What does it take to be completely untouchable at work?

Relationship, business or personal with a key customer? The strangest people can hold incredible influence over external customers. I've seen people who are seemingly absolutely hopeless at their day to day job be fired and suddenly a large account moves along with them to another organisation.

In my experience it will be nepotism. A senior employee will have arranged a cushy number for their otherwise unemployable family member. Or the person will have a history of crying about 'bullying', 'mental health' or 'discrimination' if they were ever asked to produce any work, or be on time, and no-one wants to be on the receiving end of those claims. I'm in civil service.

Because actually you can (at work and in life) behave really badly and no one does anything, and if you establish that as your default really early on then many people will just say oh that's just John don't mind him. People just work round difficult people.

But behaving badly or slacking off is not in a lot of people's nature so they never get to experience it and the fact that for the most part you'd be allowed to get away with it.

It can be cultural I think. I know that's vague and nebulous but so is the nature of these situations.

I've seen similar in my organisation. I love it but I've been genuinely shocked at some of the situations (across multiple grades) that have been allowed to continue.

It genuinely can be changed though; it just takes the right person coming along and basically being like, what the fuck, and escalating it. But that's not always a battle everyone is willing to have. I've had grounds in roles to think that somebody I report to is completely inadequate for the job and can't believe they're getting paid at their level, but philosophically I genuinely struggle with the idea of trying to expose somebody and causing them to lose their livelihood.

More fool me though, because the department is underperforming as a result, and it's now at risk of staff reductions, so either that person loses their job or other people do as a result, maybe both. It sucks.

As others suggest, it’s often who, or what, you know.
But, it may be that he has proven himself litigious in the past and they prefer to ignore him.

None of that is a good reason. IME, he could lose his untouchable status if mansgement changes, or someone grows some.

He's related to or shagging someone senior.

Related to someone high up.

Nepotism.

Does he own many shares? Or is friends with/related to someone higher up? That's the only reason I've seen it before.

Oh, or if he's previously been disciplined/fired and then got their job back via appeal/settlement. That makes people extremely cocky 😂

In a healthy organisation, nobody is untouchable.

In a dysfunctional organisation, it could be down to all manner of different things. Maybe he knows something ? Or knows someone?

Either he knows or is related to someone senior, he has something on someone senior, he’s threatened legal action in the past or (and I am seeing this with someone in my office) people are either too scared, too lazy or too jaded to do anything about his performance, so they just let it slide and avoid doing anything about it.