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.

She wasn't awful, but I had a colleague who was very odd and obsessed with her neighbour using her front path because he had right of way, and one day she came in really shaken because she found he'd been in JAIL on DRUGS CHARGES so as far as she was concerned it seemed he was capable of anything. Honestly, it sounded to me that he was a bit of a nasty piece of work who enjoyed the fact she seemed scared of him, but also like he was all mouth and no trousers and best ignored.

One of my colleagues told me .. " we don't need the likes of you here , we were fine before you came along!" .. I lasted 4 years of utter nonsense from him after that, god knows how.

Current team member - lazy, entitled, gaslights me. Subjected me to an HR investigation for bullying which found no case to answer so now finds endless ways to waste my time while pretending not to know how to do anything that they don't fancy doing.

@ElizaLaLa

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.

oh wow! like the Fast Show character?!

An idiot who joined our service supporting adults with LD who display challenging behaviour.

One service user was very challenging and could be violent. Idiot (on his third day in the job) thought the best thing to do was to scream back at him as it would 'calm him down and diffuse the situation because the SU would see how his behaviour looked. Surprisingly it didn't work and SU attached him and 2 other people. He was sent home and never came back. I had a very deep bite mark on my wrist and still have the scar and another colleague was pushed in the head. The SU was distraught and it took ages for us to win his trust back. Only small silver lining was that idiot got a bloody nose. I hope that they reported him so his DBS is flagged. It wouldn't have been so bad but he had spent the previous 2 days boasting about his experience and how good he was at the job.

The guy who used the microwave to dry/ warm his socks is probably a favourite of mine. He wasn't a dick, just got his feet wet!

Crikey!

When I worked in retail, we employed a girl as part time. She kept on begging for overtime and we’d go out of our way to offer it to her. She was such a hard worker first two weeks. After that, she'd first come 15 mins late, then half hour late, would take two hours lunch breaks instead of one... We would question her about it but she would just ignore us.
Then all of a sudden she just stopped coming. No phone call, nothing. We tried to contact her and after couple of weeks, we managed to get a hold of her mum who knew nothing about it. So we contacted HR, told them everything and as she was in trial period they send her a letter to inform her that she hasn’t been successful and to not return to work.
Couple of weeks later, she just shows up at work as if nothing had ever happened. We told her that unfortunately she needs to leave and she threatened to sue us for unfair dismissal .
And then there was a colleague that suffered from sciatica. When I fell pregnant, my employer allowed me to have a high chair to use behind tills. She decided to use it herself as “she needed it more and since I am still working at 35 weeks pregnant, surely I must not mind being on my feet for a 9 hour shift .

I once had a bullying, abusive line manager who enjoyed swearing at me.

He enjoyed swearing so much, in fact, that he ran of our swear words so had to use the same ones in succession.

My Monday morning phone calls from him would go something like "You bloody, bloody fucking.......fucking cunt!!!". Seriously.

When I first started working there was a guy on our floor (different team) who sued to complain about how rubbish it was that he couldn’t put up nudie pictures from the Sun on his desk. He also sent requests to me (I was in my 20s) and other girls on the floor to send him pictures of our boobs and crotch. He was married with kids.

Another guy who used to cut his nails at his desk (he sat opposite me) it was awful. He would also pick scabs off his arms and leave them on the table in meetings. Spent most of his time selling stuff on eBay and for years after he left we had to fix all the things he didn’t do. He was managing a grad and said they should go out for lunch on their last day. Took them to a restaurant but when it came time to pay pulled out a voucher that he had, and made the grad pay for themselves while his meal was paid for by the voucher. He was the worst.

One colleague used to do really snotty sniffs all fucking day (not envy). Always refused my offer of tissues, even when I gave her a box. She was also a bit patronising cos she'd worked there years and thought she knew everything (she didnt).

When I started in sales many years ago I was making appointments for a member of the sales team who was so fucking arrogant. He treated me well but loved to brag about how he got 5% on sales to my 1% and so earned 130k that year compared to my 24k (this was nearly 30 years so although I was earning well, he was raking it in). He ended up refusing to go to appointments until they client was ready to sign on the dotted line, which meant I did all of his work but he got all of the money. Needless to say when I complained nothing happened as he threatened to leave if they lowered his commission or paid my a higher one and he was the company's highest earning sales man.

I left to have DD1 and during my ML my manager left and was replaced. At some point his wife discovered his affair with the new manager and dumped literally all of his belongings on his luxury car in the office car park :o

Oh and when I applied to join the sales team, my sales ability already proven, I was told "Women dont belong in the sales team". And while I believe that there was an element of sexism, I think the main reason was that my colleague knew that there was a good chance I would out sell him and his ego couldnt take it and strong armed the department manager into not giving me the job.

Sales director was fuming when I left a month later after getting a job elsewhere and told him why, he hadnt even known I had applied and did try to persuade me to stay by offering me a job in the sales team but I would have been bullied and treated badly. Which I told him on the day I left.

I’ve worked in some really awful places, trying not to be too outing

One I worked with a lot of smokers, they would go out every hour for a fag break, then myself and the one other member of staff who didn’t smoke had to help them all do their work as they got behind!!!! One day I went out for some fresh air and I was told to get back to work. OK! It was the same office which was obsessed with fruit teas and the smell of them all combined was disgusting. Some of the ladies were also in love with the original guy from Bargain Hunt and he was all they spoke about.

