To wonder how people who are A Nightmare at work don't realise they are

Loving that people don’t realise that everyone is someone’s nightmare at work, even if they aren’t loud and dramatic 🤣

My old work I had 2 one was so loud it literally hurt my ears and we worked with young kids.
the other drove me mad she couldn't answer a question quickly. An example is John staying for lunch today so answer is yes or no. The conversation would be he stayed yesterday and ate beans and toast but he didn't like them which is weird he ate them before.remember his brother only ate the crusts. By now chaos is happening in the room as two of us are distracted 😂😂

Oh god yes - with the added fun of it being a small organisation so there's no getting away from them

we have the "I'm sooo busy, im
sooo busy" team member who is only soooo busy because they bog themselves in irrelevant unimportant detail

the swanning around going to lots of meetings but not actually doing anything team member

and the completely useless at their job but been there forever and everyone is just waiting for them to retire team member

all of them should have been managed out years ago....

In the public sector it seems to be completely impossible to get rid of anyone. So many people who are shit at their jobs get promoted upwards not out and it's so frustrating.

I sort of wonder if there should be an option for a "bloodless breakup" with an employee. Three months notice plus three months full pay also, dates of employment to run to the end of the whole six months.

Confidential and compensated fuck off.

Having dealt with all manner of prolonged scenarios of difficulty employees leaving, I can't imagine it would be cost more.

(I also wish it was more normalised to have a long notice period and short gaps between employment to make job hunting that bit less stressful)

There’s always one.
If you don’t know who it is, it’s you.

I'm dealing with a rumbling HR issue at the moment and can see ALL the exchanges.

The woman concerned is throwing mud at everyone because EVERYONE is wrong about EVERYTHING. And I am TOTALLY WRONG in my own specialism when I'm trying to meet her needs in the case because EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING THEIR JOBS WRONG and somehow in my tangential role AND I SHOULD BE FIXING THEIR WORK AS I ENCOUNTER IT.

Thing is, she's making lots of errors herself. And she also brought a lot of good to the org too, on a good day. But she has very quickly nitpicked all her colleagues to death by constantly correcting them. Sometimes she's right, sometimes she's wrong, and sometimes it's subjective/not important to correct. But 100% of the time she's gone in with a two-footed THIS IS WRONG response.

I think I might be the workplace nightmare!

I'm ASD and no-notice changes really throw me. I go into full on panic mode, even though I know if I can sit it out for 24 hours, I'll calm down. But I rarely CAN wait it out, so I go ape shit for that 24 hours then get used to the idea and chill out.

But I can imagine for those around me, that 24 hour period is bloody awful. Not helped by the fact that I was of a reasonable age / way into my career before I was diagnosed so had no understanding of why I was like this.

I comfort myself with the fact that although I'm a fucking nightmare, that I'm incredibly productive, finish everything I do before anyone else and never, ever miss a deadline. Swings and roundabout innit.

Spent 30 years in public sector and this is exactly the case. In fact the organisational structures and decision making are framed to avoid individual accountability by blurring and watering down who makes the decisions or who took any actions. This is so you can eventually trace a critical decision to someone who has left the organisation. You then blame them, but learn lessons, place another tier of decision making in place and move on, or if it was really bad, restructure.
This culture creates weird behaviour where minor work things become major fall outs, people have too much time to feel hard done by or slighted, entitlement around work expectations get out of hand and basic managing is 'bullying'.
It perculates into you life outside work too as you become cynical and less tolerant.

Nah, sorry, some people are nightmares. There’s different methods and then there’s being aggressive, incompetent, bullies.

Glad I'm not alone in the madness.

I do look at some i have worked with so far in my life and wondered how the f have you been allowed to do such a useless job or be a b?
1st job our of college in my field I studied in delighted then I found out that no one stayed in my job due to a horrific b in my team. she thought she was invincible. no one allowed to talk because she needed to work window to be left open all the time - that was the tip of it. I was the only one who brought it to hr. she finally got moved but low behold I got "let go"
another job I got the person I worked with treated me like shite due to the fact that the perosn he was shaigging on the line didn't get the job. again management didn't deal with it
currently one of the managers I have to deal with is absolutely useless. he has three people reporting into him and all three have moved to different jobs on the company because of him. he on annual leave today and tomorrow. sent him ab email to book something for me tomorrow, email sent 9am yesterday he only has access to the system etc. its for an important customer and if ships Friday they will get Monday. it takes him 5 mins to do - did he do it no. so I spent half my day trying to figure it out and get it booked why leave and not have your work covered ? same company we have a cocky little sh who has taken over from some one who did an excellent job and was so nice. he only doing the job 6 months (it's quite intense job need to be organised and know certain things) and all ready the line has gone down twice all because of his f ups..never before happened in the 10 years am there. but yet nothing is said to him he actually got praise in one meeting 🙄 I rolled my eyes at that. he has to do reports every month they are always wrong. he reports into my boss but he never says anything.
the other thing which ammoys me is my company gone big on bringing people back to office so more collaboration and productivity 🙄 have had a huge project to finish this week. relied on 2 people to do certain things have had to hound them every day the past two weeks to get it done. they are in the office every day and still didn't do their job. so being proof being present doesn't mean productivity but yet the metrics are being met for staff on site 🤔 on a meeting other day and someone suggested we have a meeting with them on it I actually said you want a meeting with them to get them to do their task ?? mind boggles

New boss.
Have discovered that they 'moved around a lot' in their previous organisation and moved because 'people didnt really seem to want to explore things (ideas)'
They dont want to explore your ideas because your ideas involve you expecting everyone to explore every great idea while ignoring the fact that we dont have unlimited time money and resources so have to prioritise the day job....

