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

The problem is no one will have difficult conversations with these people or put them on a performance plans and manage them out. So they stay blissfully unaware no one wants to work with them.

We also have a stinker and nobody wants to work with her.
i'm talking really really awful bad breath and strong unwashed body odour and dirty clothing - unwashed.
We are NHS so it's not acceptable as patients have commented on it.
I don't feel this is my job it's a management issue but they will not deal with it.

Some people are just are bloody awful and in my opinion need telling so. I did have it out with one member of staff here and things have calmed down a lot.
It wasn't just my opinion it was everyone's opinion.

1000% this!

I had a manager like this. How he got the job and maintained his position for over a decade, god only knows. 🙄But atm, I'm working in a job where someone thinks that not washing themselves everyday, not cleaning their teeth every morning and not washing their clothes is a requirement but they perform their job superbly. Not sure which I think is worse really 🤔😑

And this is so often the crux of the problem, we all have blind spots, we are all products of our environment and upbringing but sometimes we just need some feedback , why wouldn’t she think she was doing ok?

peoples emotional intelligence is generally low (you’ve only got to look on here) so a lot of people are oblivious and then you’ve got the cohort of over thinking people pleasers ( I count myself in that). I’d like a bit of the oblivious stuff to be honest!

Mmm I was lumbered with a ‘Linda’ for about 14 years. She even pestered me in my private time. All about herself. Luckily I was able to fuck off and go no contact for my own sanity.

We have one at the moment - she's driven three colleagues onto sick leave of various durations and can turn any meeting or project she's brought into into utter chaos.

It is incredibly wearing and stressful - I've requested and had a move within the team to reduce my level of exposure to her, but this week we're low on management, she's a higher band than me (joys of the NHS) and she is constantly asking me what to do, she hasn't learnt processes in over a year of being with us - and apparently it's in hand and heading down capability - but it's so slow it's going to break more of us at this rate (probably me since I seem to be the go-to for everyone when management are on leave).

I alternate between thinking lots of it is weaponised incompetence and wondering if she really has no realisation of how much she complicates and fucks everything up - and I attempt to avoid the overspill of her workload onto others these days cos I'm bloody done with propping up her job as well as my own (and the two absent staff I'm covering for).

I work with an absolutely horrible man, a terrible bully encouraged to report staff to management for any perceived issues, however he is also the laziest man so is reporting staff for not doing his actual responsibilities. If you call him out or defend yourself he will claim he is being bullied and every one is racist. Because he acts so jolly all the time even when being a arse he genuinely thinks he is a fantastic team player with who the department can’t function without.

I used to have a coworker who used to say ‘we all have shit, we should leave it at the door and come in to do the best job we can’, and she really really did. I only found out after quite how much shit she left at the door and I think about her all the time and wish others could be more like her

One person and their attitudes and moods can change the atmosphere in a whole office. Silences. Crying. Bullying. You can feel the dynamic shift as they come through the door. Used to set me on edge

As with my example, it's actually a problem of it being a shit organisation that won't deal with problem employees. In my case, loads of people left and no one cared until the person joined the highest level of management, when they realised she was vile and destructive and got rid.

To answer your question, OP, these people don't think it's them. They think it's everyone else. If they do eventually face consequences, they feel terribly victimised.

There was one of these where I worked. Dreaded by all. People actually left the company because they could no longer face working with him. He gamed the system to the nth degree, would drop anyone in the shit without compunction in DARVO fashion, and yet everybody else had to pick up the slack for him because it was an industry with non-negotiable deadlines.

Management were fully aware, many complaints were made over the course of years. He’s still there and facing precisely zero consequences for his ongoing unbelievably dreadful behaviour in the workplace.

No, it's not you @CurdinHenry . I am endlessly astonished by how colossally crap some people are at work. I shouldn't be, I've been working in the corporate world since I left Uni and I'm heading towards 60 - but I bloody am!!!!!!

I can deal with the shirkers, they just need watching like hawks and set the clearest and most unambiguous of deliverables that are tracked almost daily. I can also deal with the less than able, who can usually be found an area of adequacy in which to perform. But the loose cannons, the fruit loops who think they are on some upper tier of specialness because they are so good at their jobs, but who are actually hopeless, they are the ones that bend my mind.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason these heinous individuals remain, is because they are so unbearable that making complaints about them are too off-putting, so they get shuffled around from team to team and no one will tell anyone else how awful they are, otherwise they won't take them on their team. They have managed to surround themselves with a conspiracy of silence!

