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

Worked with a young engineer who used to do no work all day then work overtime and get paid for it, to get the work done. Everyone knew that’s what they did. They got this gig for the country manager where they were a type of assistant to shadow the position and help with executive level reports etc as a development role. His job consisted of running to the dry cleaner, watering the boss’s plants when he was out of town, lunches and other personal errands.

we ended up on a job site together and they saw right through him, asked him not to come back after the first 3mth rotation. Did he lose his job? No. He was transferred to a lucrative gig earning shit loads and 20years later is some kind of expert in our field, travelling the world, attending and presenting at conferences and is a company director. He always said there were better people at the actual job but as he had the gift of the gab he’s managed to leapfrog everyone and end up in a very comfortable position

Not where I work now, have come across some in the past.

Conservative Central Office has at least two.

Wow. No such thing as unsackable in a city law firm. Brutal. Your feet don’t even touch the ground as they hustle you out. I find all these stories fascinating and completely outside my frame of reference!

I worked with a person who went to prison for a couple of months and was welcomed back to work as if nothing had happened. They weren't even that good at their job. I do wonder if they had some kind of dirt on someone high up.

yep.. takes more breaks than the rest of the shift entirely.. when she goes off sick, she is never shown as off sick to protect her pay and her sick record, she's useless at her job.. and yet she still remains in post!

Yes, we’ve got one who turns up late every single day, takes long lunches, does no work and doesn’t hit targets yet somehow inexplicably hasn’t been sacked.

At a place I used to do business there was a family member of the boss employed there who was completely useless and untouchable.

Needless to say I quit doing business with them when my account was handed over to them to handle. No discussion, no reason why. Just went straight somewhere else.

Your challenge is to figure out why the person is untouchable. Stealth family member, son/daughter of a long term friend of the boss. Shagging the boss. Etc.

We had one, he would get so vicious whenever managers called out his performance that they backed away.

I had watched for years so when I became his manager I gave him a bit of time to see if he would change then started working with HR. He was absolutely nasty but I didn't see why the rest of my hardworking team should have to carry someone who did barely any work

Yep, we had one. Finally retired in April. Utterly useless, refused to even have Teams open as she ‘couldn’t work it’. It would have been too much hassle to manage her out. We found a load of signed customer documents in her drawer after she left that she hadn’t sent to HMRC because she hated scanning.

Yes. They are called senior managers here and manage to get away with doing fuck all and aren’t held accountable for anything.

Also had one a few years ago who was eventually sacked after going off sick for months and then working a different job. Fraud basically. This was after previously exposing himself to colleagues twice, bullying colleagues, sexually harassing trainees he was supposed to be mentoring and letting some trainees perform clinical skills they weren’t trained or permitted to do, all of which should have been sackable offences.

"My boss replied that she was a militant black lesbian single mother who had converted to Islam so how much publicity did the MD want? She kept her job."

You missed out she was also disabled - as in the old joke.

@devildeepbluesea omg you must be a magician! How have you managed that? (Struggling with a performance case in CS and getting nowhere because HR won’t grow a backbone…)

My company are so terrified of unfair or constructive dismissal claims that chancers get away with absolute murder. They have had two constructive dismissal cases in the last couple of years which has caused the fear but they really need to grow a backbone. Decent staff leave when wankers get to do as they please.

Yep. Colleague with a diagnosed personality disorder. She's complete drama and absolutely vile to the people she works with, but because it never affects patient care, management can't do anything about her. We all just have to put up with being cornered and verbally attacked, or her storming off the ward and going home.

My husband used to be a school caretaker at a large secondary school. There was him and 2 other full time caretakers,doing different shifts.
One caretaker got away with everything - off sick for weeks, ringing in sick literally at the last minute ( which meant one of the others had to do a double shift), always having time off for appointments ( even though he didn't start work until 1.00pm),constantly late and not just by a few minutes, was lazy, talked to the cleaners like shit,spoke to delivery people like shit, and hated the kids and when he was actually at work the standard of his work was appalling!
8 years later he's still there.....my husband always said thought that this other caretaker had some inside financial info on another member of staff and that's why he kept his job....

We have someone that is off sick more than she is at work. She boasts about being due some sick leave when she's not been off for a while. And in the 20+ years she's worked there has worked one Christmas (it's normal operations for us at Christmas and new year - emergency services). Is always going on holiday when she's off sick, posting pictures of nights out on social media etc.

Her sister is a senior manager so that probably has something to do with why she gets away with it.

I had a colleague who was off sick the day before she went on holiday. Every single time.

Same colleague had made her job ridiculously convoluted. Essentially tasks were duplicated for no good reason. She had done this to make tasks till the time available to ensure she was never asked to do anything else.

She was able to keep this going until retirement.

Yep. A compulsive liar who has been 'off sick' for nearly 3 months now; but not signed off for the thee months with a long-term illness which would be understandable, it's 3 days of food poisoning, then a week of covid, then a bad back, then another food poisoning, then another food poisoning (Jesus Christ, take a food hygiene course!), then something else....

Prior to this there's been several relatives drop dead requiring compassionate leave, his flight home from holiday was cancelled so that was 2 days he couldn't come to work...

On the rare occasion he does turn up he's late, rude, disengaged, crap at the job, spends more time outside on his phone than at his desk, talks at length about how he doesn't need the job or the money, but curiously refuses to fuck off.

And yet I’m terrified every day of being sacked.

They seem to sack people left right and centre where I work.

Yup! One lady had a full blown tantrum in our office after being asked to do something that literally every other colleague was also being asked to do. I've never seen anything like it. Fully shouting, stamping her feet etc. A manager took her into another room where she continued yelling and we could all hear it. It was absolutely bonkers. Aside from that meltdown, she was regularly rude to other colleagues and clients and had a reputation for being really bloody awkward. I think managers and HR teams are just too frightened of potential consequences to sacking someone.

Yep, I'm CS too and it seems to be nigh on impossible to get rid of the dead (and piss-taking!) wood.

I work in HR in the civil service. So far I’ve got rid of 3 of our 4 unsackables in little over 2 years. The 4th may well be gone before the end of the year.

It is doable, but it takes a huge amount of management time.

Yes I used to be middle management in NHS. I would do performance management on dangerous/incompetent/lazy staff and get accused of bullying and I would have to stop, and let them continue being dangerous/incompetent/lazy. Every. Single. Time.

I worked with one person who did very little work. She seemed to spend most of her time browsing the net and booking holidays. She worked alongside a very conscientious member of staff who did half her work for her. Lots of staff complained about her but nothing happened and eventually she retired. In the same organisation I worked for a manager for a short period of time who was constantly moved within the organisation and was frequently promoted just at the point where she had caused the maximum amount of chaos and alienated all her staff. Eventually after a member of staff raised a formal complaint supported by others on the team she decided to leave.