Your worst ever colleague

[CrimsonCattery]

Just a bit of fun. All my current colleagues rate from amazing to only mildly irritating but in the past have worked with some right wankers.

The worst one was a couple of years ago. Civil service open plan office. Friendly team. One man was the same grade as me and started at a similar time never spoke to me which was fine if a little odd as we were all learning the work. We had the same mentor who was a lovely older woman eho had been doing our job for years. Our boss was also female.

Mentor told me he was completely blanking her and would only go to the men in our team for advice. He refused to take any direction from women and would default to our boss' male counterpart. We hotseated and he started kicking off if asked to sit next to someone of a lower grade (we were still relatively junior) which was bizarre as no one else cared about seniority like that. The men in our team also hated him and he narrowly escaped being hit at one Xmas social after a disgusting comment he made about the women in the team (they refused to share what he said). His work was also crap and he got fired for a combination of that and his terrible attitude.

We later found out from Google he had been fired from his previous job where he should have been helping people because he was unfairly finding against people he disapproved of. It was in the news as he lost an employment tribunal after he sued them.

Have also worked with milk thieves, phantom shitters and other oddballs. Its very dull where I am now in comparison!

Nasty team manager (in another country) in our global IT team who would slyly change a group password and keep it to himself. You had to find this out by chance (sometimes wondering if you had gone mad) - if you tried too many times to log in with an incorrect password, you got locked out and had to ask him to unlock the account. He would say “oh yes the password was changed, didn’t you know?” making out all along it was your fault for not knowing. He would even change the password to something personal eg his home phone number and then berate you for not knowing it. I was so glad when he left.

The boss who refused to give me time off when my 18 year old had to have a cancer scan because 'she's an adult now and can go on her own'

I once worked with a guy who regularly got angry about random small things. One time after he had been working with a new coworker for a bit, I heard him have a long and loud sweary rant about the guy because he asked him too many questions. This happened a few times and was in a meeting room know for its lack of sound proofing. Another time I tried to start a friendly conversation in the morning and he went on another long sweary rant about a female environmental activist and called her a stupid . He would also regularly rant about diversity and ask for new staff members ethnic origins before they started. The worst time was in a meeting with quite a few witnesses where he started ranting about how stupid people were and targeted minority groups! Someone raised a grievance against him and he didn't do it publicly again. Not sure what happened to him in the end!

Another time I worked with a group of guys who would openly complain (while I was in the room) about women 'taking time off' to go on maternity leave...while I was pregnant! At the same place another guy asked me (during the same pregnancy with dc2) 'please don't have anymore children as it's bad for the environment'!

Strange thing was none of them could see why anyone had a problem with their behaviour when challenged.

I've had a few awful colleagues that were either immature or rude ect but my most recent one was at my job at I was laid off at just beginning of covid-19, it was my gap year post and she was always on daily mail and screaming at us about work but never did any herself. Ate stinky tuna every day to the point we would gag, never cleaned out her cup (apparently) so they would make her bleach it to disinfecft it 🤢, she would insert herself in every young person's issues in the office and tell them how they should ect. She would start arguments with everyone and anyone then blame it on hormones 'because she was hormonal', she called a pretty girl in our office a 'stupid slut' because the girl made one mistake on her admin, amongst multiple other issues she has, they have only kept her on due to the specific qualification she has but has 'apparently' (coming from slt), been reprimanded several times. Although I desperately wanted to work to save for going back to uni I treated leaving that place as a blessing, I was one of the first to go due to my limited time and that fact I'm severely venerable but working with her during this period would have been hell on earth.

Have been v lucky really!

The worst were two incompetent bosses who did bugger all work, apart from sucking up to their own boss, and made out that they were concerned with “strategic” matters.

And a few passive/aggressive colleagues, eg not sharing necessary information, silent treatment.

One of the crap bosses asked for proof of appointment when had a day off for an ERPC under general anaesthetic for a miscarriage (I didn’t divulge the mc to her as didn’t trust her). I’d had no previous sick leave.

She later told me, when was near end of maternity leave, that my job was no longer available as she much preferred the (male) full timer who’d covered my mat leave (I was PT at the time, which she hated, even though the job was easily manageable PT). That finding another role was for me to manage, and that I must work FT. I emailed her, her boss and HR expressing surprise and concern. was immediately sorted by HR, was offered a good PT role working for someone else, thank god!

I was once really poorly at work so I looked a bit like shit, no make up or anything and I went to speak to the manager to see if I could go home and she told me to go and put some make up on and do my hair....her husband owned the business and they only hired girls under 30

I work in an industry fuil of geeks and oddballs, which I mostly like. But there is one man called Frank who was just a vile person. Even the sweetest, most easy going staff loathed him.

He couldn't be sacked because my boss won't sack anyone his father had hired, family firm stuff.

