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?

Oh I had one of these once. I absolutely hated her.

• she was supposed to be showing me the ropes when I joined, but if I asked her to show me how to do something or to come along when I was meeting an important contact for the first time she'd just point blank refuse. Literally look me in the eye and say "no, sorry". But never if the manager was nearby....
• she was supposed to be delivering some training but she didn't do any of it, at the last minute she assigned it all to a junior colleague and told management she did that as a "development opportunity" for him. He then didn't have the time or experience to do a good job so she told management it showed he clearly wasn't ready for promotion.
• I asked her advice on something which she'd handed over to me literally two days earlier, she told me it was all totally fine then in a team meeting she raised it as a major risk and asked me loads of questions about why it wasn't on track!!

I could go on and on and on and on. DH and I had champagne when she announced she'd got a new job.

The colleague who had been in post for years and resented my employment: the regulations had changed which meant that someone on a higher grade was required in every department. I don't blame her for feeling pissed off that people with her qualifications were now being told to work under others since although her pay etc didn't change but it must have felt like a demotion.

However I do blame her for setting out to sabotage everything I did at work, including ignoring direct instructions, being relentlessly negative about the new regime in front of other staff and clients, badmouthing me to other staff with a constant refrain of "What does she know, she's just got the piece of paper, she's crap, doesn't know what she's doing" etc and (it turned out after I'd moved to another department and a more junior colleague felt able to tell me) deliberately hiding new and expensive resources so that I, who'd ordered them and taken delivery etc, would look bad.

What made it worse was that she was prepared to deprive our service users of those resources, even though she maintained she was utterly devoted to the service users (unlike me who only cared about getting the next qualification, apparently.)

My worst was a constant complainer:

• would arrive at work complaining about her DH/DS/DMIL (in varied combinations and sometimes all 3 at once.

• complained all day about how shit the job/management/company was (not entirely unjustified tbh - as two of the managers later threw the team under the bus to save their own skins).

• would regularly slam the phone down at the end of calls from customers, slam stationery down on her desk after taking a call, would picks call up muttering (not always quietly) about how shit everything was.

Had a boss in London, years ago, who physically slapped me, hard, on 2 occasions, but made a joke of it. Hounded one of my colleagues who was part time, went to see the people she was working for and asked repeatedly what she did wrong (when they repeatedly said she was great, she even won awards there!). Rang her as she was driving home (outside her hours, and she had DCs to pick up) and said she wanted her in her office right now, then there was no real reason when she got there...
Everyone was scared of her, even her seniors..leaving there was the best thing I ever did.

A colleague once told me there was a warrant out for his arrest! 🤔

Appointed at a grade waaaay above their experience/ ability (owing to pushy, old-school-tie approach at interview that appealed to senior managers). Now condescends to/ lords it over those with stronger CVs/ more ability, but who are at technically lower grades. A total odious nightmare.

This thread is brilliant!

Worked in an office with honestly the most horrible, bordering on evil woman. I should have known when in my interview they asked how I would work alongside a 'big character' She was about 30 years older than me and I don't think there wasn't one day that passed where she wouldn't shout at me. Literally shout at me in the office. Everyone else on the team was utterly terrified of her but HR were chomping at the bit for me to make a complaint because they were losing so many staff because of her.
One day after absolutely bellowing at me again for some very minor, admin related thing I just stood there and burst into tears. Moved into another department, put in a complaint to HR and she quit whilst being under investigation. HR manager said she had fallen on her sword.
Horrible, horrible, horrible lady.

OP, I work with someone like your colleague. Helps himself to food anyone else brings in but never buys as much as a packet of biscuits for the team, or shares anything he brings in himself. He's also been known to scour meeting rooms for leftover sandwiches and biscuits and complains that facilities keep the custard creams (for meetings) under lock and key. He is by no means hard up so why he won't spend the 50p to buy a packet himself, I'll never know!

Bullying
Martyr complex
Only her opinion is right and everyone else is wrong
Puts people down to make herself feel better.
Thinks her age means she should have more respect

She's retired now. But I know she went into teaching because she liked being in control, a god complex. Felt so sorry for children who went into her class.

Mood Hoover's!! Yes!! I've got one of these on the team I'm on now.
Thing is I think he may be a nice guy outside of work, but oh my god the MOANING.
The job is shit
He hates everyone on the team
Hates dealing with the public (ummm we are emergency services)
Thinks everyone is out to get him
We start WhatsApp groups and he leaves before saying anything
Then moans he's not involved in anything
Latches on to ppl (I was the last one), pours his heart and soul into them about some trivial problem he's got, messages at crazy hours of the night and day expecting you to be his personal counsellor
Stuff like 'I feel shit. Help me. What can I do? Nah it's fucked I hate it. I'm done. Can't be arsed. What can I do to get her to talk to me? Why does she hate me?
And my personal favourite, 'big me up to her to make her like me'
It's exhausting and I've cut ties now but Jesus wept he's weird.

Used to work with in a team of three and the other woman was so so lazy. We partially worked from a communal inbox as well as our own. I wondered why I was so tired while she was so relaxed, until one day I was helping someone with something and thus could see her computer screen.
She was shopping for shoes.
The third person in the team(who was the boss) monitored our work for three weeks. I was dealing with upwards of 500 emails a day. She was averaging forty.

