To ask you to describe your worst colleague

[SydneyJones]

I work with someone who's so tight. Will never contribute to presents (weddings, new baby etc). Donations can be anything like 50p etc.

Any food people bring in he will help himself in adundance. He has never brought in any food to share.

I helped him out loads and asked him for a review (evidence to give to manager for our yearly review) and he wrote one word answers. Not one sentence, my manager was baffled when she read it.

He doesn't log into his phone so we always get calls from his customers.

I've worked with worse people but he's the worst right now. Anyone else?

We have one who is the Grammar Police, and picks up on any comment as racist, we just wait for her to go out of the office, then someone will pick up one of her letters. for the boss and read it out with all her own mistakes.

She has no idea why we all smile when she goes off on one.

So many!

Ridiculously negative colleague who never had a good word to say about anyone. Thankfully just left.

Colleague who was off for spurious reasons for a whole year because he was on a competency programme, failing miserably and didn't want to face the music. We all had to pick up the slack.

Manager who prevented others from being promoted and told us all that the big boss didn't want us talking to him. Turns out big boss is really nice and she told him huge lies about us all, he realised this as soon as she left and we were then directly managed by him.

Manager who can't be bothered to talk to his team and just sends emails occasionally bollocking us if we've done something he didn't like or to tell us huge important stuff that needs lots of clarification.

Manager who said she would only ever tell us the negative stuff about what we'd done so we'd improve and would deliberately leave out praise because we knew what we'd done well. I left quite soon!

Passive aggressive constantly whilst smiling sweetly. Also incredibly defensive and pc. Everyone else in the department ( all men) don't really see it. We used to be friends until she became a pita.

ethelfleda are you me?!

worst colleague; older man

sleeps in his chair
talks over people & butts in when 2 others are having a conversation
repeats what you've just said as though you've never said it to make himself look good
inappropriate/racist comments
patronising
never makes tea
constantly bigs himself up &thinks he knows it all
wheels his chair over to your side when hes asked me to do something (he doesn't have access to)
thinks everyone else knows less than him
patronises his colleague (I am on a different job but he sits behind me)
utterly insensitive
always goes on about what his colleague/me eats in a food police way
disappears to do his own errands/pretend job errands or just goes home early
always implies no one else does any work but him

the worse thing is the bosses all love him and let him dictate to them!

From the past, an aggressive cow. She would storm in, bang out an abusive email to send to one of the other 3 of us who worked with her, then storm out of the room to rant and rave at her husband who worked in the same building, or phone our manager in London and do the same to him. She was an aggressive, abusive lout who never took responsibility for her own actions. If she treated anyone badly, it was their fault.

We all eat noisy smelly food (I can deal with all that & am an equal offender).
One colleague slurps his coffee. Yick.

I presume I must do something equally annoying, though, I'm just blind to it.

I have a colleague who I really, really like, but on a Friday he goes to the canteen for fish and chips and brings it back to our office to eat. It absolutely reeks, and the office stinks for the rest of the day. There are four of us who share the office, including the fish-eater, and because he is such a nice man, we three others are too polite to say anything.

I started working washing up in a pub restaurant at age 11 (tiny but very busy village pub)
By age 16 I was making food and waiting on, depending what was needed. New temp head chef arrived. Kinda creepy looking fella in his 30's. At the time there were 3 regular waitresses, me (16) and a 15 and 14 year old. He sat next to me once trapping me into the staff table and tried to kiss me open mouthed. Forcefully! Ew!
Turns out he'd tried similar with the 15 and 14 year olds too!! He denied everything to the bosses. Said it was silly girls making stories up. Nothing was done.

He then had it out for me.

I had a radio (my own from home and fine with the bosses) in my kitchen which was away from his main one where the cookers were, and he kept switching it over to the cricket every time he walked in but never stayed to listen to the score. Obviously the monotonous drone of the commentator and continual irritating air horns (seriously, WTF does anyone listen to cricket?!) was purely to annoy me. I kept turning it back to pop songs. Every. Single. Time.
I came in the next day to find the power cord severed.

Things kept going wrong in my kitchen, like being out of stock I needed even after I had done a stock take for the boss's Booker run the evening before. The bosses assumed/were told I was screwing up. Even though I had been there through dozens of chefs, and even three new owners, I seemed to be unable to do my job.

