the disciplinary to get me fired until i had a quiet word with him.

Since found out he had done it to plenty of other people in that role but because he was the company golden boy he was pretty much untouchable.
 
I once had an Apprentice who only started working at 4.30 when it was time to clear up!!

I once caught him in a closed bedroom on his phone with a hammer in his hand tapping the floor occasionally to make it look like he was working.

Apparently he drives a Bus now. Perfect job for him being sat on his 4rse all day.

At least he can't fake driving a bus.
 
I once had an Apprentice who only started working at 4.30 when it was time to clear up!!

I once caught him in a closed bedroom on his phone with a hammer in his hand tapping the floor occasionally to make it look like he was working.

Apparently he drives a Bus now. Perfect job for him being sat on his 4rse all day.

My new apprentice is heading this way. Totally not interested in the job, always on his phone, talks very little and asks no questions. Dunno what's wrong with them these day's. There is good money ahead of them if they only stick in. I made senior pipeline technician at the age of 30 and engineer at 35 without a degree all through hard graft and paying attention.
 
Generally PMs, the 'we need this yesterday' type or the 'I don't know how to do that' type - I operate on a one-strike system, I'll show you once but come the **** and tell me you don't know how to do something I've shown you before (to try and get me to do it for you) and you'll get kicked to touch.

Also the little brown-nosers that put everyone in the shit just to make themselves look good. Snakes in the grass each and every one of them.

Gah.. Tell you what, I actually had a good colleague one time, worked well together, took turns about in the 'glory' jobs and pushed productivity to a level that we could afford to skive most of the day and still be more productive than the rest of the cattle.
 
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Mine involves an apprentice from my days as a printer. By the time he had been in the job for about six months he thought he knew it all. Didn't want to do the things that was required of a first year apprentice. The Monotype machines that I worked on were driven by compressed air. After pissing me off for most of the morning I sent him to the binding department as told him to ask Dorothy to return the fallopian tube she had borrowed. Bit sexist I know but hey it was the early 1970s. Dorothy had one hell of a temper on her when she was in a good mood.

Apprentice pouted for a week but he soon realised he didn't know everything in the printing business.
 
Rude Nigerian lady who took 50 days off sick a year in a previous job. She'd start harassing you when you were on the phone. She ran up 1000's on phone calls to USA.
In current job the guy who sits beside me. If I ask him a question he tuts, roles his eyes etc. If I send him an email he gives out about sending him emails. If I tap him on shoulder he gives out..etc. Generally he makes my life worse than it should be in the office. Reported him but all that has happened is awkward silences and bad blood.
 
I put a lot here to begin with but then decided I can't be that descriptive.

Suffice it to say I've had some terrible bosses/colleagues in my line of work over the years. Currently I have 2 colleagues that sleep during office hours.

I like reading about other people's horror stories though. It helps me realize how good I have it.
 
Dunno what's wrong with them these day's

The average age of the workforce in our place is creeping up, but we're having difficulty dragging it down because of the same issues you're finding.
Youngsters are a bunch of disinterested little poops.
 
Because they're working for scraps when the folk up top are making an absolute packet and bemoaning the financial woes of the lands.
 
Because they're working for scraps when the folk up top are making an absolute packet and bemoaning the financial woes of the lands.

Not expected to work for scraps here (to be clear, we don't do apprenticeships).
Still disinterested little poops.
 
I can't really go into specifics (as I think he has been on AVF before), but lets just say, the bosses son was given a job working for me. No qualifications or experience to do the skilled job he was handed on a plate.
 
Many years ago I got temporarily transferred to an office that was renowned across the company for being useless to give it a shake up.

First day, I'm going through the staff schedules etc and I'm looking at holidays, sick pay and time off etc and I notice one of the girls has 3 weeks off booked starting the following week, but she's already had 4 weeks holiday from an allocation of 5.
So I ask her to pop into the office and ask her about her holidays and what I'm saying is correct.

It is.

Me - "How can you go on holiday for 3 weeks, when you've used 4 out of 5 weeks of your holiday entitlement"
Her - "I'm getting married and going on honeymoon"
Me - "That's nice, congratulations, but you don't have 3 weeks of holidays to take"
Her - "But I haven't used all my sick time"

o_O

So after a further brief conversation in which I told her unfortunately sick time isn't an entitlement and she couldn't have the time off, she quit, and then her 3 pals quit as well in protest as the same would have happened to them.

Lo and behold I'm a genius as the new folk I take on to replace them perform better within a fortnight of starting than that lot have in years. Few more out and the place was reformed.
 
I wonder if all reformers, making honest people lose their jobs, think the same when they get home at night






:D
 
I actually worked for a company who were doing a Lean process thing, the guy that they got to do the lean stuff was eventually given the heave ho, essentially the reason being he had enough time to do lean so clearly his job didn't require his time there... Got to love company logic lol
 
Where do i start?

The guy who sits next to me who has bad BO, then puts his desk fan on, and blows his stink towards me. Every time i take the fuse out, he puts a new one in.

Or maybe its the guy who sits opposite me? No matter who i'm taking to, he'll shuffle over to my desk and join in, whether the conversation concerns him or not.

Or maybe its the guy who sits a few desks away? He never shuts up, just talks and talks and talks. It has been known that he will continue to talk to you even when you put your earphones in!

Or maybe it was an ex-boss who had quality bullshit like "if you don't know where i am, its not my fault" and "shit rolls downhill, and i'm at the top" or calling a colleague a "2 faced shit bag"

Or maybe it was an ex-colleague who you had to repeat everything to? Every few days, the same fudgeing questions! We eventually fell out over something else, and he stopped talking to me, which was bliss. No more questions like this, "i know you showed me yesterday, but how do you do XYZ again?"
 
Minimum around £18k a year + perks (vehicle home/company phone etc.)
Not bad, but then factor in Aberdeen prices for accommodation and it's not as good as it perhaps looks on paper. Still not something to shake stick at though granted!
 
Just after I got married I changed jobs to one closer to my new home. I was working in an accounts dept. for a small building firm, and was the only male in that department other than the manager.
From about 2 weeks in I realised that this guy had it in for me, giving me crap jobs with totally unreasonable time-frames, so much so that my wife used to come into the office and help me with the paperwork sometimes until 10pm. He would totally blank me in the mornings when he'd arrive in an hour later than the rest of us, and found every excuse to pull me up on the smallest things.
I never missed a deadline (or got any overtime), but I stuck at it as I needed the job.

Just over a year into the job, I was offered another job and they wanted me to start immediately, even offering to cover my month's salary if my current employer refused to pay me.

With this assurance I was looking forward to handing my notice in. Now one thing I haven't mentioned yet, is that my boss had a terrible stammer, which got worse the more angry he got. I'm not someone to make little of anyone else, but went he predictably went off on one and demanded that I work 4 4 4 4 4 4 weeks notice I told he he could go fudge himself if he thought I was going to work another 24 weeks for him, and walked out.
 
Not bad, but then factor in Aberdeen prices for accommodation and it's not as good as it perhaps looks on paper. Still not something to shake stick at though granted!
Why would you need to find accommodation? His post clearly says you get a vehicle home (see bold below). So you can drive while you take a shower. Win/Win imo.
Minimum around £18k a year + perks (vehicle home/company phone etc.)
 

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