To challenge you all to name a stupider co-worker than mine?

[BossyBitch]

I'm a project manager and have recently had a new person join the team. They need to be given various user accounts and access privileges, and there's a system for requesting all that.

I delegated the task of requesting all the stuff to one of my team supervisors - he might not be the brightest crayon in the box but the whole procedure consists of filling in a web-based form, uploading a passport picture and hitting the 'submit' button. What could possibly go wrong, right?

Imagine my reaction when I got an e-mail requesting that, in my function as the new joiner's manager, I supply a passport picture ...

... as opposed to the phone snapshot of an actual passport that my genius co-worker had sent to them!

And, no, he wasn't taking the piss, he actually is that bloody thick!

Please tell me there's worse out there!

How could the anonymous OP, posting about anonymous colleagues, possibly get into hot water at work?

Yep. I'm sure the OP hasn't mentioned this to anyone else in RL. And no one could possibly recognise the very specific details of a passport and not being British etc...

When I was a Civil Servant, my Boss thought Germany was in the Commonwealth. I really hope she's nowhere near the Brexit negotiations.

I once spent over an hour in a stock cupboardas a 17yo looking for a bubble for a spirit level. In the defence of my colleagues they didn't for a single second think I'd fall for it.

That’s not a bad idea, spare bubble-things for spirit levels. What if one broke? You could just pop a new one in. I’d totally fall for that too.

I once got asked to go up to spares and ask them for a sky hook. I asked the chap how he thought it would fit in the workshop, if indeed the spares dept actually had the ability to find something like that. He looked at me until I explained that a sky hook wasn’t a mythical wind up, it’s actually the name of a very large helicopter.

One of the few times in my life I have achieved smugness. I treasure the memory.

I had to train a new woman at work on our workflow systems. Fine, done it plenty of times. No, it quickly transpired that this woman couldn't even use a computer. So when I said "oh, just click save and then we can upload the file", she didn't know how to click save (in Word). We had to go right back to basics.

IMO she should never have been hired if she wasn't computer literate, and oh my god teaching her how to use a computer was painful. She didn't last long!

Aurora, this reminds me of the colleague (ages ago, in a student job) who was single-handedly responsible for the question "have you ever used a computer before?" being added to our recruiting phone screening script.

Mind, she wasn't dim at all. She'd just ... never actually used a computer before, as it turned out.

We had an apprentice at one job I was at, and he was frequently just a few minutes late - we're talking about 2-3 days a week. I would ask him why he had been late, and he would usually say something like "it took me ages to cross the road at X and Y" or he'd forgotten something as he got to the end of his road & had to go back.

I tried explaining that everybody else would leave home just 5-10 minutes earlier just in case there were any holdups, and if we got in 5 minutes early so what. He explained that it took him X amount of time to get up in the mornings, which meant he left at exactly the right time for his 15 minute walk assuming everything was fine. He couldn't seem to grasp that if he got up 5 minutes earlier, he could leave home 5 minutes earlier and not be at risk of being late.

I genuinely started to doubt my ability to explain things, as did my boss as it seemed such a simple concept, so the boss tried. The guy was still being frequently a few minutes late right up to when we told him he'd failed his probation period (loads of other similar things too, not just the lateness thing).

And no there was absolutely no reason why he couldn't get up 5 minutes earlier & leave the house earlier.

I once worked with a girl who was making instant noodles for her lunch in the little kitchenette we had... but she put the noodles in the bloody kettle!!! I kindly stopped her before it was too late

I think the woman was a bit dim, and had never used a computer before. It was a bad combination and it was recently! 2011 or so!

It's definitely one of those interview questions you'd never think you need to ask!

Many years ago, when I first used a fax I used to photocopy everything before faxing it so I would have my own copy. No idea why, I knew how faxes worked, I just had a blank moment

Best one from my lovely not (normally) stupid friend years ago, when myself & ex went to his parents house

Her: how did you get from the the train station to your bf's house?
Me: his sister picked us up (she's deaf)
Her: oh wow, I didn't know you could drive if you were deaf.........so, can you drive if you're blind too?

Bossy bitch - is there a chance at all he was being deliberately obtuse. Sometimes when people are labelled 'not very bright' they live up to their name.
Perhaps he was sick of being labelled and bossed about so it was a double bluff, jokes on you

I had a colleague who went out to do a home visit to one of our clients. About an hour later, client rang to say was colleague coming as she was quite late. We all tried ringing colleague but no answer and we all got really worried. Next day, colleague came in, we asked how the visit had gone and she said it had gone really well. We were so confused. Turns out she had gone to a completely wrong address but the random lady had let her in anyway and she had spent an entire afternoon with her!

Many many years ago had a colleague in a first job who was asked to frank all the post.
We had scales and a franking machine, so you weighed the item, looked up the cost, set the franking machine to that amount and put the item through.
She got through the post really quickly and was praised. Until it was discovered that she'd weighed the first post item, and then franked everything at the same rate. Wasted hundreds of pounds.

Working in a bar.

