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.

Fuck me, Shipman

I worked with Rita, she was pretty bad.

Also worked with a woman whose teeth were like something out of a medieval surgery text book - absolutely rotten, bleeding gums etc. When you walked in the office you could tell if she was there or not because of the smell. During meetings, everyone would arrive after her, then sit as far away as possible.

One boss in retail whose main aim each day was to be best friends with her staff Who she saw as cool and trendy, and get a couple of select muggins to do her work, except when any senior management visited when she would put on lipstick, walk around very importantly, speak in a string of buzz words until they left. She spent more time on fag breaks (with the cool gang) than working, but was very full of herself. It was like a school playground crew ran the show.

Another boss who started his own business after a career in a toxic masculine culture, he was aggressive and this was fine apparently cos he and his fellow directors used to talk to each other this way all the time. Difference being that one director swearing at another who can give as good as he gets is one thing, but doing it to your employees who would be sacked if they tried it, is another. He threatened to shoot me once. Luckily I left soon after.

Ooh I just thought of another one: I was temping in an acountancy firm, just as a secretary, while I was 6 months pregnant with DS1. I was pretty large at that point. The head honcho of the firm was an utter sleazebag who thought all the "girls" in the office were there for his personal edification.

He came up behind me at the photocopier, slipped his arm around my waist and purred into my ear, "So, is your husband happy...about the pregnancy?" I stepped back and landed my stiletto heel right on the top of his foot with my full weight on it, then as he screamed in pain, I just said, "Oh dear, I had no idea you would be standing so close!"

Cunt never came near me again.

Oh and I thought I was having a bad time when I started my first ever job share! Thankfully it's all going a lot better now. Some of these are outrageous!

Guy who murdered his wife and kept her under the bed for a few months. Only found out when he stopped coming to work then it appeared in the paper.

Shaving head at his desk guy.

Guy who claimed he had been recruited by MI5 because the work he did in the Tesco call centre had impressed them so much

Woman who smelled so bad I had to have repeated conversations about it with her. People refused to sit in the same pod of desks as her.

The boss who thought that if the place feel apart when he wasn't there it showed what a Very Important and Crucial Manager he was. So he would hide all processes and information from his staff, even down to where important keys were kept, useful telephone numbers, how to access key information etc etc. Then when he went on holiday everyone would be tearing their hair out trying to function while he was away. He would spend a couple of very content days putting things right when he got back and boasting to anyone who would listen how it always falls apart when he's not around. The fact that a good manager makes sure that a place runs well at all times was entirely lost on him.

I used to work for the civil service where the pace of things was very sloooow...e.g we would have a meeting, I would stay late and type up the minutes while everything was fresh in my mind, send them to the chair of the mtg the same day for approval (as requested) before sending out - he would sit on them for a month before declaring ‘no changes, send them to the attendees’. Making me look completely incompetent as secretary.
I can’t stand slow and inefficient people, so I really struggled in this environment.

Other things that stand out from my time there;

• A colleague with severe B.O - the manager had to speak to her multiple times because it was so bad. You could smell it down the hall before you even reached the open plan office.
• Many of the staff used to take long naps during the day in their cars or offices.
• people used to sit playing solitaire all day and not even try and hide it.
• people not sticking to the ‘flexi hours’ I.e coming in 10 everyday and leaving at 2pm, when they got paid for 37 hrs a week

Many, many people in that building were a complete waste of tax payers money unfortunately!

In a previous job I was supervising an intern on a placement year - the company took on a full cohort and the interns did a rotation of three months in different departments.

She came into our (customer facing) office wearing the same stained joggers every day until I had a quiet word about the dress code. She would fart quite freely at her desk, made an inhuman amount of noise just eating a fucking sandwich and one time - I wish I was making this up - idly scratched her fanny while standing next to my desk asking me a question.

I once asked her to type up some minutes. A little while later she laughed and told me in the most condescending tone that my spelling could use some work, until I pointed out that she was looking at an acronym, not a spelling error

In the end, she was moved to her next placement early because she felt the work we did was beneath her so she just stopped doing what was asked of her. I was not sad about it.

I've worked with a few odd people - one would lie down under a table for an hour every afternoon to relieve pressure on his spine/snooze. He always worked his hours but it was a bit odd when he's suddenly pop out from under a table.

This isn't cheerful at all. The worst person I ever worked with was an alcoholic who had become estranged from all her family, her children had gone into care and she had been abandoned by all her friends. She was foul to work with. She was deeply unhappy and her mood would affect everyone and the management kept moving her around as everyone complained about her. It felt like she'd purposely spoil other people's good times.

She started to make kind gestures and sort her life out. I decided after a good week working with her that I was going to make an effort to socialise more with her - she'd been nasty and upset virtually everyone but she seemed to be turning over a new leaf. That weekend she killed herself but no one realised until she'd been absent for a few weeks. Quite a few people rejoiced at her absence whilst scoffing the biscuits she'd brought in to the tea room.

@PandemicAtTheDisco

I've worked with a few odd people - one would lie down under a table for an hour every afternoon to relieve pressure on his spine/snooze. He always worked his hours but it was a bit odd when he's suddenly pop out from under a table.

This isn't cheerful at all. The worst person I ever worked with was an alcoholic who had become estranged from all her family, her children had gone into care and she had been abandoned by all her friends. She was foul to work with. She was deeply unhappy and her mood would affect everyone and the management kept moving her around as everyone complained about her. It felt like she'd purposely spoil other people's good times.

