Cheer me up with your worst colleague stories please...

[whatsnewpussycat777]

My colleague and I are irritating each other at the moment, however nothing sinister. Thank God.

Had one previous colleague who was the laziest person on the planet ... and got away with it.....That partly nailed my leaving that particular job to be honest.

@Saracen

Not funny really, just sad:

Civil service. One mid-level admin person was very insecure and passive-aggressive. Almost anything you might say to her, she would interpret as a criticism. Heaven help you if you actually DID want her to do something differently from how she was currently doing it. However gently the request might be phrased, she'd go into full-on defensive mode. She was in a state of constant high alert. She supported a number of people, most of whom were too scared to ask her to do anything in case of upsetting her. But then if you did the admin yourself, she concluded it was because you thought her incompetent, so THAT upset her as well.

We all felt very sorry for her, but no one could ever figure out how to handle her and work with her productively. She kept getting fairly positive performance reviews because her bosses wanted to shift her sideways to be rid of her, which was easier to do if she looked like an appealing prospect to the department onto which she was being dumped. So she had a new job pretty much every year, which was hard on her because she never had a chance to become thoroughly competent. I'm sure she could have been competent if she hadn't felt so threatened.

I was lucky enough never to be her line manager. Just being in the same room as her made me tense, as she radiated stress in all directions.

Yes - recognise all these things in current co-worker. Nightmare for years, do not know what to do as I love my job.

Previous manager shrugged and said I had to make a\ formal complaint but I said that's like the nuclear option - how can I work in close proximity once she knows I have started a complaint??

After my Dad died suddenly in 1991 my then boss told me that I needed to 'get a grip' after I returned after a week of special leave, which was all I was entitled to, and was struggling to cope. A few months later he then took 4 weeks special leave after his brother died suddenly. They hadn't seen each other in months and the brother had a wife and sons. But me trying to support my Mum was beyond the pale.

That was the Civil Service in 1991. I am delighted to say that I am now 4 grades more senior than that utter arsehole - I'm talking about you Colin - and would never let anyone in my team treat anyone in that way at all.

@Saracen

Not funny really, just sad:

Civil service. One mid-level admin person was very insecure and passive-aggressive. Almost anything you might say to her, she would interpret as a criticism. Heaven help you if you actually DID want her to do something differently from how she was currently doing it. However gently the request might be phrased, she'd go into full-on defensive mode. She was in a state of constant high alert. She supported a number of people, most of whom were too scared to ask her to do anything in case of upsetting her. But then if you did the admin yourself, she concluded it was because you thought her incompetent, so THAT upset her as well.

We all felt very sorry for her, but no one could ever figure out how to handle her and work with her productively. She kept getting fairly positive performance reviews because her bosses wanted to shift her sideways to be rid of her, which was easier to do if she looked like an appealing prospect to the department onto which she was being dumped. So she had a new job pretty much every year, which was hard on her because she never had a chance to become thoroughly competent. I'm sure she could have been competent if she hadn't felt so threatened.

I was lucky enough never to be her line manager. Just being in the same room as her made me tense, as she radiated stress in all directions.

This sounds very familiar. Was her first name Julie?

When I worked in a hospital I booked some transport for a patient after I'd assessed her for being eligible to transfer to a different unit. My colleague cancelled the ambulance behind my back because she didn't agree with my decision! (It was not her decision to make, and she didn't like that)

Middle aged grown man who sat beside me. He was junior to me but same role, and asked me for support often. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but if I happened to be speaking to someone else when he needed support he would be on the other side of me like a toddler repeating “lowdown, lowdown, lowdown, lowdown” I never quite found the words to address it so I just ignored. Not time sensitive work and I wasn’t the only person able to assist.

@PrincessInPyjamas

After my Dad died suddenly in 1991 my then boss told me that I needed to 'get a grip' after I returned after a week of special leave, which was all I was entitled to, and was struggling to cope. A few months later he then took 4 weeks special leave after his brother died suddenly. They hadn't seen each other in months and the brother had a wife and sons. But me trying to support my Mum was beyond the pale.

That was the Civil Service in 1991. I am delighted to say that I am now 4 grades more senior than that utter arsehole - I'm talking about you Colin - and would never let anyone in my team treat anyone in that way at all.

Get a fucking grip, Colin!

