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.

I used to work at a small family business ran by Husband and Wife. They had a row every day and the wife came into the office crying and take a bottle of vodka out of her wicker basket and take a massive swig. By the end of the day she was slumped over her typewriter. The next day she would come in as though nothing had happened and it would start all over again. Happy days !!!!!

Worked at Argos in the 1990's, Christmas temp started nearly always late starting and coming back from lunch.
We found out she was a prositute and if she had a client Argos had to wait.

Mostly I've worked with very capable, smart people, but a few were a right pain.

One was supposed to support me (both working in management consulting) by participating in interviews to discuss potential organisational changes in a client company, then typing up the notes and doing some analysis on the data. After one or two (of dozens of interviews) it became apparent that she struggled with this, so I started briefing her in detail in advance (to make sure she knew as much about the topic and the interviewee's role as possible and make it easier for her to follow the conversation), take my own summary notes during the interview, and debrief her afterwards to make sure she had understood all key points. Her notes were still atrocious. Almost everything she wrote was completely wrong, or so badly written that it verged on incomprehensible. For example one senior interviewee said quite clearly that he very much did not support the proposed change and explained why. In her notes she wrote that he was very happy to support the change. I would correct her notes, explaining my rationale for each change, send them back - and in the next iteration she would then introduce additional 'improvements' (I.e. new, completely incorrect information that she'd decided to add for some reason). For each 1 hr interview I must have spent hours on discussions and review cycles. In the end she did a lot of 'self study' while I dealt with all project work myself. She had a masters level degree in a scientific field and worked with us in a well paid, sought after role

I once sat next to someone in the office who ate very loudly with lip smacking and was constantly chowing down snacks. I used to keep earplugs in my desk which I would pop in at the first rustle of packaging. If it wasn't for blocking my hearing, I would have probably had to murder him which would have been a shame as he was a nice man.

We had a YTS (god that makes me sound so old) lovely lad but he had some strange condition which turned his tongue brown and it dried like flakey skin. Every lunchtime without fail he would pick this layer of skin off his tongue and pop it in the waste paper basket.

I had a boss who wanted me to book cheerleaders that flipped and somersaulted for a rooftop garden party at top of a skyscraper in the city. I said "but that could have quite a high risk of ...death..' and he just looked directly at me and said, 'yup. Put it in the risk assessment. '

Mine isn't very lighthearted but he was certainly the worst colleague I've ever had...he was caught taking photos of female customers then telling people 'look at my girlfriend', 'accidentally' showed a female colleague porn on his phone when he was 'trying to show her a photo', management had several complaints from work experience students that he made them feel uncomfortable, and told a colleague in her early 20s (he was mid 50s) "always marry someone 20 years older than you, they have more experience"...all with no consequence. Large, very well known high street chain. Last I heard he was still working there. He was a lazy fucker as well so I'm not sure what his redeeming feature was in the eyes of management to keep him around!

I worked in a large organisation and switched from one department to another. I had to job share with a woman who had done the job for years and was extremely close to the team and best friends with our manager. It was only a job share because she had a huge amount of work and couldn't handle it on her own so we were both full time.

She was a pain in the arse from day 1. She had the desks surrounded with plants - huge plants that attracted these little black flies, it was like being in the fucking jungle. This was an office of 2 teams but she took up so much room with her plants (later when we all moved to an open plan office with 5 teams she took the plants with her!!!!). She couldn't stand if I had a more efficient way of doing things or good ideas, especially if others agreed with me- she would shoot everything down, dismiss it with the most bizarre reasoning ("we can't email so and so the reports because they're not paid to print, we are"). If our boss agreed with me about how something should be done she would sabotage until she got things her way. The gaslighting and manipulation that went on all because she was threatened by me was completely insane. A real underhanded bully type who really played the victim, anyone who didn't know her thought she was charming. Sometimes she would make little digs at me under her breath and of course no one else heard it but they would hear me react to it. Worst of all though she had this annoying habit of constantly calling everyone sweet pea all the time. Drove me crazy.

Everyday she would swan in at 10am and claimed she worked until 7pm but others said she always left at 5pm. I worked 8 -4pm but at one point my dad was in hospital so I had arranged to leave a little bit earlier to visit him. We had a shared inbox and I found an email from her to another colleague slagging me off for leaving early! When I flagged it up to our manager the manager said she couldn't deal with it because they were too close so had to go to grand boss! So many people had sympathy for me working with her and the grand boss used to talk to me a lot about how he could see what she was like yet no one did anything about her! When I had to have supervision meetings my boss/her BFF would agree with me when I pointed out how difficult she was but still did nothing.