I worked in the NHS and sat on so many committees where they discussed the problem, decided on a solution but until prompted didn’t actually assign the action to anyone then would be surprised in the next meeting that nobody had carried it out.

Last three experiences have been with women managers . Somehow they seem to think that they need to Boss Bitch in order to prove something . So everybody hated them, refused to work with them. Management kept moving them around as probably cost a lot to get rid . Just no need to manage a team by bullying , threats and attitude. Management training should be compulsory in most organisations.

I feel I am becoming difficult, I am at the “what’s got into her” stage rather than the nightmare stage. I know it’s because of burnout, I have an exit strategy and I am now pushing back on things I’d have grumbled just to my DH about.

I always worked in the public sector. At my last job the office bully was left to make the lives of others a misery. The manager did nothing. In fact she was often seen whispering with the bully. The delusional office lunatic was sometimes taken aside but that always culminated in the managers laughing and joking with her lest she started picking on them. No one was managed. No one. They were too scared to make any decisions. A miserable set-up.

I think some of them know they are awful and some of them enjoy being difficult. I agree about the lack of managing these people out of a business which is the desired option. Unlike a marriage where you can end it because relationships have broken down, you cannot do that in an employment contract.

But doesn't the blame for so much of this rest with managers who just won't manage? They were the bane of my sister's working life - people who hid in their offices and refused to confront employees like those described here: the bullying, smelly, rude, lazy or incompetent. They didn't want the aggro and stress of dealing with managing them - but they did want the nice salary and status. So their colleagues were left to suffer and often to carry their workload too.

A friend who ran a small company used to complain about one of his managers who had sought promotion but clearly hadn't taken on board the expectations and responsibilities which came with that promotion.

@Icecreamandcoffee absolutely this. It astounds me how many people in my organisation literally do what they like. Come and go as they please, pick and choose their tasks and projects, have the whole office run around them regardless of seniority. The NHS seems utterly incapable of even contemplating addressing capability issues never mind doing anything about them.

I am biting my tongue not to let rip at our resident nightmare right now who has proceeded to dramatically answer a question asked - and answered by me 2 hours ago (but she's a higher pay band so obviously needs to look important).

I swear I could move to Australia and this woman would still be messaging me asking how to save a word document.

The reason she thought she was doing ok was due to weak senior management who had no appetite for actually managing people and management in the public sector who seem to be terrified of a tribunal or using HR.

She had had feedback a few years ago (on a previous team) about her work, behaviour and conduct. She had got the union in and mentioned contacting ACAS and senior management (above the manager who cited concerns) rolled over and instead redeployed her to another team. Therefore she's spun the narrative to everyone that the previous manager just didn't like her. It was pretty much an open secret that every department had a turn having "Sue" (not her real name) and if you wanted rid of her you complained to senior management above you and started following HR procedures against Sue and they would move her out your team.

When she entered our team our manager (previously from the private sector) was appalled that her behaviour had gone unchecked for years and that everyone just accepted that "Sue didn't do certain work - even if it is in her job description, and "it's just Sue's personality to be rude/ confrontational", and "that's just the way Sue is" and "Sue has never attended training on x because Sue doesn't want to use it" even if x was important to the team she was on. It was a given that Sue would come in at 9.10, take a full lunch break and leave at 4.30 even though her hours were 9-5.

You just described two people I manage. It’s exhausting. They are convinced they are soooo valuable, I spend a lot of time sorting out mess they cause.

the reason they don’t realise they are a nightmare is because they have absolutely no self awareness!

This is absolutely spot on.

I too have worked in a variety of private sector and public sector roles. The difference in the level of pissing about in the public sector is staggering. You just couldn’t do it in the private sector because the finances just wouldn’t work.

In my last role at a charity our COO would not ever make a decision. He specialised in dodging ever even offering an opinion on something. He had his head in the sand about a matter of huge operational risk that our Trustees tried to raise with him several times to no avail. He spent his time rewriting the HR policies instead.

Of course the operational issue became a problem and 60% of the staff had to be made redundant

Yep I have one person in our team who is a nightmare. It's well known within the team, they cause tangents add to other people's workloads due to the failure to do aspects of their job they don't want to do and will just debate or complain.

It's well known in our team and management. Any attempts to readdress they put in harassment claims to HR (public sector). Its an absolute PITA.