Until the boss came home early one day in a new car he's bought and watched chef Twat filling his boot with stock. He'd been taking it after I'd given my Booker order to the boss so that I would be out of the things my kitchen needed for service.

I wish I had been there the moment he was fired. I would have waved him off.

A colleague who did my training in a new job a few years ago made a big thing of sending round-robin emails to the whole team saying how well I was doing. Naive me thought he was being nice and supporting me. Then I started doing better than him at my job. Suddenly if I brought up anything I'd done in a team meeting or on an email chain, he'd respond with 'That's great, but have you asked permission from X / have you considered doing Y instead / make sure you don't forget Z'. He still looked helpful, but was doing his best to undermine me. I realised that it had suited him for me to be good at my job when he was training me up, as he could present me as his success story. When I did better on my own, people realised I had done well because of me, not him - hence he did all he could to knock me.

Manager who made me redundant and then had a massive go at me in front of the whole office when he wasn't invited to my leaving do.

I worked part time for a family run business.

One colleague would go out for a cigerrette break every hour and still have an hour lunch, yet would moan if I needed to pop to the toilet.

We had to work in twos and the one male would leave me alone on many occasions wondering out the building to make phone calls and going MIA for hours coming back just in time for closing.

One of the morbidly obese males would make me call the take aways to order his food. He couldn't speak English and would just prod the menu and didn't say please or thank you.

I've had one who use to push himself upon me when walking passed.

And one of them use to slag us off on Facebook saying he worked with a bunch of idiots/morons.

If anything had gone wrong with a customer the one would pretend (the manager actually) she didn't speak English and didn't understand when she did.

Safe to say I no longer work there, it made me so sad. All that just to pay my bills!!

Manager was total manipulative bully - nice/nasty cycle- the works

made long serving member of staff come into work on day of mother's funeral and only allowed her a long lunch break for the funeral (time to be made up later in the week).

told member of staff whose child was in itu with meningitis that she had to come into work for her shift.

member of staff had holiday paid for by parents and needed an extra day off - staff happy to cover - manager emailed all the staff saying that it was understood that member of staff could only afford the holiday because her parents were paying for her and were we really happy to cover her shifts.

forced pregnant employee to climb steps for her job rather than make adjustments - when she said she was unable to - bullied her into early maternity leave and when she returned she received no discretionary bonus because she was so 'difficult'

no-one wanted to sit next to manager for Christmas meals because manager would nick food off your plate.

my heart still sinks if I ever meet said manager when out and about even though manager retired 20 years ago!

Sales guy who hock spat in my bin next to my desk. Same bloke used to take off his socks and put his feet on his desk to cut his toenails and did not pick up the bits (that's what cleaners are for). Thing is, he was dead posh, public school type with some startlingly common verbal traits as per tim nice but dim. Dreadful chap.

Boss/owner of the company was a manipulative bully, she didn't bully me but she bullied my work friend and it was awful. Work friend left eventually and I followed suit (I also found out my boss had been stealing client money claiming our company had done work I know for a fact hadn't been done. Boss covered her tracks as soon as I made it obvious I'd seen what she had done).

Boss wouldn't let me take any breaks or put the heating on in winter. Funny how when she was in the heating would be on. I was young at the time and should have told my boss where to stick her job.

Worked with a girl who was absolute tripe at doing her role. Thought she was gods gift to the world and that every man fancied her. Looked at everyone like they were shit on her shoe and reported people to HR for absolutely nothing - a colleague comforted her once, as she was crying, and this girl then reported said colleague for invading her personal space.

Colleague had been working with us for only a few weeks when she complained to the regional manager about me and another colleague. She claimed we had been inappropriately discussing the fact that she was dating a transgender person. The fact of the transgender status was supposed to be a secret from some of us but not others, inevitably the secret got out but not via the accused parties. It annoyed me that she didn't allow my immediate manager to deal with it at the time. I still bear a grudge, although I shouldn't. I can't trust her now.

Various members of her family and friends regularly and frequently come in to have a chat with her for 10 minutes during work time. She's taking the piss, nobody has noticed.