Worked with a tiny nurse for years. Unfortunately I was one of the few people who worked with her closely. So to everyone else she was a hard working diligent worker as she displayed all the visual characteristics of this. (Oscar worthy) She sounded sweet and her diminutive appearance fed into that picture. Sadly she was a bully par excellence. So when things inevitably came to a head between us, me as the taller, bigger person, it didnt appear like she could be the one bullying me. Management were useless, they knew all about her from others who had worked closely with her, which coincidentally included some of the managers themselves. They tried to say it was a her vs me situation. I left. She is still at it, nurse, ahps , clerical, still nothing done about her. Kept the docs on side though...they didnt care. Most demoralizing, depressing times of my life.

I won't depress everyone with the nasty bastards, but there were some funny / outrageous ones:
The guy who walked into the gents' loos eating a banana and walked out finishing it (Ew!)
A very senior colleague years ago who got dismissed for gross misconduct for accessing porn on his work pc in the open plan office.
My poor line manager having to tell a young woman that it was evident what she got up to every lunch time as her colleagues could smell it when she returned (shagging her married lover in his car. Sex smell. Double Ew!)
The Christmas party; a competition to decorate your table's mini Christmas tree with found items - paperclips, earrings etc. A colleague removed her clit piercing and put it on the tree.

I worked with a woman years ago who from my first day would tell me explicit stories of her sex life.
A couple of years on and she started having an affair with a bloke at work (they were both married). My colleague walked in on them having sex in a teaching room (local parents & children would have ICT lessons). She then fiddled both their wages. She was asked to leave but never had to pay back the (public) money.

A colleague removed her clit piercing and put it on the tree.

Aaarrrggg!

@AwfullyAngry

Went out to the shops at lunch, bought a razor, came back with her pubic hair in a plastic bag which she proudly displayed to everyone in the office.

Wtaf

@Tankflybosswalkjam

I just to work with Harold Shipman. Actually as a colleague he was ok I suppose. Bit lax with his paperwork, bit grumpy but let you get on with things.

Oh my God!

I’ve got a colleague who decided to keep a (full) insect farm under her desk! Luckily they couldn’t really escape but still …

Thanks for making me laugh this morning! Some of these are just brilliant. There's one in every office..

We had a woman who used to message everyone in the team except one person to ask them to wear a certain colour clothing to the office the next day. Perplexing on so many levels.

A few I can think of:
Worked in an all female office with senior manager in. If anyone talked about anything not work, they were later reprimanded. If anyone asked a question about work, they were later reprimanded as you "should have known that". It bred a culture of silence and oppression in the office.
Laughingly, she had a book on her desk: how to be an excellent manager.
The company had an anonymous feedback session and it turned out everyone was deeply unhappy unsurprisingly.
She also hated kids and babies and wouldn't even get up if someone on maternity brought a baby in for a visit.

Before that, worked with a slimy, useless guy. What he did I have no idea. Sat openly selling things on ebay, playing computer games and laughing loudly while telling everyone what he was doing. Management did nothing.
He would also drift in about 9.30. We could hear him talking and laughing in the corridor with the attractive young ladies from another company, but he would always cheerily say "sorry I'm late, I was in a meeting"
I finished earlier than him and he was always say "what is it, half day?" when I left.
I would snippily say "I've been in since 8, not 9.30 like you" but it never stopped him.

Fractured my tail bone after the birth of my second DD so couldn't return to work when I was supposed to . HR bitch summoned me in for a meeting and said "what's your problem,lots of women get back pain after giving birth".

Manager who was either my best friend or ignored me

I work with someone now who is just a vile human, no redeeming features at all, and I rarely say that about anyone. Gobby, full of herself and thinks she's more important than she is, lazy, lies blatantly all the time.

Hah, my version of her was just the same. Stayed in the same entry level position for years so she could bully the new hires and be able to fit her basic tasks around gossiping with her mates, eavesdropping on management and checking her Facebook on her mobile. She would then complain about assorted new hires who, through application and talent, would pass her by as they climbed the corporate ladder.

Sadly for her, she decided that Covid 19 and the related restrictions were not for her. Firstly, she demanded to be sent home from day one even though she didn't meet any of the criteria. Then, when we were all WFH, she decided that it was no fun on her own so tried to get her mates to move their equipment to her house so they could all work together. Management got wind of it and we got an email advising that nobody was to do anything of the sort.

Then she decided to lobby management to reopen the office and make us all go back in - this was autumn 2020. Every week or so we would get a rambling and self-serving email from her, sent company-wide, demanding that we all go back into the office. Thing is that the office was still open with a small amount of staff there but she wanted all of us back in in our hundreds.