Absolutely nothing happened after she got a talking to. Sigh.

A guy at the law firm where I work. He's airways been bone idle but for some reason (he is very posh which may be the reason) the partners think the sun shines out of his arse.
He was in our department as a trainee and literally did NO work. Everything anyone have him he brushed off saying he was already too busy but when we compared notes he was saying the same to everyone.
We got stricter with him but then found out he was palming his work off on the other, much more hardworking trainee and taking the credit.
We recommended he not be kept on but another department offered him a job. He's even been promoted since! We have a centralised system where you can look up what hours everyone has clocked and what bills they've generated. He's still doing fuck all and struts around like he's god's gift. I don't know how some people get away with it.

Oh I've remembered another one.
An office junior years ago. Everything she was given she moaned about our dosnt do because it was "boring".
My boss once asked her to offer a client a cup of coffee and refused because "I don't like his face".
She had a good talking to about what was expected of her. Next time she was getting coffee for a client and making small talk and I was eavesdropping to make sure all was ok. She asked him hire his journey was, had he come far etc and I was delighted at the improvement. However he then named the town he was based in and she remarked "oh I used to live there. It's a right shit'ole!"
Finally after another rebuke from my boss she stormed off yelling "you can fuck your job!" Only to phone up half an hour later to ask if she could collect her wages now.

There's been a few, the one that sticks in my mind probably wasn't objectively the worst, but drove me nuts.

Passive aggressive, confrontation avoiding, would never give a straight answer to anything, would ok something then when it was too late would want the opposite done, and would just do everything in the most difficult way - and expect everyone else to do things that way as well. Infuriating.

The unqualified teachers employed by my academy chain. Two of them. They think they are marvellous but the rest of us carry them. We can't go a day without sealing with some of their shit. But hey, they're cheap and their life experience is so much more worthwhile than a teaching qualification. Their inability to stop banging on about their brilliant experience while the rest of us deal with their ludicrous assessment levels and inability to handle the paperwork or behaviour makes me want to murder them. With a spoon. But also the Academy chain heads, for perpertrating this con.

Gosh, where to start...

The boss who had an affair with someone in our dept' and falsely accused me of telling his wife. His mistress who wouldn't speak to me because she thought I'd told his wife.

The colleague who was lazy, incompetent and was the one who told the boss' wife about the affair. A grade A, two faced asshat.

The team leader who spent hours making personal phone calls, talking about herself, shirking work and bitching about everybody.

I hate people!

Woman who is ice-cold, unfriendly, bossy, rude and generally not nice to be around, until the bosses are around, then she's cutesy voices and kiss-arse central. I loathe her. I ordered a new laptop for her, recently, took all my professionalism and grown-up-ness not to get her a total dud.

My worst colleague is lower than a snakes belly. Wouldn't really like to say any more

Great thread. Very therapeutic

I have one I have posted here about before.

Recently I noticed she has name labelled all her work pens and pencils on her desk - which are from the work stationary cupboard

girl oh my god

There have been a few! But the one that really sticks in my mind is the manager I had when I was pregnant with dd. I had recurrent UTIs and eventually ended up in high dependency in septic shock. Understandably I was not in work while this was going on but she bombarded me with phone calls & messages asking when I'd be back to work. When I went back, she didn't ask me how I was, so I didn't tell her. I was then called in to a meeting with her and HR to account for my absence, was told 'it doesn't sound very serious', asked 'can you guarantee you won't be sick again while you're pregnant?' and told 'you didnt tell me how you were when you got back, it made me look stupid'. God, I hated her. She was a fucking head case, she gave another colleague a robust bollocking in front of everyone for 'looking at her funny'.

Several members of my family are desperate to meet her & give her a piece of their mind. Despite the fact that dd is now ready to start school, they've held a bit of a grudge against her! 😂

I once worked with a silly attention-seeking bitch who claimed to be afraid of bananas. Any sighting of s banana resulted in fits of screaming and crying. Funnily enough, it was a phobia that only exhibited itself when she had an audience...

She was also obsessed with Disney characters and would show everyone photos of herself dressed as Snow White or Cinderella (if they'd really let themselves go) and demand compliments. She was about 30.

Had a boss once who put his four year old son through to each of us in turn so that we could all have a little chat with Noah

death by did you have a thread about that? I think I remember reading similarbwhen I was pregnant with ds. I had severe HG and really awful spd and I spent many a conference call popping myself on mute to puke :/
I knew my boss would try to get rid of me if I couldn't continue with the pregnancy (she'd know I was trying and just get rid while she could) so I couldn't tell work until I was things were Ok. When I told her she paused for a veeeeeryvlong time (I'm adept at using phone silence so I wasn't going to fill the void with chat) and said 'oh. Will you take more than a month maternity leave?'

She demoted me when I came back. Utter, utter cow. I worked far too hard and ended up being signed off sick (very sick, severe complications) at 6m.

To his day she's never said congratulations. My old team sent out some lovely 'congrats oh we will miss you thanks for all your work' emails with her pointedly copied in.

I have a new boss now who is just incompetent but not actively malevolent. I wish I'd get a decent boss - I had one when I started at this company and it makes. HUGE positive difference