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Original poster

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

361 replies

whatsnewpussycat777 · 18/02/2021 15:48

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.

OP posts:
girlofnow · 18/02/2021 18:28

@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.
You win!
MoltenLasagne · 18/02/2021 18:32

Had a boss who was a bullying nightmare. At one point he made one of my colleagues cry and she said something about not being able to work in these conditions. He threw 20p at her head and told her if she was that upset she could phone the union and discover they'd back him rather than a menopausal old woman. They did too. He got promoted out of that job...

LaMadrilena · 18/02/2021 18:44

New-ish colleague decided to eat lunch at her desk. Sardines. Then chucked the bones and skin in our shared waste paper basket, and carried on working. Thankfully I was senior enough to tell her to take the rubbish out immediately.

maddiemookins16mum · 18/02/2021 19:04

I had a colleague who had tinned sardines for lunch. Heated up in the microwave and ate from a cereal bowl with a teaspoon EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Loved her to bits though, she was a legend, miss her so much.
She adopted stray cats and would cry about them.

Ronniesgirl · 18/02/2021 19:08

Work with two beyond lazy people. Wouldn’t be so bad if my manager was decent but nope. My manager couldn’t manage a wet fart never mind anything else. All I hear from any of them is excuses. Drives me mad!

Original poster
whatsnewpussycat777 · 18/02/2021 19:10
Shock
OP posts:
Lordamighty · 18/02/2021 19:12

Work experience lad who set fire to the gents toilets, he was bored apparently 🤷‍♀️

SomewhereUpMyArse · 18/02/2021 19:13

Bloke who had all his team's desks set out so that people had their backs to him and he could see their screens. He would then walk around commenting on what they were doing. And woe betide if you did a wee bit of non work related googling. Like a teacher supervising a classroom. Very very weird.

OrigamiOwl · 18/02/2021 19:20

My co-worker who brought in the smelliest homemade fishcakes, to eat in the office. Not even in the kitchen area. In the small office. They smelt so offensive everyone was gagging...but he was boss' golden boy so apparently that's fine.

FollowingFlitwick · 18/02/2021 19:27

@Ronniesgirl

Work with two beyond lazy people. Wouldn’t be so bad if my manager was decent but nope. My manager couldn’t manage a wet fart never mind anything else. All I hear from any of them is excuses. Drives me mad!
Yeah but how do you manage a wet fart?
MichelleScarn · 18/02/2021 19:29

@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.
Firstly love the name! This is jaaam hot! Wow, Shipman as a colleague is a definite candidate for bad!
ElizaLaLa · 18/02/2021 19:39

New bloke started the same day as me. Sat next to me. Would whistle and tap and click his pen and squeak his chair and chew and just be a cunt ALL fucking day. Drove me mental. I left that job because of him.

ElizaLaLa · 18/02/2021 19:40

Another job, the admin woman in her 40's spoke in a baby voice to all the bosses/men. We all sat in the same room so no escaping it.

sadpapercourtesan · 18/02/2021 19:45

When I was doing teaching practice, it was a horrible little school with a toxic, confrontational culture and several very depressed and angry teachers. The staff room was the size of a broom cupboard and the atmosphere in there at lunch time was unbearable, all these people who HATED each other all jammed in together. There was one TA who took real pleasure in slowly, noisily eating sardines out of a tin with her fingers and dropping bits all over the place. It stank to high heaven. She made the same little speech ever day with a gleeful smile on her face, "I used to have cheese, but it goes STRAIGHT THROUGH ME, so now I have the fish".

I can't be in the room with tinned sardines now. The stench of failure and loathing overwhelms me.

pontiouspilates · 18/02/2021 19:46

A colleague in a client facing role who picked her nose constantly. It made we gag.

BetterNameChangeForThis · 18/02/2021 19:49

Worked in a small care home where we did all the shopping for the residents. One colleague was caught stealing from the residents shopping when she did it. Then when we did the medication inventory and saw the enemas were missing, she admitted taking them home for her boyfriend as he was constipated. Both things came to light at the same time so obviously she was fired!!

