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'm another who used to work in education and I was going to post my experiences, but I honestly think you wouldn't believe me. @MollyBloomYes I am glad you and baby were ok, and I believe every word you typed.

Not a worst colleague because she makes me laugh but there is someone who has IT problems every single day. All said straight faced with an air of total surprise . Every day I wait to see what’s up with her this time

You won’t beat this for grimness. I worked in an office owned by a man whose son worked for the company too, same role as me and there was about 8 of us in an office.
The son would tug himself off at his desk, leave the “result” on the underside of his desk and then photograph it to show his girlfriend.
He called it his pleasure station

One guy I worked with when I was a teengaer at burger King. He thought he owned the place and every single little thing he would make it out like I was really dumb and slow, and say come on Popsicle, it's not rocket science. All bloody day long. I'd just be making a customer a bloody drink and if I took too long he would say it loudly and repeatedly. I don't know what he wanted me to do, slam the dispense so it all all came spouting out and drench me to get it in the cup quicker.

I also had a girl I worked with in my office when I was a bit older and I am asthmatic so she would call me darth vader in front of other colleagues. She would also post notes into people's lockers, asking them to go out for drinks with her when they had wives and girl friends. She works at a shop down near me now and was rude to me in front of my children. My husband said she should have put her in her place. I'm just too nice and polite. I shrugged it off and left the shop....

Fat old toad of a man who regularly made rape jokes and other inappropriate comments to women. Sexually harassed me while i was pregnant, which caused me to have a complete mental breakdown with now lifelong mental health issues. The fucker still works there, in my team because i couldn't go through with a full grievance at the time as only had a week to go til maternity leave started. Also harassed a number of other women.

The married man who got fired for shagging one of the secretaries in the toilets after 5pm when he was supposed to be working late as per his contacted hours. He would also email women and tell them how attractive they thought they were. Approached one woman for a threesome with him and his wife.

The one who smelled really really bad. But he was a lovely guy. But unbearable to sit near.

Another man who had awful halitosis. Like something had crawled into his mouth and died. The manager's solution was to liberally spray perfume, which one of my colleagues was allergic to but she was told to suck it up because john smells.

The bitch who bullied me and turned the rest of the department against me too. I was much younger then, i wouldn't stand for it now.

All the same place.

In my first job my boss always used to come to me at 5.15 with an urgent task that had to be done by the end of that day. I swear he took great pleasure in saving things for the end of the day, giving it to me then going home, I immediately starting looking for a new job, quit and never looked back.

I do think teaching attracts some dreadful people. Both my parents (normal friendly reasonable popular people) were teachers and each had one at one point in their careers had an utterly mental boss. Thankfully these people left but they were lunatics.

My mother was a governor on the recruitment panel and voted against hiring the mental head (correctly it transpired) but it got back to the head. My mother then had to work for her...

I had a manager who was amazing at her job. Really talented and creative. However she once made me go out and buy a gigantic fish tank, and all the equipment and fish for it and set it up in the office toilet so she could give it to her (supposedly secret but everyone knew) boyfriend who worked downstairs for his birthday. Then when one of the fish died I had to do a 40 mile round trip to take its body for a post mortem. But I'd work for her again in a heartbeat as she was amazing in many other ways.

The worst colleague I have had was the person who turned every against one another and bitched and lied so nobody knew the truth. She was a mean one and our weak manager did nothing about her despite knowing how awful she was. She sent at least two young colleagues off with stress and anxiety. Our useless manager was made redundant and then she was put in charge as the remote management believed she was indispensable. She spoilt what was a lovely job role for me.

Oh I’ve got a great one.

New member of staff who had negotiated salary and start date. She came with a reputation of being brilliant at her job. We were sharing an office, and under the same line manager. We worked in the charity sector.

For the first few weeks she turned up late every day and talked about herself rather than doing any work. She said she wanted to get a feel of things before committing pen to paper.

After about a month, she began disagreeing with me on things. Pretty much anything I said, and then proceeded to go to our boss to double check things. We’re talking simple things like which key unlocked which door, and a persons name.
Over time she became critical of everything we did and one day, when I was explaining our project to a parent she swooped in and shouted at me in front of them.

In the end she didn’t pass her 3 monthly review and was let go, however she continued to turn up for work. We all sat there a bit flabbergasted when she walked in to the meeting. My boss had a quiet conversation separately but we could hear her shouting and denying she had been asked to leave.
Very quirky.

@MollyBloomYes that's appalling, but as a former teacher I'm sadly not surprised. You and your baby were so fortunate to be unharmed. Out of interest what do you do now in the NHS? I'm always curious to see where fellow ex teachers end up!

I worked as a supply teacher. I've had lots of deaf students over the years so I'm used to working with CSWs and interpreters.

So I went to a class where the interpreter told me, "X doesn't understand why she has to do this again" so I explained, in English, that 'no she didn't need to repeat the work she had to do something slightly different" It was looking at life stages and she'd missed one stage out.