I seem to attract arsehole managers when I'm pregnant.

First was very senior manager kicking off because I refused to carry heavy equipment around a 10 story office block when 7 months pregnant. My response was a polite "I'll arrange a porter job and let you know what time it'll be done by". His response was to try and fire me for insubordination! He obviously failed.

The other was my direct line manager. She was clearly and purposefully discriminating against me for being pregnant (paying for all of my colleagues to get an industry relevant qualification but not me, excluding me from work events and projects amongst more petty stuff too).

I tried having a gentle conversation on the basis that she might have been trying to "protect" me from extra work when she screamed at me that I needed to be excluded for abandoning the team to have a baby. She then raised a formal disciplinary against me for my shouting at her during the conversation. Fortunately my side of the conversation had two witnesses who were admittedly nosey fuckers but fully supported me in getting the disciplinary overturned. She was properly batshit and I was so relieved she lost her job during my maternity leave, not sure I could have returned to her team.

My office mate used to work about 2 hours in the morning out on the floor, then come back to our shared office to 1. balance her checkbook, 2. make calls about her private side job, 3. make long, loud calls to her mother while I was trying to work (and the people on the work calls I was making could hear her). Told me if it disturbed me I should work outside the office. The kicker was when I turned around from my desk after hearing a strange noise during a call and she was cutting her toe nails. If she had to work more than a few hours she would get really stroppy and tell our boss she needed help from us (everyone else in the department was busy from the minute they arrived until they left). It was not new behaviour when I arrived - she was famous for it. So when the boss came to ask me to help her I always refused pointing out that I already worked full time and wasnt going to add more to my day to help someone so they could mess around for most of the day.

A young guy I worked with was so full of energy he was like a pinball bouncing around the office all day. He was nice enough but a bit clueless. At the end of every day he would scoot down the stairs and the office would gather at the windows to watch him run across the carpark, leap onto his bonnet and climb in through the sunroof before driving off. 😀

I once worked at a place with a man who was employed in a general odd-job-man kind of role around the office - collecting and distributing the post and generally helping out where needed. He was a lovely bloke and always willing to help anybody and pick up slack, but there just wasn't always that much for him to do.

He spent most of his days going through the envelopes from the received post and checking out for every unfranked stamp, before meticulously removing it for re-use. The line managers knew he did it, didn't mind at all - and he was always very happy to share the 'loot' with them and everybody else.

It just seemed so bizarre that he would spend so much time for not very much gain. The company must have paid him far more per hour than he 'saved' in postage costs. Bearing in mind that this was a huge international FTSE 100 company and all of the outgoing company mail got properly business franked and collected anyway (and the vast majority of the incoming mail was business franked too) - so the relatively few 'reclaimed' stamps that he spent hours removing with his various assembled equipment and unsticking/cleansing fluids were only ever used by individuals for their own personal post.

Genuinely great chap - and by no means stingy in his everyday life and interaction with everybody else. I think he must have just spotted one one day that had missed the RM machines and thus began a long-term obsession.

We had an apprentice who used breastmilk in our coffee for a few days without telling us until months later!

We also had a receptionist who drew up plans of how we could redecorate the waiting room which featured two wheelie bins and a massive prop syringe.

Had an awful colleague that was just a nightmare. She had been a PA for a long time, but her role when I worked with her was an admin role. She clearly felt this was below her, and only interacted positively with people who were director level or above. As our role was primarily interacting with general staff, that was an issue. She definitely didn't like me, I think because I had been in post much longer that her, so knew processes/procedures/general company knowledge that she didn't. You could guarantee that if I said something was done one way, she would do the opposite. No end of problems with her screwing up really simple stuff, just through being bloody minded. We had desks facing each other and touching, and the recycling bin was next to me. She would throw waste paper at me. Not at the bin, actually at me so it hit me. She was openly racist, she 'couldn't see the problem with calling people racial slur because they are' and she thought that a particular famous actor was 'quite good looking for a black man' All were reported to management, who seemed to just shrug their shoulders and ignore it.