We're so old fashioned that all the retired staff come to our lavish Christmas lunch each year. Despite apparently hating his fellow man, retired Frank turns up like a bad penny every year, growling and carping like the utter git that he is.

I heard him making a caustic remark about 'elderly secretaries dancing', these women are not elderly and he himself is a clapped out codger, clearly a huge misogynist to boot.

I'm Scottish and only go down to London for the Christmas do. I'd never spoken a word to Frank but he was at the bar when I grabbed my boss and cheerily informed him I was thirsty. Boss hit me up with a drink and as I walked away Frank hissed at me 'when Scotland goes independent will you pay for your own drinks?'. Whilst attending a free lavish party in Central London!!!

I told a few people and they said yeah Frank's a cunt.

Some absolute horrors here. Interesting how so many are NHS staff, the very people we're supposed to consider heroes at the moment..

No doubt there are some lovely NHS staff, but when I had to work alongside an NHS unit I met some deeply unpleasant people, across the board- doctors, nurses and HCAs.

When working in NHS admin as a band 2. Had a band 3 in the same office as our team (all band 2) but her work was connected but not the same role. She was so concerned that everyone understood she was a band 3. She then decided that we should copy her in to all our emails as she was a Band 3. She would mention being a band 3 at least 5 times a day.

Most annoyingly she dobbed me in to our manager for not adhering to the clear desk policy. We had our own desks and as I was leaving one evening remembered a task I needed to do the next day so I left a post it note on my desk to remind me. That was it.

She would also send long, passive aggressive emails if she felt we had done something wrong, while acting as if she hadnt sent them, so just carrying on a normal conversation, while just having sent an email asking why you didnt respect her as a Band 3!

Been very lucky with some of my colleagues, some of these stories are horrific. Especially the bullying ones.

Went out for a meal/drinks outside work for a colleagues "Jo" milestone birthday. They also invited "Jen" who I didn't know as well as we didn't work in the same department. Jen made a big issue about only coming out for drinks as she couldn't afford the meal. Not a problem so she turns up at around 10 (an hour late...the rest of us including Jo were made to wait at one place as she kept saying she was only 5minutes away). She turned up and totally took over the evening. Demanded we go to certain places etc. I didn't know her that well so had gone along with it as Jo never said he didn't want to. I drew the line at going to the strip club she wanted to go to so I headed home.
But not long before heading off I made a comment about her and her behaviour to a friend (not my finest moment, agreed, as it was overheard) but other than that I had been nothing but pleasant to her. She had been openly grinding on some other people in the club, it turned the whole thing into a bit of an awkward and uncomfortable atmosphere (even for Jo who just sat in silence).

Scroll to the Monday and I get called to my boss' office and told she had made a complaint about my behaviour at the weekend but obviously neither her boss nor mine (they were good friends) were taking anything further as it happened outside of work. I leave and wouldn't normally see Jen during a normal work day so never thought any more about it until people were telling me how much she was mouthing off about me and the bitch I was, slagging me off to anyone who would listen in the canteen. that she was going to tell her boss etc. As I didn't normally eat in there she didn't realise that people would tell me but they did.

Later that day I passed her in reception and I deliberately said hi. She went on a whole speech about how hurt she was that I spoke about her behind her back. She though it would be a good idea for us to go to one of the meeting rooms and have "circle time" so we could talk about all our feelings. I quickly shut her down with "No, I don't think that would be appropriate. I know about everything you have been saying about me behind my back at work so let's move on because we are not friends and don't need to work directly together"

She was let go less than 6 months later as it turned out she wasn't working as late as she told everyone she did. When she realised the company was starting to track her clock in and out times she would use the time she had to be in the office later to do other jobs. Final straw was when she was caught doing a fitness dvd in the office after she thought everyone had gone.

I'm getting on a bit and things were different in the late 80s/early 90s. My first job after leaving college was in an office. The boss was having an affair and would get me to lie to his wife if she phoned (I was 17 and didn't know any better). He once parcel taped me to my chair for fun! I then worked in a bank. Some of the managers were very handy and us secretaries had to be very careful if we went into the stationery cupboard because we might get 'hugged'! The branch manager didn't deal with stress very well and would often bark orders at us minions. On one occasion, I was just leaving his office and he shouted "Oi, you, make me a coffee!" (again I was too shy and naive to speak up). He once had us all working very late going through every file in the office (there were hundreds and hundreds) to find a specific letter. We couldn't find it. The next morning he informed us that he'd found it in his desk. No apology. Git. I've had a boss who shouted at me, in front of colleagues, for something that had nothing to do with me. Oh and I was called to my supervisor's office so she could speak to me about my inappropriate footwear - a pair of flat, bronze sandals from M&S! No idea why they were inappropriate when another colleague wore stiletto mules, clacking around making dents in the floor and nearly falling over!