Anyway the interpreter ignored me and repeated that, "X doesn't understand".

So this is repeated and then I turned tot he interpreter and asked her to interpret what I was saying. I was very polite about it.

I received a mini lecture on how not all interpreting is simultaneous and she (the interpreter) knew what she was doing.

So I asked her to interpret again what I was saying, she sighed and signed to X. BUT she didn't sign what I was saying. So I signed to X what she needed to do and why.

Interpreter was furious, the CSW who I didn't know was a CSW because she was sitting on a computer shouted that, "I saw her do that"

I just thought the terp was having a bad day and didn't think much of it.

I got to my next lesson with a different interpreter and we recognised each other, we finally worked out I'd interpreted a conference she had attended a couple of years previously.

While I was teaching the first interpreter put a complaint in to HR. I'm not sure what she put, but she was not impressed with me.

The following day I saw the second interpreter who, unwittingly was an angel, and had discussed with terp1 how experienced an interpreter I was and how well I interacted with X.

I was sent a message that terp1, "would not take the complaint further as long as I didn't complain about her".

@BluebelllsRosesDaffodills no he went to prison

Well, there was the boss I had when I was off sick six weeks with stress. On my first day back she decided it was my turn to chair her team meeting for the first time.

Or, the boss I had who called to berate me about something but I was on the phone to a customer so she made one of my team put a note on my desk that said "call boss now!" When I did, I couldn't get through because she was on the phone berating another team member. When we finally got to speak, she yelled down the phone at me for 40 minutes.

Another one had 7 in her team and within months 2 were off sick with stress.

Most fun was the boss who spent an afternoon telling me that I needed to let go of getting involved in things and should just concentrate on my own work. The following morning she asked me to set aside my project and use a particular skill of mine to help dig a colleague out of a big hole he'd made which was now becoming embarrassing.

A colleague who did not grasp that they did need to wear some kind of deodorant and clothes do need washing. They prided themselves on their excellent sense of smell

@WannabemoreWeaver sunroof guy was cute. Not really in the spirit of this thread I suppose. He would be over 50 now and I do wonder if he’s about somewhere still trying to squeeze through a car sunroof. 😀

These are amazing

I used to work in a jewellers and it was a commission based job.
My superior would wait until I'd nearly made a sale and would then tell me to go do a menial task like clean the shelves and she would take over the sale.
Ended up leaving the job as she was taking all my good sales and I couldn't do anything about it.

Thank you OP for starting this thread, it's brought a smile to my face (thanking that I never had anyone remotely as bad as some). Nothing tops the Harold Shipman co-worker.

Better to have been Harold Shipman's colleague than his patient I reckon!

I once worked in a large department store and the worst colleague only got a job there because his uncle was on the board. He had no people skills or manners whatsoever and was an awful bully. Eventually he left, apparently to run a bar in a seaside town though how on earth he'd get on with a job like that I dread to think.

All my anecdotes come from the same woman and her teenaged daughter who was an apprentice in the school I worked in her mum was a (very lazy) Teaching assistant.
This 18 year old used to wear short pleather mini skirts with very very low cut tops so when she was working with the young children you could either see almost all of her breasts or her knickers! This same 18 year old used to attend staff meetings and when the head teacher was speaking she used to just go on her phone blatantly and take her contraceptive pill in front of everyone!

Awful toxic School full of over promoted unqualified staff who were related to theCEO.
I was a qualified teacher there but considered the lowest of the low. Was dreadfully bullied by SLT so much so my case was filed for tribunal. I left with a huge payout

Thanks for all your stories! They’ve certainly kept me entertained 😃😳

I’ve NC for this.

Worst colleague - would be out all night sniffing coke and working as an ‘escort’ then come in to work and actually talk about it to a few of us. I actually spoke to her parent who was our line manager about as I was actually really concerned about her.

Colleague then started to come to work wired from taking drugs all night and have to go and ‘hide’ in the building so she could get shit together. She wasn’t turning up for work and I had to do her work load, she was never reprimanded for any off it.

I eventually told our head of department because she was a fucking liability. Head of department assured me they were aware of her ahem ‘lateness’ and alluded to that they were trying to get rid off her.

The line manager ( parent of employee) then started being a total asshole to me to the point I left.

The worst part of it was the job involved working with children.

This was years and years ago and employee STILL works there

@andannabegins

Oh and one of my colleagues at my current work eats apples really loudly across the room which drives me mad but in the grand scheme of things is not too bad!

I had one of those. Only she didn't just eat apples loudly. Anything. She particularly loved celery. The chewing noises she made were awful. I've never been bothered about people eating before but seriously this woman was gross. She also loved to slurp coffee .

Mick the Master Farter was just grim. Enough said.

A while ago we had a phantom poo spreader in the female toilets. Really. I saw it. Gross.

How do some people get on in life?