I can work with her well enough. I would dread being on my own with her all day (unlikely unless somebody else was off sick) because we don't talk at all.

i'm working with a fantasist who bigs herself up at every opportunity (external partners say she's the most attractive, the epitome of our profession, the only person they can trust/rely on etc)

she tries to emulate traits/behaviours that other colleagues have, that make them valued/likable/trusted etc -but its so obviously a poor attempt at copying that she falls short of achieving

she's lazy but spends time working on other colleagues' statistics, to try to make out she does more (but doesn't)

she tries to corner individuals and make it seem they are 'special confidants' , or try to pitch one person against another

she is barking mad- but not in a good way- then puts on a poor me-everyone against me victimhood scene,

rest of the team tread on egg shells- not wanting to collude and not wanting to challenge her because noone wants to the next in the list of the several bullying complaints she's already made

its awful- and yet everyone kind of pities her to the same degree of loathing or being wary of her - gah!!!

oh- and another who is the apex of laziness- sleeps on the job, avoids tasks, goes out for personal calls/errands when we are at our busiest-

nasty to and about everyone, moans all day, everyday,

sends the best workers to coventry cos they challenged him
.has applied for countless jobs in our line,in different teams, all rejected because his reputation is widely known, who feels sorry for himself =

steals other peoples' food

raises harassment complaints when management try to tackle him, or goes on sick leave when holidays aren't agreed-because someone got in first- ,(or over Christmas when he couldn't get out of working it)

ghastly person!

Kingjoff-i've worked with someone very similar. Never did anything that they viewed as beneath them ie actual patient contact such as washing or toiletting. Would spend all her time at work "looking busy" walking up and down with bits of paper but never actually getting anything done whilst the poor shift after her had to do all the jobs that she "was just far too busy to do". Bosses knew what she was like but two managers never did anything about her lazy arse. Staff would dread being on shift with her as you would inevitably end up doing her job to support her hca/csw as well as your own and then staff would dread being on shift directly after as there would be a mountain of stuff to before lights out or handed over to the day staff.

Oh but she was such a good employee as she always stayed late writing up.
Don't know what the fuck she was writing as she hasn't done any bloody work all shift.

The co-worker that was too "sick" to work but would not take sick leave as to be at home was "boring"
Consequently I had to cover her work as well as my own whilst she sat about most of the day reading magazines and ordering me about.
The Manager was her best buddy and when she popped in she would say to her "i'm just taking a breather, as I'm feeling a bit under the weather today" and she would receive sympathy from the Manager.
The irony was that I suffered the same "medical" condition as her but I could manage to work as most people who suffer it do.

After I left they had several temps to cover my role, they all left after a day or so because they wouldn't put up with it, after a few weeks she developed a mystery illness and went on extended sick leave.
It was one of the most miserable periods of my life, if I complained about the amount of work I had to do the Manager would say I was being unkind to my co-worker.

I worked with someone who thought he was God's gift to everyone, and the boss believed him. He was a lazy arsehole who behaved like total shit to those under him in the hierarchy, to the point of putting their jobs in jeopardy by blaming them for the consequences of his laziness. He used to strut around the office in T-shirts with extremely sexist slogans on, and somehow was allowed to get away with it. He managed to convince the boss into giving him particular responsibility and a large budget for marketing, and spent it having a lovely time taking his mates out for expensive meals.

Eventually, long after it was obvious to everyone else that we were all working our socks off earning money to keep this waste of space in a job, the boss realised that he'd brought in zero new business and that he wasn't earning anything. He still gave him more chances, which this man was too lazy and/or stupid to take, and eventually he was forced into a deal whereby he left quietly. In a company where leaving dos were generally quite raucous, it was noticeable that no-one turned up to his.

I wish I could say the boss learned from it, but he didn't. Fortunately I don't work there any more.