Another colleague, worked in a different dept to me, but I had to interact with them often. They worked outside the building but came back for tea break and lunch, so if I needed to speak to them I would pop into their break room at those times. The break room always smelled faintly of vomit, I'd stand outside the door, no idea what the smell was but it was gross. One day, talking to a member of his team it turns out he opens the 1litre pack of uht milk, and leaves it out till he's used it all, because you 'don't need to put it in the fridge' his colleagues bring their own milk, meanwhile he takes a fortnight to get through a litre, vigorously stirring his tea to get rid of the lumps! Boak.

@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!

🤣 I’m borrowing that phrase lol

I had a colleague once who smelled so bad. It was a mix of unwashed, cat pee, poo and death 🤢 Even my line manager walked around with a scarf round his face, because the smell made him feel sick. It really was vile. I dreaded my shifts with him.

The manager who asked that we were at our desk 5 minutes before our start time (effectivley making us work 20 minutes a week for free....) and we had be there on.the.dot and getting a warning for being 2-3 minutes late... bearing in mind I'm on public transport, I have no control over. I started to get the earlier bus, but could still sometimes be a couple of minutes late if the traffic was bad. It wasn't as if I didn't try. My last job where the Manager had so much time off sick it was ridiculous and would proudly proclaim she was a bigot as well as bullying my poor colleague with mental health problems....and my current job where the interim Manager decided she liked my desk and basically took over it when I wfh and left literally rotting food and half drunk cups of tea/coffee which congealed and went green

Oh i also had a smelly colleague! She rarely washed, claimed she didn't need to, but always wore a lot of perfume. She stank to the point that someone quit rather than work with her anymore. Her tops had almost green stains under her armpits and even her coat which was left in the staffroom stank.

I was sick one day and was waiting for DH to pick me up when she passed me and said 'Oh gosh good job you're going home I couldn't bear to smell all day'. The next day we worked together I handed her a deodorant and smellies set and told her 'I got this because you said you couldn't bear to smell all day, but you do'.

I worked with two such idiots.

First one used to go to the bathroom alot. It got to the stage where the manager had to check on him to see if he had a UTI. That manager followed him one day and found him "having some fun times with himself" in the bathroom. He was frog marched out the door.

Second one was using our helpline on telesales as a dating service. If she liked your voice she would talk dirty. She got the door too.

I started a role as interim head of finance. Purchase ledger clerk insisted on calling me "the temp" - and thought I was going to do all of her data input for her because she was too busy (playing tetris as far as I could see).
Turned out the guy I'd replaced had indeed done most of her data input for her - and much of everyone else's work too, which had probably contributed to his breakdown.

FD & I did a happy dance around the office at 9am when she resigned a few weeks later.
She then complained to the chief exec that she'd only resigned because she'd assumed they'd get rid of me to keep her on. Chief exec went to the FD and asked did she have to stay and work her notice, couldn't we get rid of the old bat straight away.
And she was an absolute cow to person who joined to replace her, including addressing her as "temp" for the entire week of handover.
Happy Days

@FlippinFedUp21

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

Thank you *@FlippinFedUp21*. I was pretty astonished by it too. Still, at least all my colleague relationships have been easier since then!

I had a smelly colleague once. She was barely out of school and I dont think had had a brilliant upbringing. Lots of things she said added up to make it sound quite neglectful so I suspect she may just never have been taught that she needed to wash every day.

Our manager, who was an absolute cow in every way, wussed out and refused to say anything delegating the task to me as I was training the girl. I did it as nicely as possible but honestly I felt awful. At the time I was angry with my manager for making me do it but thinking back, she was such a bitch the poor girl would probably have been humiliated so I am glad it was me.

@draughtycatflap

A young guy I worked with was so full of energy he was like a pinball bouncing around the office all day. He was nice enough but a bit clueless. At the end of every day he would scoot down the stairs and the office would gather at the windows to watch him run across the carpark, leap onto his bonnet and climb in through the sunroof before driving off. 😀

That is really cute. I bet it could get a bit annoying but sounds adorable, actually.

A previous boss was a horrific nightmare. For example. The office (all women except him) was so cold that I worse thermals, coat, hat, gloves and scarf and scarf all day every day. Being incredibly magnanimous he decided to get some of his male staff to put up a partition between us and the ginormous garage type door that let in huge gusts of freezing air every time it was opened. As the blokes were putting the partition up my boss goes "Not that we need that anyway, with four women in here it's hot enough already". I left soon after.

I dont know, I've never seen that one.