To wonder if every workplace has that person who is unsackable?

Friend of mine works in an airline and had to work with a good for nothing, barely competent and ignorant layabout, who had somehow curried favour with the manager. This layabout knew how to bilk the system so that her work record looked good. She did this through handling lots of 'easy' cases that she knew would require little effort, leaving the problematic time-sinks to others.

One day my friend found a huge, ugly, glaring blooper that the layabout had perpetrated and which was enough to get anyone booted out or severely disciplined. The layabout and the boss exchanged glances when my friend pointed it out. Then the manager and the layabout disappeared into the boss' office.

They emerged half an hour later with creamy smiles and the news that it had all 'been settled.'

The layabout eventually resigned. It was as though she was made of Teflon.

Well Mr Teflon at my workplace has won his appeal against his dismissal. Because HR made a procedural error. Useless twats.

Yep. A friend of mine works in an office and one of the members of staff,a man in his mid 50s seems to be totally unsackable. Is late in to work on a regular basis,takes time off sick practically every other week,doesn't turn up for work and doesn't bother phoning in to say why,takes 2 hour lunch breaks,is rude to other members of staff, leaves work early for medical appointments on a weekly basis without clearing it with his manager. My friend said that if HE did a fraction of what this colleague of his does,he'd be out on his ear in no time.

The unsackable ones who appear totally useless probably know where the bodies are.

I’m a civil service contractor (don’t work directly for them but do contract work for various sectors). After 20 years in the private sector I was gobsmacked at the amount of useless non workers in the civil service.
people who did literally no work for weeks on end, days offline, never show for meetings, always an excuse for why they do nothing. One team had a spreadsheet with 1000 ‘tasks’ on it to complete. Everyone mucked in and did their fair share. One guy did zero.

Nothing happens to them though, they’re just moved around to other teams over and over. And eventually retire with their 28% pension contribution.

Ugh… I have one of these it’s the EA to the CE. She is a nightmare. I don’t actually think she is good at her job but is just busy correcting everyone else so to the boss it looks good.

Yup - drunk at work, suspended but the hoops that have to be jumped through and there's no guarantee they'll be sacked. Huge amount of work, statements from other staff, HR and union meetings. Years ago it would have been gross misconduct and out the door pronto.

I’ve often wondered how some of my colleagues have survived the years but this one made me laugh as I’ve worked (not CS) for over 20 years as the only woman in a department-a few creeps yes, so it’s dawned on me I must be the bag lady 👀 😅

@Currygirl We've got less than 20 employees, so no dedicated HR department. I know procedures are in place but he's got to actually come to work at some point in order to do the next steps... (we're not UK so regulations and laws differ).

If they continued to pull sickness stints like that in my work, they be on a sickness monitoring programme from HR……

I've experienced a few in my time.

One was a receptionist who was simply the most awful cow and rude to everyone. Quite often she would not even answer the phone and would say 'why should I?'. The CEO was standing right in front of her when she said that (we ALL heard it) and he just walked away. They restructured and tried to make her redundant and she just refused to be made redundant. Literally 'Nope. I'm not being made to redundant'.

Another one was my line manager who actively sabotaged others in a variety of ways - quite openly. We were paid based on time recording and she would go into the system and change people's time records to make it look like they were not working. Management knew this, mind you and did nothing. She would have screaming hissy fits in the office (one was about how the office employed an American and she screamed so much about 'British jobs for British people' that we had staff members come running because they thought something tragic had happened and someone had fallen down dead or something. The company got taken over by another company and she went absolutely batshit crazy that she had not been consulted and yelled 'I'll quit if you let this happen' and our MD just quietly opened the front door to the street and gestured her out then slammed it behind her.

We all erupted into clapping and cheering.

It comes down to weak managers and fear I think. In my experience- not just in the workplace- everyone tiptoes around the most difficult person in the room.

Nepotism maybe

.in DPs workplace there were 2 such people….they put them on a 2 man team together …..so that they didn’t bring anyone else’s work down…..what they didn’t achieve in the week was written off……this was a LA department…..very rarely is anyone managed out of the council in my experience …

Yep lots. Police. Impossible to get rid of most.

Yep, everywhere I've worked. Constantly late, don't pull their weight, on their phone, off sick a lot, inappropriate etc, etc, etc. They could get away with murder.
I remember being told off for wearing inappropriate footwear (years ago when I worked in a bank) - they were flat sandals from M&S, a subtle bronze colour. We were allowed to wear sandals (all the women did), but apparently mine weren't suitable. It was ok for someone else to wear stiletto mules though...

https://giphy.com/gifs/moodman-jan-brady-bunch-tran-MDxuzRvxF39VwnYu9B

same here, Windsurfing. Every single one of my unsackable's reports have left because of her bullying and micromanaging. But she is smart and works hard...

For me, the worst unsackable person wasn't the unproductive one but the one who was known to bully people and shout at people. He was "too valuable" so they wouldnt get rid of him. But they lost scores of talented people (myself included) as a result

Yup, the person in question even throws proper hissy fits if they don't get their own way with management. The amount of times they have quite and then next day back at work expecting the world to revolve around them in unreal. Most other staff hate them because they demand so much and are rude to colleagues. But they are good at their job, it's just they take great pride in telling everyone else, even owners of their demands and management just caves in every time. People have left due to them, they have set a witch hunt on various people and they are just untouchable apparently cos management is too scared they will flip it in a tribunal and say they were the ones who were bullied out. The person in question is narcissist and very good at manipulation, although people see through it after a while.

I've seen a lot of this. Frightening.

Sadly the unsackable waste of space at my last job was the general manager- his parents owned the company.

My DC frequently complains to me about the 'innovation manager' they work with, who doesn't innovate anything, in fact, this is actually a big part of everyone in the team's jobs.
This person tries to take credit for everyone else's work, but never comes up with ideas for new products of their own.
This person is considered to have the proverbial 'brown ring around their neck' because they're so far up the bosses a**e, so no matter how badly they do their job (that's if they actually do do it at all), there's no way the company will get rid.

The lad with, you say, Autism is not quite what I would expect behaviour wise. I’ve had 4 team members with a diagnosis and the only difficulties we’ve had are the result of them being extremely hard working and showing the others up a bit. They can be extremely literal so you have to be explicit in your instructions but the job gets done.
ADHD is different. Those poor guys can be doing their utmost and not achieving a hell of a lot but with reasonable adjustments can really improve .
I’m very wary of anyone who uses an ‘autism’ label as a reason for poor or criminal behaviour , it is a wide spectrum and said diagnosis does not automatically mean you are useless or bad.
Apologies, it’s a bit of a sore point with me . I have had to work with many, many more neurotypical devious,lazy incompetents who were much more damaging for the company.

Yes. And I've just sacked them. Well orchestrated the sacking. I'm senior and quite new to the business and was absolutely shocked by how totally incompetent and downright dangerous they were.

Not on my watch. It brings whole teams down - and in their case, very nearly the business.

Yes they were expensive to get rid of. Totally worth it.

I don't disagree —there are plenty of important jobs out there. But there are also a lot of bullshit jobs. Society isn't harmed if Tracy in sales, Geoff the bid writer, Dom in marketing, or Janet the efficiency consultant are a bit naff at their job. The country clearly does muddle along with a lot of useless people having meetings about meetings and replying all to emails.