Then the other one, I had a hypochondriac boss who didn’t believe doctors and was the laziest boss I’ve had. This same place I had to take minutes at a displinary meeting for someone who had been accused of being in a men’s magazine and given copies to the teenagers she worked with. The staff there regularly excluded me from stuff and one time they all went to lunch together, meaning I couldn’t go and I hadn’t brought any with me. When they came back two hours later I made a comment that at least I could go and get some food now.

HR also took the kettles away in case we burnt ourselves!!!

Oh wow these are awful!!!

I had a collegue 2 years ago who was an absolute nutcase. She started whilst I was on holiday and all the guys were likes a she’s so crazy, I thought I’d make my own judgement so didn’t pay too much attention....well they were right. We work in clothing store and in my department we sort out the clothes in a particular way, she’d been moved off other departments because she was shit so they dumped her with us. so sorting them out she all of a sudden screams at the top of her voice ‘ no you can’t treat the clothes like that, they need respect, poor things” talking about them like they were animals. She said a few other things at the time to support my claims.

A few years ago a guy in our team who sat next to me was a major hypochondriac. He said the light from outside was damaging his eyes so he wore a baseball cap in the office. Then he said there was glare from the monitor... stuck a massive piece of cardboard as an overhang on top of the monitor to apparently prevent glare, except it kept falling off.

Then he said he had a toe fungal infection and needed to take his shoe and sock off to let it air out - he did it once while I was having lunch at my desk 🤢. We were in an open plan office so I created a code word for my colleagues - and mentioned Camembert whenever he did it!

Some months later we found out he complained to HR whenever somebody from our team had a mild disagreement with him. There were complaints he made about different colleagues on separate occasions and they were over the most minor of things such as suggesting he do a task in a different way. So weird!

I'm so happy we're WFH now because my colleague is always on a weird "diet" and would reheat breaded fish fillets in the microwave in the office kitchen and then bring it to her desk to eat it. It smelt awful!
A different colleague tried to explain it wasn't pleasant for the rest of us and can she eat it in the kitchen.
But, if that colleague went on lunch at a different time she'd gleefully bring her microwaved fish to her desk and say "oooh moanypants isn't here so I can eat in peace"
The smell lingered ALL afternoon and so when "moanypants" came back from lunch, she'd complain the office stinks (quite rightly so!) and open the window all afternoon. So you had the choice of fish stink or be freezing!

I once worked with a guy who intentionally emailed explicit images of his current girlfriend to everyone in the team. He was completely baffled when we weren't appreciative!

I worked with a guy who couldn’t fold a piece of paper in half to put it in an envelope. I kid you not. He was absolutely useless. He had a business and finance degree, yet, working in a building society he couldn’t tell us what an ISA was

I currently work with someone who eats crunchy vegetables at her desk. The noise is just grating. She’s an interfering arse too. She gets involved in everyone’s work and never finishes on time. When she doesn’t finish on time, she takes that time back as she hasn’t finished her own work. She crawls up everyone’s arse 🤮 it’s sickening. My other colleague agrees, so it’s not just me. Someone that needs managing, but my spineless manager won’t say anything.

1st story: Years ago, I had a young chap working as a co-ordinator for me. I was a PM. He had severe insomnia, was a lonely soul and had no friends.

I took him under my wing, boosted his confidence and took him out socially to try and give him a social circle.

As a director, I had to produce high quality briefing docs and reports - but because he basically didn’t sleep, he would take my work and reproduce overnight, handing them directly to our VP, who was very impressed with his work. I was questioned many times over a 6 month period as to why my work wasn’t as good as his!

I stopped inviting him out, because he was quite frankly pissing me off - I was already working 50+ hours a week. And I also found out that he was bad mouthing me to literally everyone and wanted my job. I resigned soon after that as I wasn’t willing to put in an extra 20 hours work each week...when it wasn’t bloody needed.

2nd story: a different company, a different coordinator...she complained constantly of badly cracked heels. She would pick them in meetings and then chew on the skin. Disgusting...

3rd story: worked for the ceo of a small company. He was a sexist, misogynistic prick. He would expect me (as senior mgmt) to make him toast / coffee in the morning, would slap my arse, would call me over to his desk “to look at something important” and it would either be porn or a beheading of some sort. Didn’t last long there at all...

Some of these are quite sad but others have me howling with laughter - where are all these weirdos coming from and how do they hold down jobs?!

I also have worked with real hypochondriacs (particular favourite was the chap who told me a lengthy story about how his GP had laughed at him and he needed my advice as his line manager about whether to raise a formal complaint. We did not work for the doctors surgery, I had no idea why I was supposed to advise on the subject.)

Or the intern who turned out to be quite good but needed a conversation a few weeks in because people had complained to me that he sat scratching his balls in an open office. I had been a manager for approximately 6 weeks at this point. Nothing prepared me for that conversation.

In a previous company the line manager who hired a new team member and then proceeded to tell us all at a team meeting before the person started “I’m really looking forward to her starting as it means I won’t be the fattest person in the team anymore hahaha!!” What a bitch.

@MumofSpud

A recent colleague - I gave her lifts to and from work and sat next to her. She didn't stop talking from 08:30-6pm - I knew every detail of her life - each morning starting with what she had for dinner and her household chores she did and then details of any dreams she had had! This went on for a year - until I was furloughed and then made redundant I haven't heard from her since - nada nothing - weird!!

Why was this so bad?

Some people do talk a lot.....