Oh, just remembered, we used to do flexi time (within reason) and could build up TOIL. One lady didn't really understand this and would take an afternoon off and then try to 'pay it back' in tiny increments - staying 5 minutes extra! She could not understand why this wasn't acceptable

@Harls1969, your story of working in a bank reminded me of a friend who used to work for one of the big high-street banks (I forget which one). The staff were supposed to finish at 5pm, but if they had to stay late they could claim overtime if they were still working after 5.30. The branch manager always managed to find some reason to keep them after 5, but mysteriously always let them leave just before 5.30. CF...

Someone was employed because she was a family member. She couldn't string a sentence together and would send emails to customers that were complete nonsense.

I was working in a group home for adults with learning disabilities. One of the women I worked with was related to the manager and allowed to come in when she felt like it, was never pulled up for being late. She would skip about the place in a tiny skirt and knee high boots and one of the male clients took a fancy to her and used to follow her around everywhere, trying to grab her. She used to giggle and fend him off but she never changed her behaviour and no one suggested that her clothing was maybe inappropriate. She spent most of her shift outside vaping and picked the 'fun' jobs to do, while the rest of us scrubbed toilets and did the real work. Thank god I left soon after, but she was still skipping about like a fairy in her mini skirts avoiding any actual work when I left.

ProfessionalWeirdo - yes this was also a major high street bank. And that also used to happen. Managers going off for lunch that was mostly liquid with clients, coming back three sheets to the wind (having driven back in their company cars!). Lots of meetings on golf courses. Very different, I imagine, to banking today. I hated the old boy network and the cliques. My face definitely did not fit. I see that as a massive compliment!

We once had temp who seemed really nice and would have got the job if he was good. After a few weeks said his dad wasnt well, then his parents were flying back to their home in india which was in a part that took days to get to. They his mum was taken ill out there and he had to fly out to get them back he would send regular updates.
His work emails were monitored and a friend sent him an invite to a party. He replied but copied work email in by mistake with a photograph of him and his wife drinking cocktails in Bali and couldnt make the party. As you can imagine when he got back he was sacked and had to pay his wages back. I couldnt take any time off in summer because of him

I’ve got many! However, the worst was when I was a legal PA and the owner of the law firm was a twat. He was bloody horrible and creepy. He never liked me and that was ok, the feeling was mutual, but I was damn good at my job and he paid loads of money so we put up with each other. His worst was when he called me into his office to talk about the bloody database that he’d been developing for about a hundred years, sat in his huge office chair cross legged like the dwarf he was, but he was wearing running shorts and his willy & balls fell out. That tended to happen a lot, especially in management meetings. The final straw came when me and (now ex) DH split up. Cue the Xmas bash and one of the senior Solicitors sidled up to have a word that Company owner was monumentally pissed and had just announced that he was going to have a good feel of my arse. I got my stuff and left. Fortunately, he fucked up the business and I got a handsome redundancy package 3 months later. I’ve never been so relieved.
But yes, over the years I’ve put up with bullies, lazy arses, phantom shitters, stinky feckers, those who’d like to work you to death and underhanded bitches. I’m glad to say that I now have an amazing boss who really cares about her staff. Mind you, she didn’t tell me the full extent of the job when she hired me and I nearly crapped my pants on my first day when told I’d be responsible for all the accounting and payroll when I had zero experience of either. However, I rose to the challenge and love my job.

Worked for a firm producing lots of powerpoints based on excel data. One colleague basically spent her time checking every figure on these charts, to make sure they were correct down to the n'th figure after the decimal because it made so much difference if the number was 3.45 or 3.449! Thats all she did.

So the week after our joint manager went on maternity leave, she informed me I was going to have a disciplinary to investigate why a particular report hadnt been done and emailed to the clients. I sat there as she told me and gave me a letter confirming, saying did they really want to do this? She confirmed they did. I immediately told the woman who was covering HR (but had no HR experience) that I wanted to spend the week until this disciplinary focusing on proving it wasnt my fault but I could prove to her in one email. They told me that the meeting would go ahead next week as arranged. The colleague wanted to attend the meeting but I refused to allow it. So I sat with HR woman and a friendly person, and produced my email sent a month earlier to evil colleague, maternity leave boss and others stating that the report had been completed and was ready to be checked. I also produced a mountain of evidence that colleague was bullying me. The disciplinary was stopped but nothing was done about colleague.

6 months later maternity leave boss was back part time, and informed me in my annual review that bullying colleague was to be my new boss as they were training her up to be management. I complained but was told it would be fine.

Luckily i had an interview the next day, for a better job with school holidays, which I got and delighted in telling my old job that I was leaving. Might have mentioned a few times my extra long holidays to really make her feel bad.