She started to make kind gestures and sort her life out. I decided after a good week working with her that I was going to make an effort to socialise more with her - she'd been nasty and upset virtually everyone but she seemed to be turning over a new leaf. That weekend she killed herself but no one realised until she'd been absent for a few weeks. Quite a few people rejoiced at her absence whilst scoffing the biscuits she'd brought in to the tea room.

Oh that's awful

Sounds like she was recovering and had realised enough about herself to see just what she had lost but because she had no one left, she had no one to support her through the rest of her recovery.

Its made me cry, and I am so sorry that you didnt get the chance to be there for her. I hope the biscuits choked your colleagues.

@PyongyangKipperbang

Sorry for upsetting you. It's really something I'll never forget. She truly was an awful person to work with but we learnt a lot more about what she'd been through at the funeral and many people felt bad. She needed help and no one was there for her. It's maybe the worst people that need kindness the most.

I worked for one woman who wanted you to be her best friend one minute and was a micro-managing bitch the next.

Also worked for a man who wanted the entire team I was working for to gang up on me. Some did (arse-licking cunts) but not everyone, so I soon found out what he was up to. I found out many years later that something similar subsequently happened to him which was wryly amusing.

Guy who murdered his wife and kept her under the bed for a few months. Only found out when he stopped coming to work then it appeared in the paper

Holy hell!

I was going to post some of the usual lazy/useless colleague stories, but I feel a bit better about my place after reading this thread!

Pandemic that's awful. But you should be proud of yourself for making the effort and recognising her difficulties and wanting to support her.

Our colleague’s spouse died. I remember the day it happened, as people who were usually quite guarded with their emotions were crying in the halls. Those closest to our colleague decided to go to the funeral, using their lunch break and making up the rest of the time at the end of the day. Our absolute arsehole of a coworker complained loudly all day about people getting ‘free-time’ off work and how unfair it was to him! Nobody liked him before, but from that point on, no one would work with him, some people completely refused to speak to him. The atmosphere in the office was terrible and the worst part was, he was completely convinced he was the one who suffered by not getting a couple of hours away from the office.

I started a new job and was working in the same area as a woman working for a very senior manager. She was in a stressful job, working for a demanding person, but she was such a bitch and took her stress out on everyone around her. Kept telling me how to do my job when my manager was ten feet away. When she went on holiday I had a steady stream of colleagues come and introduce themselves to me - they'd stayed away when she was around because they were avoiding her. I had thought it was a really weird place to work because no one from other departments had ever spoken to me. When she came back she was most upset that I'd covered her job to her manager's satisfaction and done my own. She left soon after.

I also had the dubious pleasure of sitting in part of the office near someone who was very loud on the phone and an oversharer. Within a week I knew all sorts of personal info I really didn't care to. It was toe-curling.

A staff nurse who shouted at me, in a ward of six patients and their relatives, because I told her I wasn't willing to do a procedure I wasn't trained for (as a HCA, not a band 5 - wanted me to pack and clean and medicate a tunnelling pressure sore) .

I was so terrified of her (I'm HFA) that the next thing we had to do together; my hands were shaking and I couldn't do it fast enough - lo and behold she starts shouting again, this time adding several colleagues watching. I ended up in tears, patient ended up trying to comfort me . Absolutely horrendous .

She would regularly look me up and down, told me I was fat, useless, crap at my job and wasting my time bothering . All in front of patients and their lovely families . Was a daily event .

Eventually I got so worked up over working with her or her cronies that I blacked out on shift, and coincidentally she left six weeks later; ward sisters and several other staff were also shifted very quickly (toxic/hostile environment) .

I saw her a year later, she approached me in another ward when my mother was very unwell . I told her to find a colleague instead ...

Think she's since been sacked altogether .

A colleague printed off a meme about people with my disability and sent it to me. She scrawled a comment on it that could be taken as threatening. And did so anonymously.

She thought it was funny and thought I would too. Couldn’t understand why my boss and I were so freaked out and demanding to know if it was her.

@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.

Woah! I would have thought he'd have had a lot of paperwork .

So many!
A shy young man started at my shop. He didn’t tell us much about himself but that’s not uncommon as a lot of people use retail as a stop gap. A few weeks later he asked to speak for me and asked what was ‘really’ going on and how had a manage to film him through his window? He told my manager that he knew I had obtained some footage of him engaging in some fetishistic behaviour and had shared it around the office. I had been leaving clues to this around, such as leaving packs of nappies in the stock room (we sold nappies) and saying the word Mr Brown repetitively. I now can look back and see that he was obviously very unwell and delusional/paranoid. At the time I was so confused. I even let him check my phone and the work laptop but it didn’t reassure him.

Also worked with an actual medical doctor who couldn’t attach a file to an email or join a teams meeting without assistance. Lost it and blamed the computer/ admin staff/ other staff grade doctors for her ineptitude.

The temp who was given the task of scanning then shredding past mortgage applications but couldn't be arsed with the scanning bit.

I managed a trainee who had previously done a post grad qualification and worked for about a year - both entirely unrelated to the work we did. She was convinced that this would mean she got special treatment/fast-tracked. She was also convinced that during her (very well paid, 3 year long) training period she should not be expected to do any actual work- just study and do a bit of work shadowing. Despite being shown her contract and recruitment info etc that clearly stated her role she complained to my boss about me and when that didn't work complained to HR about all of us.

She left after about 6 months but a few months later appeared in reception and demanded to see me. She had started a life coach business and wanted the company to pay her to run sessions for staff (for a high fee). Couldn't understand why the answer was no.