Loving this thread! Okay so I have worked with a few
Male colleague- stingy, used to ask for food off everyone despite living at home, working extra hours every day and on days off. Used to bring his £2.50 'pocket money' in everyday but would never give in to donations. Massive creep, really inappropriate conversations and making everyone feel uncomfortable. Thank God he left!
Female colleague - thinks she's gods gift, her opinion is the only valid one, really rude not only to us but to her husband, flaps all of the time even when there's no need, just generally very opinionated and annoying!
Female colleague (the worst person I've ever worked with) - nobody likes her, massive feminist to the point if someone mentioned sex life, marriage, having children with a man we get the 'men are disgusting, why would you even want to be with one'? Then proceeds to go on about her (lesbian) sex life. Refuses to do her job and faffs around all day, leaving us (mainly me) to do her job as it's a very important one. Bear in mind she gets paid more than us to sit on her arse! Refuses to ask for bigger uniform so her skin is constantly hanging out, yes some people have weight problems but that's what a bigger size is for! Puts on stupid baby voices (God knows why), licks the managers arse so no matter what we say, they believe her overy us. Goes off with stress (very stressful sitting on your arse all day obviously!) every few months and won't step down so one of us can take over. It makes us feel guilty when we genuinely need to take a sick day. Lie after lie after lie! If we try and suggest a way to help her do her work she will either ignore us, storm off or run off to the manager crying. Apparently she was the same in her last job too, wish she would bloody leave! Rant over

The Mood Hoover. Never had anything positive to say about anyone or anything. Ever. Would constantly interrupt any conversation with negative comments and drag everybody.

I genuinely don't think she did it on purpose but god was it dull to be around.

We no longer work together but I see her negativity all over Facebook still. The only thing she is ever happy about is her dogs. I always think of that episode of 'Friends' when Joey borrows phoebe's friend's dog and makes him sad. I bet The Mood Hoover's dogs feel like that too

I used to work with a cokehead, not a Saturday night recreational type but a 'few lines a day' type. Little prick used to come into work high as a kite and try to grab my arse, didn't even feel any pain when I drove a pen through the back of his hand. He got sacked a few months ago after crashing a company vehicle and nearly killing a colleague, pathetic little piece of shit.

Lol Build 'I broke the dog'

My worst colleague was reasonably good at his job, and came across quite professionally so management loved him.

He was extremely lazy. I think he used to play games instead of working, as I could hear him constantly clicking his mouse when there was no software we used that required that. He could stretch out a bit of work that he wanted to do for ages, to avoid helping out with any other tasks. If he made a mistake he'd never admit it, he even changed records right in front of your eyes and claim it had been like that all along. He was just so arrogant! It also turned out he'd been stealing thousands of pounds from my employer, so he was dismissed.

I haven't rtft yet but any chance I get to vent about this man I will take it:

He was in the role above me for a couple of years and did nothing, absolutely nothing, for his management point. Boasted all the time about how great he was at his job, but left early and contributed nothing, even when inspectors were in. Once presented one of my ideas back to me at a meeting at which we all had to present something.

• Sulked for weeks if ever our manager tried to raise anything with him. I mean he wouldn't speak to anyone at all if anything had rattled him and would keep it up for a good couple of weeks.

• When our manager retired, he and I went for her job. I'm convinced he only went for it to stop me getting it.

• Got the job (senior management shit as well) and proceeded to get me to make every decision needed, while strutting about doing nothing as usual.

• At this point my marriage ended amidst ex's infidelity, otherwise I would have left. When I was upset at work one day, he tried to get a senior manager to send me home, despite me begging him not to as I couldn't bare the thought of seeing husband at that time and had nowhere else to go. Senior manager came to me (never usually left his office!) and said I could stay, go, or do whatever I needed to do for as long as I needed. Boss then hated me even more.

• Every time I mentioned needed an afternoon off for mediation (kept to a minimum and arranged for quiet times) would snap 'What's that, never heard of it!" or "Haven't you sorted that out yet?" If I tried to explain how long divorce can take would cut in with "I wouldn't know. I've been married 30 years - no one in my family has ever been divorced!"

• Constant drip drip of negative, undermining, spiteful personal comments aimed at me, while never doing the management aspect of his job so I was doing it for him.

• Now is on long term sick leave so I have continued to do his job unpaid for this year. I am led to believe the end is in sight.

That feels better! A lot of it is obviously the fault of senior managers who didn't tackle issues they were aware of, and I'm saying nothing about his sickness, other than that I would take no pleasure in his being unwell, but this man has had nearly as much of a negative impact on my life as ex had over the last 10 years.