By spring of 2021, with over 90% of staff expressing an interest in permanent WFH, she rage quit the company and said she was taking them to court. As far as I know, this hasn't happened to date.

I worked with a guy who used to inject oranges with vodka and get progressively pished.

That's genius!

Used to work for a company with crap, overly controlling management. Accordingly, turnover was high and morale low. Whenever anyone handed in their resignation, the information was treated as a state secret until the last possible moment for fear of infecting the rest of us with the hope we too might escape.

Another characteristic of the company was that those good at brown nosing tended to be favoured for team leader roles. One perfectly normal-seeming guy was elevated to a TL role, whereupon he became the most revoltingly obsequious yes-man. Somehow, another colleague and I heard that this guy had decided to retrain as a teacher before the formal leaving announcement and we sent him an email to congratulate him. Within an hour, we were all in the MD’s office getting a bollocking for the heinous act of kindly wishing him good luck while this pathetic snitch stared innocently at the ceiling.

Needless to say, his leaving do was not well attended.

I happened to arrive in the public car park at the same time as a colleague. We walked through the town precinct to our office when she asked me to check if the CCTV cameras were moving to follow us. (Very odd) I looked (wasn’t sure what she was getting at) & they weren’t. When I asked why she needed me to check, apparently all the guys operating them fancied her & she believed they were ogling her. I was 🤨

I work with a man who is in charge of the hiring-he hires mainly young girls so he can walk behind them being a creepy twat
They are bloody uncomfortable but he knows just how to cover his arse so he gets away with it
His wife (who works with us,is lovely but blind to him-he treats her like shit)

The one just underneath him plasters every where with posters that read 'mental health is important!talk to me if you need to'
I'd rather speak to a poisonous snake-shes unfriendly,hard faced,two faced and nasty
If people do trust her with their problems,it's all round the store within the hour (my fil died last year and I was forced to go home-i was slagged off for weeks as 'he's not her dad' like that makes a difference)

Another woman (c) became friends with a pregnant lady (p) and when she tried to come onto p,she was knocked back
The shitshow had to be seen to be believed-p was forced to leave and c has dropped her husband and moved her new girlfriend in (k)-who also works with us-and the kids are meant to just suck this up

K is much younger than c but they want a baby so have got the husband to sleep with them both so at least one might get pregnant (what could go wrong???)
They've all kicked off over the fact that none of us have batted an eyelid over all this (nobody cares) and have whinged that we should be shocked but we aren't

And we have someone who goes into both the ladies and the gents and shits
Big smelly shits that whoever it is doesn't flush,just leaves them and judging by the smell,they eat manure for breakfast
We've spent the last two years trying to work out who it is but no luck

One boss just screams at everyone for no reason and if you do have to speak to her then she just makes you feel an inch tall
Her sidekick just bangs on about her son all the time-i know more about this kid than I do my own

I'm handing in my notice soon-I've had enough

My then boss was a moody, vile, spoilt, self entitled idiot. He had taken the company over from his father and slowly started running it into the ground.
He would arrive around 11 and because he was running late he expected everyone to work till 6 or 7!!

Me being "naive" never questioned why he would disappear to the toilet for 15 mins or more.

The penny dropped one day when the mens loo was out of action so he dashed into the ladies. 20 mins later emerged walking like a robot, and walked out the building.

I needed the loo, as I walked in there was the strangest smell ever, like burnt dirty fish. It made me gag.
Then I saw it, two pieces of foil with black burn lines all over them.

Bossy boy was chasing the dragon 🐉 in the toilets every day.

He lost the company so I heard and years later despite going into rehab a few times is still doing it.

Not my colleague but my DDad's. Dad was a supervisor in a factory for forty years. For a period in the middle his team was beset by the 'Phantom Crapper'.

Men would enter the loo and someone had laid a massive log in the channel of the urinal!

Some poor sod had to go in with a spade and pick it up and dispose of it before it blocked the pipework and this happened about forty times over a twenty year period.

A suspect might be considered but they would leave and another massive turd would appear.

Eventually it was assumed there were copycat Phantom Crappers at large!

I was interviewing people for an admin role in my team. This lad turns up, good school reports and results, decent references. We were interviewing in a small office on a hot day, and the stench of stale BO meant we finished the interview after 15 minutes rather than the usual hour. But possibly even worse was the chunks of ear wax sticking out of his ears (not envy). I had to call the agency and explain why he wasn't suitable.