I met the nice co-worker a year later. They had made a lot of folks redundant and it had fallen to evil co-worker to actually do the work rather than check it as she was their golden girl and kept on. The management then discovered what all the other staff had been telling them that all she was good for was checking but absolutely useless at doing the actual work. Suddenly she was off the management track.

I love my new job, but a new person was brought in to work with me. She was doing an excel based job with no excel experience. Was nice enough to start with, but after a year her true colours started to come out. She acted like my boss rather than co-worker. Wanted to dump all the jobs she hated onto me but keep the high profile ones for herself. I eventually was pushed into complaining to HR (this time a proper department) who took things a little more seriously. We had a meeting where we were both meant to list all the tasks we completed with a view to reallocating them to make her life easier. I had a full list of jobs I did. She had nothing and put on the tears that she was too busy to write a list. It was clear from this meeting she just thought she could dump the crap on me without authorisation. Every job she "told me to do", if I even complained, I got told "its a job for the secretary".

Eventually she handed in her notice, got authority to leave early as she had put in so much overtime but get paid for the same time. I got many calls from other staff who also were fed up of her bullying and were glad she was leaving. I was told that all the overtime had been her coming in at weekends just to sit around doing nothing but be there to claim overtime. She spent her last weeks compiling a "to do" booklet for the replacement. It was basically saying "tell peri to do this that and the other" and slagging the boss off. We went through this book removing all examples of this after she left.

Her replacement was interviewed away from her so they would never meet, but the bully knew all about her. From other things she had said I realised she had been reading the bosses email when he left it open (which he did frequently, we were always locking it for him). The new replacement keeps asking me where the rest of the work is because it doesnt take her half as long because she is competent unlike her predecessor.

It doesnt seem much now but working life with the bully was hell, before she resigned I was seriously looking for other jobs even though I loved every others aspect of working there. I was miserable. Our boss, hated working with her so spent more and more time working from home where possible just to avoid her air of gloom. Another department who she had worked for ten years previously had said they were shocked she was ever rehired after all the crap they had put up with.

My worst ever colleague was a woman who smelled so bad, she actually made a couple of people vomit when they had to share a very large room with her. I can't even describe the odour, you could taste it when you walked into the building lobby each morning she was working 🤢. A combination of strong rotting rubbish, something metallic and faeces. I have no idea how she was hired in the first place!

She had continence issues - which of course I sympathise fully with. But she admitted freely that she 'couldn't be bothered with all that showering business' when she was asked very nicely to improve her personal hygiene by her boss (who asked me for advice as a manager, she wasn't gossiping). Colleagues and customers complained about her being extremely rude and offensive to them too. People refused to work in the same floor as her due to the odour. She was eventually let go after failing to improve her hygiene and repeatedly putting her used continence pads in the communal open paper bin (I wish I was making this up!). She had a nice home, an adult daughter who was well groomed, she earned a decent salary too.

I am very sure she had some serious MH issues as she was later imprisoned for embezzling £27, 000 from the local charity she was treasurer of. She'd spent it all on Facebook games. All I could think was who was the poor soul who had to share a cell with her...

I've had some crap and bullying colleagues too, but it's hard to forget this lady.

@StopChelping. Really sorry to read this. I had this. Wouldn’t reply when I said good morning. Was excluded as they made tables of themselves only at the Xmas party. Horrible horrible experience. Eventually just left.

New colleague who despite being trained in the job Monday to Friday forgot all she learned after the weekend. This happened every week.

She had a high pitched squeaky voice when talking about her mutt dog Snoopy who she referred to as Snoops.

She also told me that she would cross the road if she saw an Asian person walking towards her . Considering we had quite a few Asian patients who are lovely I told her she was in the wrong job with an attitude like that.

We reckoned she knew she wasn't going to pass her probation period and deliberately fell off a stool at home breaking her wrist so we couldn't get rid of her that quickly

Many years ago I worked with a man who was not only physically overbearing, big and tall, but he had a permanent frown as if he was trying to keep his angry thoughts in check. As a young teenager in my first job I kept my distance in our large team.

Within a few months I heard he was going through marital problems and kept missing work. Then the next thing he disappeared and left all the family pets dead on his wife and kids doorstep.

The florist I worked with who was convinced I fancied her husband (he looked like Lurch) and made my life a misery. Apparently, when I sent a postcard from a holiday I was on, she lifted it, tore it up and dropped into the bin in front of everyone. When I told Lurch I was leaving, he said, “X will be pleased, she’s never liked you.”

I replied with, “You really didn’t need to say that, so why did you?”

They were bloody weird- him 6’7” and miserable as sin, her a roly poly poisonous 4’10” with a penchant for strong canned lager and takeaway meat feast pizza. They were welcome to one another.

My other colleague was almost driven into the ground by the woman’s spite; I saw her years later, after she’d moved jobs, and she looked 10 years younger.