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

Normal.

Usually arse kissers. Sometimes they're actually good at the job/the company is scared to lose them. Often not.

Often but not always they are the bottleneck between top dog and everyone else, so the top dog doesn't want to lose them as they think their life will be harder when they can't filter everything through them/give them all the shit

Short of committing murder it is virtually impossible to get sacked by the Civil Service. We had one woman who skived, stole, fiddled her flexi, caused so much trouble that our manager nearly had a breakdown & got away with it all. When she finally handed in her notice, we had a party the day after she left.

An epic HR scandal

One of ours actually was sacked recently, though there's a rumour that his appeal has succeeded.

Yes. The golden bullet.

No. Not every company has someone who is unsackable.

But quite a lot of companies have extremely poor lower mangement who are not trained or supported to deal with poor performance effectively. Often because the HR department is in some way responsible for the risks of taking action (i.e. being sued) but not responsible for the poor productivity and lowered moral of not taking action.

I've known people being promoted 'out of harms way' and senior management haven't made a secret of it. They've been just as awful at managing people as they were actually doing the 'shop floor' job.

We have someone similar. Meant to be full time. Started “working from home” a lot after Covid without any real output. Told she wasn’t to be working from home so is now “sick” at least 3 days a week. Still seems to manage to have sick leave despite this so god knows what’s on the time sheets. When the boss asked if he could talk to her about attendance she said she felt harassed (before any actual conversation) and then took another 2 days off…
She has a list a mile long of things she hasn’t done and the company is suffering but it has taken HR a YEAR to agree to even start looking at it.

This is so true

Oh yes there's always one. Civil service and she was beyond awful. If she had tried as hard at her actual job as she did trying to find ways not to work/turn up then she might have been pretty good.

Our head of unit finally put his foot down and refused to have her back after a period of time where she just didn't turn up. HR said we had to have her back but he held firm and said they should take her if they thought she was ok - and they did! And she's still there!

I have a friend who left who was her line manager and every time I see her (only 1/2 times per year) she asks me if C is still there. It was more than 18 years ago!! God knows if she's still the same.

Yes. She was buddies with her line manager. He went, two months later she was made redundant. She blamed Covid, but it was just her laziness.

Yes. The company i work for has two (and a third semi one). DH & another staff member. They've been there many years & have become so relied upon the small company would be stuffed without them. DH's counterpart is treated with kid gloves because of this. She decided to move & announced she was working remotely would quit - the company do not allow WFH. They allowed it. Doesn't wear the compulsory uniform, either, and dictates who does what. Gets overpaid massively. DH just knows he isn't replaceable so chugs along. The other semi non replaceable staff member, whose been there many years, demands to only work a couple of days a week from mat leave (child is two( and spends half that time on Insta.

The issue isn't incompetency - it's the opposite. They're the only ones who knows & understand what they're doing.

This is the companies fault, though, for their employment techniques. They hire people in my department on poor salaries, don't train properly & expect too much, so people leave. I will be as soon as I can get some time under my belt as the manager hates my DH & gives me the rubbush jobs. I know half the staff are looking too.

Civil service used to do voluntary early exit schemes every few years to get rid of dead wood but they can’t afford that any more.

Yup

Her mum worked in HR

Local authorities aka your local Council have people like this deliberately - they don't want smart folk with transferable skills who could move elsewhere and take the organisation's dirty secrets with them, they want to hug them close and encourage them to hold on for their pensions.
So those who've been there a long time will have dirt on the company and be part of the gang, or they'll have screwed up themselves and be culpable; will feel loyalty to the team for not having been thrown to the wolves.
Surrey County Council's Social Services, I'm thinking of you...

Yes, years ago. One was a drunk nurse. The other, more recently, was a care assistant who used to bully everyone, including the residents. The manager was a gutless wonder and was frightened of her. I reported her to CQC, but nothing was done. The manager was one of these weird people who gave the good workers hell, but constantly let the rubbishy ones off with everything. Couldn't stand it so I left. They failed their inspection a few months later.

We had a rule that you couldn’t take sick leave immediately before a holiday period, you had to take it as annual leave.

Oh god, I worked with one of these. Eventually sacked after ten LONG years. Incompetent at their job, yet full of self-confidence, fell out with pretty much every client - there was a long list of people they couldn’t work with. My team gathered cast iron evidence against them, went through the whole grievance rounds several times, but nothing doing. They even did something that in any other workplace would be gross misconduct, yet seemed to be Teflon coated. After my team were on the verge of walking out we eventually got forced through a pointless mediation session with them, only after we been dragged through this stressful process did they sack them. We used to joke they had kompromat on the MD, but I doubt it, I think we just had an incompetent HR department that didn’t want the hassle of firing them till we made it no longer an option.

Is it Boris Johnson?

We did, but they have just lost their job because they finally backed themselves into a situation that they could not get out of. It has taken years, though.

Yes. She must know where the bodies are buried. Though she knows very little else.

@Feckedupbundle applying for jobs when off sick isn’t gross misconduct.

Maybe these folk have it right though. Maybe all of us expecting a medal for grafting at work are the true mugs. 🤔

I have several - school .
Incompetent, lazy , late , off sick ..
complaints are made . Nothing ever happens- HR is just as unprofessional and the excuse often is that it's hard to recruit so just need to keep these people who are not anywhere near adequate.

I admittedly haven’t been a great manager. One of the reasons that I found it difficult is because I think these days, the manager is not directly supervising their employees’ work. I had someone who made me cringe with the way she would come across and the mistakes that were made. Because it was a complex area, where we were developing a new approach, it was more of a safe environment to mess up. About half the people agreed with me, the other half thought she was great. Every time I would give any feedback she would accept it with great gusto. If there was any HR issue she would have all the policies ready and would have clearly spent ages going through them to make sure she was aware of any loopholes. It’s just bloody exhausting, I can see why the organisations I have worked for end up getting management consultants in to do things rather than the hassle of managing staff who push all the generous policies to the limits.