Another job, woman started working at the school with us. Told us all on the first day how she was on a higher salary than us as she 'wouldnt work for what they offered' and told the interviewing staff that. They were so keen to have her 'they offered more than we were getting'...apparently....Way to get yourself liked Hmm She didnt last long as was obviously too good for us lowly LAs, and was soon promoted above her level of competence became a cover teacher (thank goodness she left our team). So full of herself.
Is now in prison serving time for an inappropriate relationship within the school, and she should never have got the job as her DBS should have shown her guilty of fraudulently claiming SS money a few years earlier.

MadisonMontgomery · 18/02/2021 20:00

Manager who set up the office so everyone was sat in lines with their back to her desk so she could monitor what we were doing all day. We were literally not allowed to say a single word that wasn’t work related, when you came in in the morning you could only say ‘good morning’ then sit down & get on with your work. She would track how many times you made a drink or went to the loo. I left when she decided the whole team had to sit & eat lunch together & could still only talk about work.

FlippinFedUp21 · 18/02/2021 20:02

I was going to reply but I can't top the cutting-the-toenails-at-work scenario

SomewhereUpMyArse · 18/02/2021 20:02

Ooh, just remembered one from years ago.

I was a lowly temp doing stuff like opening post, taking bits of paper round the office etc on a rota. This high up guy came in the postroom a couple of times looking to see if a cheque had come in that day's post, he was like "it's my lottery cheque hahaha". Didn't really know what the fuck he was on about and I thought he was boring so paid no attention.

Anyway a couple of months later there was a huge kerfuffle, police in the building escorting him out, all the locks got changed, everyone instructed never to ever speak to the guy again.

Yep, that's right, he'd got a hold of this cheque which as it transpires was a couple of hundred thousand and put it into his own personal bank account then got done for it. Stupid bastard really. I've no idea how he thought he'd get away with it.

NeverDropYourMoonCup · 18/02/2021 20:03

Well, there was the anxious micromanager who frequently forgot I had an entitlement to an unpaid lunchbreak and would freak out if I didn't pick up the phone to her next door in more than half a ring.

I frequently got accused of disappearing for over two hours at lunch because she hadn't needed to call me in that time and I'd then crept out seven hours after I started work to have my twenty minutes. The final straws were two fold - first, I found her standing outside the toilet door because I wasn't at my desk. She asked when I was thinking of coming back from lunch - I hadn't even been yet; she said I would have to go back to work now, as I'd missed my chance to have a break. The second was when I began to find alternative locations to spend my break, rather than at my desk where she wanted me to stay. I walked in to my most recent hiding place to be told before I had even sat down that she had sent an All Staff email asking if anybody had seen me.

Another one informed me that she didn't believe in arthritis and then referred me to Occupational Health with a handwritten note stuck to the form, presumably missed by the PA when posting, to 'find out if she's telling the truth and if, so start the process for dismissal on the grounds of her obviously lying on her job application'. I was shown this at my appointment with OH, as they were quite angry about it. I had declared the condition and been cleared by OH at the start of employment. The Occy report was particularly scathing in their report, drawing her attention to legal protections/Equality Legislation.

Then there was the creepy bloke. My line manager. The least said about him, the better, but he was fired for other reasons, rather than my complaint about him harassing me.

SomewhereUpMyArse · 18/02/2021 20:04

@MadisonMontgomery my god there's two of them! Is this a thing then that they teach at some kind of fucked up management school or something?

Original poster
whatsnewpussycat777 · 18/02/2021 20:08

Yikes 😳 some stories!

OP posts:
2pinkginsplease · 18/02/2021 20:09

I left a job after 16years service . Got lovely gifts from my boss, the assistant manager, some of our customers but not from my colleagues!!!! And just after I left a temporary manager left and got gifts! Shower of shites . Nice to your face and a bunch of bitches behind your back.

Twinkie01 · 18/02/2021 20:15

This reply has been deleted

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Crackerofdoom · 18/02/2021 20:19

A hundred years ago I was working in a residential school. I was in the basement with another member of staff (we had a hydro pool down there and one of the children was using it). We were chatting and I mentioned that I had a big row with my sister that morning. She casually responded with "Oh I used to fight with my sister so I stabbed her in the head"

I did everything I could to avoid being alone with her after that Confused