New girls holds up a wedge of lemon- 'Is this a lemon?'

Saturday job, busy afternoon and the cry from the next till was "sisters, do we accept Tesco vouchers". We worked in Iceland.

There didn't pass a Saturday where her till cashed up below a couple of million.

I work in SOFTWARE, yet I still have co-workers who have no idea that pretty much any file can be attached directly to an email. How is this possible?

I have several co-workers who consistently email attachments within Word documents. Simply dragging a file into the email window to attach it is apparently entirely too easy, for everyone involved. Instead, they will open Word, then open the other file, copy the file's contents, then paste the image or document or spreadsheet or LINK! or whatever into the Word document, save this new document, then attach the document to the email. This then forces me to open that ancient and sluggish application myself in order to retrieve the (now, inevitably, distorted and degraded and less functional and otherwise altered from its original state) file, and then extract it and fix it, if I'm still able.

What's worse, however, is when people insist on doing the same, only using POWERPOINT! Whyyyyyyyyy???

People will also do this in our online work tracking software. Instead of simply attaching images (or whatever) directly - which is as easy as dragging them into the window - they will paste them into Word documents (with all kinds of unnecessary "official" looking company branded formatting for some reason) and attach that document, requiring the developers to then fire up the ole MS Word in order to retrieve something they otherwise would have been able to simply click and view in the same browser window. They do this even though it is, because of people like them, strictly forbidden. No matter how many times people are reminded not to ever do this and given several very valid reasons not to, they do it. Every time.

WHY? Why do these people waste so much time, creating completely unnecessary work, not only for themselves but also for every recipient of their stupid useless attachments as well? STOP IT!

Star, I wish! I really, really, do! Mostly because I (secretly) genuinely appreciate insubordination and a bit of cheek, but also because it'd mean he actually got something right for a change.

Unfortunately, no chance: I could write a book on the guy, he actually is that dim! Or, to quote my ever-optimistic boss, who famously loves everyone, 'I guess we'll just have to accept that [name] can't do this - and since we can't get rid of him*: find someone who can and finance it as overhead'.

• except passport picture guy - that's kind of an achievement! ** see PP; T&C to do with merger.

JWrecks, tell me about it! I'm in tech, too (software delivery, actually), and I keep on having to teach people fucking VLOOKUP. This includes experieced programmers. They tell me real techies don't excel at Excel. BS! I've got a BEng and an MSc in relevant subjects and I can bloody array formula with the best of them!

You might have hit a sore spot there!

Computer.. last week I got up in a meeting, went up to the screen on the wall and started trying to move the items with my fingers, as if it was a giant iPad. I tried to style it out but it was quite embarrassing. I don’t know what I was thinking!! Can I still blame baby brain?!

Our screens are interactive, so it would have worked!

Some years ago, a colleague covered a lesson for me and wrote on the pull down plastic screen with a board marker. Ruined it. I was so cross! Someone else used a permanent marker on the whiteboard. Duh.

I went for an interview a zillion years ago in a very high end office in London. They asked me to do a typing test to check my speed. All very marvellous until the girl who was checking the test asked me how to check how many errors there were. I was like 'Whut?!' How about the spellcheck function....?

First time I used a fax, I genuinely thought the original would arrive at the other end :blush:

I have witnessed more than one colleague use a calculator to add up columns in Excel.

This thread has pissed me off a bit. I have ADHD and have two sons with the condition with ASD thrown into the mix.

Computer, surely this could easily be optimised in the following, totally re-usable manner:

1. Create a spreadsheet with all numbers within the reasonably concievanble range
2. Derive the Cartesian product for said set of numbers
3. Calculate the sum for each pairing just ONCE
4. Use advanced magic (a.k.a. "Index-Match-Match") to pull the pre-calculated result

My coworker ended up losing £1000 in cash one night, couldn't find it anywhere then tried to blame me, who usually deals with the money side of things. My coworker is unfortunately my DH and we are self employed and can't afford to lose this kind of money (who can) A fraught and anxious week and whole house and yard torn apart when person who paid rings me up and says "um you haven't lodged that cheque I gave xxx last week is there a problem?" Errrr wasn't sure whether to kiss or kill DH

Posted too soon! Anyway we are a household of calamities. My two will take instructions literally so a passport photo may well have ended up as a photo of a passport. I have also made a huge error of judgment in the doctors where my GP told me to put one hand on my baby's head and one on his stomach so I used the baby's hands . It turned out he meant mine so he could look in his throat.
My children are far from 'thick' neither am I and it pisses me right off to think that people who don't know us might write us off as not the sharpest tool and then start a hilarious thread albeit anonymously.
I'm usually the first to see the lighter side of posts like this and I am not in the professionally offended camp either.
Fwiw if you met any of us in passing you wouldn't know we all have SN. You'd probably just call us thick.

Jwrecks, that is dumb and illogical. And I don't even work in software.

If someone writes on a whiteboard in permanent pen, just write over that in whiteboard pen and then it will wipe off easily.

Simples.