What does it take to be completely untouchable at work?

Does he identify as a women? :-)

I knew of a similar individual who always seemed to shirk her workload. She could hand back countless jobs based on H&S regs most of us had not even heard of - I am sure she re-wrote the moving and handling manual on a daily basis.
If anyone else tried using the same excuses we were soon pulled into the office and got a bollocking.

India Knight at the Sunday Times springs to mind…

I'm baffled by the one in my team and have often tried to work out how he does it. He's not attractive or charming - indeed, he's one of the most charmless people I've ever met. He does move around between teams every few years but some of these moves involve promotions, so he must be able to convince others that he's competent and knowledgeable. I think the key is that he has absolute confidence in his own brilliance and it's so strong that other people just assume he must be basing it on something. He's definitely not sleeping with the boss!

We had someone similar, we changed from a junior school and an infant school to a combined academy. She would forever call another teacher to her class as children played up, she had extra TAs, her books etc were a mess, no one from the junior side could understand how she passed her NQT. A promotion came up with a hefty payrise and somehow she got it! It meant she didn't do any teaching but did a lot of lesson observation, her feedback was incredibly harsh. After a particular gruesome lesson observation, which she observed with my mentor ho couldnt find the same faults she had, I found out how she got promoted and passed her NQT. One of my TAs had, in the past been her TA during her NQT year. Turns out her best friend was the daughter of the head and they lived together. When she got promoted, it was at the same time the heads daughter was getting married and didn't want to houseshare anymore and could only leave if she had extra money. The TA said next lesson observation when she gives poor feedback ask her to teach the lesson to the same class and show you were you went wrong, I did, she refused but I got better feedback from her. I do believe she is still there, after more then 30 years totally untouchable oh and to top it all her best friend got the job as headteacher when her mum left! I didn't stay there very long!

Yes. I think the public sector is especially vulnerable to these kind of staff. And they get all of us a bad name, as well as being impossible to work with

He knows where the bodies are buried or he's undercover 🥸

Ime it’s because at some point in the past someone tried to deal with it and the employee kicked off so much, started talking about bullying and discrimination (bonus points if any protected characteristic, and I say that as a disabled person).

The majority of managers I’ve known are when you scratch the surface are all mouth and no trousers. When push comes to shove they pull away from dealing with the problem either due to being scared or laziness.

I’ve known two. One was shagging the boss, one was best friends with the boss. Unfortunately for them when the CEO changed, they no longer had that protection.

I worked with someone a bit like this, he'd swan in and out as he pleased, went on long liquid lunches, just not turn up sometimes. But he was tall, handsome, charming, and would help more junior staff with mentoring when asked, and more importantly, brought in shit loads of business and money to the company so they let him do what he wanted!

I used to work with a woman like this when I worked in a huge magazine company. She was a named editor on one title but was rarely in the office and the editing work was done by others. She occasionally attended meetings, where managers were clearly careful around her and treated her with kid gloves. She never said anything.

It turned out that when she'd arrived as a young graduate in the company a couple of years earlier, she'd had a relationship with the 30-years-older big-name editor who ran the massively-successful money-making title that the whole London business was hung on. After they split up she accused him of sexually assaulting her and had recorded some evidence (no idea what) of what was clearly an inappropriate relationship. The management couldn't afford to lose him, so to avoid a court case and negative publicity they came to a deal with her. That seems to have involved a cash lump sum big enough to buy her a 2-bed flat in a very nice part of Zone 1 and three years continued employment as an editor, to give her a great CV. From what I eventually understood she did some work from home and only came into the office when he wasn't around, because they weren't allowed to be seen together.

This happened at a job I was at around 10 years ago.

Employee got away with barely doing any work. Being rude etc.

I think because they'd been there so long & it had never been dealt with, when someone tried to deal with the situation the employee pushed back, said they were being bullied. If their performance was an issue, why had they been there without issue etc for nearly 20 years.

@Marylou2 yes I would say this- or has something personal or business on someone high up

Knowing where the bodies are buried.

I just remembered another work colleague years ago, she had brought a discrimination case I don't know the details or how far it got but basically the managers pretty much left her to do (or not do) whatever because they didn't want the hassle and were basically waiting for a natural and legal end to her working there. She wanted to stay on because the job was close to her home and I assume because she had a hold on them, if she went somewhere new she'd have no leverage that's if she got hired at all as we know how discriminatory job hunting and sacking in work trials can be like. She was in her 50s with health issues.

He's an undercover MI5 spy, needing an ordinary job to throw the Russkies off his scent......Tread carefully around him - he may be armed.

There's usually at least one in every workplace.

Assuming this person isn't in a middle management role (which means they got there by ass kissing, looking older than they are, and being a useful scapegoat or go-between for upper management), he's just been there too long and it's too hard to fire him because he doesn't really do anything that bad and they're worried about getting sued.

People like that dont end up on projects or have trackable workflow. They will do the minimum people will organise around them rather than await their participation. So their objectives end up being turn up and little more.

This allows the manager to ignore them because they were not going to work as a team player anyway. The manager is stuck as they cant fire so the manager can only hope they swap teams.
The other option is promote them away from the managers management line

I think some is down to sheer brass neck and no one challenges them. I recall a former colleague who did 10-4 (I assumed he had negotiated different hours - he got away with it for months. No apologies for being late just confidence so no one challenged.
Overworked line managers and complex policies. It’s easier to do nothing than face hours of work trying to sort it and involve HR when stakes are high - you’ll possibly be accused of bullying/racism etc.

You need to hack into the hr database and find out.
I've known ppl like this and while they didn't get sacked, they did get made redundant sharpish when redundancies were being rolled out.

Will be:

1. Shagging someone with a lot of power.
2. Family member on the board.
3. Photo of the CEO with a marrow up his arse. 🤷‍♀️

There's one of these at my place. Don't understand how he hasn't already gone but sadly expect it is wishful thinking that he will be the fall guy. He'll have another someone ready to push under the bus before he is thrown there.

A penis and/or a relation in high places.

Where I work there's an utterly incompetent man, a team 'leader' who has managed to demote himself and his team in the eyes of the rest of the company during his period of employment (2.5 years). He pushed out a couple of high performers in his team (felt threatened?) and has absolutely no respect from anyone at the company, high or low.

He's basically being kept to throw under the bus in a few months when something doesn't happen. He'll be the fall guy, and he's so incompetent and out of his depth that he can't see it coming. He won't get a good payoff either. If he wasn't such a highly paid and conceited arse I'd almost feel sorry for him.

A third case was because the employee knew of massive fraud going on so had a secret on the boss.