I used to work with a woman whom I will call Linda. She would never stop talking. Linda was jovial and friendly. But she had no social filters. She would see that you were working and would pester and pester until you answered. Most of the conversations were about her private life. I would say something like "Look Linda, Ive got this report to do and I need to be quiet. Can we talk later when Ive finished?" Then a few minutes later she would start a conversation about her pets. It was like trying to work with a tannoy you could never turn off. Sometimes I used to go and sit in the loo for a bit of peace. One day she kept interrupting and interrupting when i was trying to type a report. I had no choice but to answer her. Eventually the line manager turned around and told BOTH of us to be quiet as she was trying to concentrate.

I was pretty angry at that response from the manager. It would have been obvious that I too was trying to work and that it was the colleague who was being disruptive. Instead of owning with the situation she took the easy way and blamed us both. At lunch time I walked out, came home and sent an email to the manager telling her why I had done so. I told the manager that unless she dealt with the situation and found me somewhere else to work I would raise a formal grievance.

Eventually I was moved to another office. Although it was a much larger office, busier and noisier I was still able to concentrate without Linda. One of my new colleagues asked me why I had requested a move and I told her. She responded that "Linda" had very poor social skills. It was clear that others shared my opinion of her.

I worked with one. Promoted 5 times as she was useless and insufferable to work with. She caused problems between colleagues she worked with in every team. She was managed out by a restructure and hasn't worked since.

They are often a nightmare wherever they go. We had a lady in a workplace I worked in. She was an absolute entitled nightmare. Very much promoted to point of incompetence. No-one wanted to deal with her or manage her because she was a nightmare. They dealt with her by moving her sideways every few years and selling it to her as " a new challenge". She was completely oblivious to the fact that she was constantly been moved around because no-one wanted to deal with her and instead thought it was wonderful that she was selected for a new challenge every 4 years.

I am sure some actually know, and enjoy it!! And are mollycoddled by management.

We have a guy at work. He is paid TWICE what I am...but he expects me to do his work for him as he is PC illiterate and paid well above his knowledge base and ability.

I also do not possess the technical or experienced based knowledge bank required, but I am expected to complete technical work for him.

I am pushing back now though and asking HR and QHSE lots of questions about responsibility and stating that I want to highlight my lack of knowledge in this are that I am being told to work in, and that I will complete it to the best of my limited ability and I cannot be help liable for any errors that are in it - when it is reviewed by the idiots.

More and more people we work with are getting fed up with them asking others to do their job.

I always tell these people that the workplace does not deserve them and they should be in a better job with more prospects.

Or I did until I retired because apart from my tiny team, the larger team we were merged with were all completely bloody useless people who thought they were above everyone.

Everyone in my department is lovely, most of my staff were actually rejects form other parts of the company. My translator was unpopular with the rest of her team, the person who ended up as senior chemist/deputy lab manager "failed" her internship after taking maternity so no dept wanted her, one of my process engineers was told his department didn't want him back after things slowed down during covid. Also get last pick of operators and graduates from the company training centre.

However I would not swap a single one of them for the arrogant, stupid, idle, feckless, unimaginative, ignorant turds who work in the rest of the company.
We are a happy little life boat of sane folk rejected by the hive.

There's a huge amount in this.

It’s just so true and is the reason we get such a bad rap. I get asked to do all sorts of tasks not in my job description purely because I’m a) numerically literate so can handle data and b) I worked in jobs prior to academia so can communicate better with external people not related to our world. I don’t know how some of them get through life day to day in truth.

I work in the public sector now after decades in private industry. My take on this as I see it all the time is that people don’t want to make a decision. They don’t want responsibility/accountability and don’t want to take whatever risk they perceive comes with doing that. As a result, discussions become about minor issues, work is directed towards minor issues and attempts to change that are met with those nightmare behaviours. Being seen to be doing something (anything) is more important than actually doing it.

I recently went to a conference with one. She could not be pragmatic and just get shit done. She assumed the very large (20k attendees) congress would change the lights in our room to make the slides project better, that they would keep the slide upload room open late for her - spoiler, they refused on both counts.

Had I not taken over and done the heavy lift on the slides, there’d have been none. This event cost >100k, I get cold sweats thinking about it.

She's been in the organisation >10 years, delivering 4 of these a year. I don’t understand if it’s always like this or something happened this time but I am bubbling with resentment every time she is praised for how well it went.

I think a large proportion of people lack insight, they seem unable to reflect on how their behaviour towards others might be perceived. There’s comes a point when someone needs to be very direct with them and spell it out.