to ask you to share your "awful colleague" stories with me?

[smokeytoby]

I have the pleasure of working with someone absolutely insufferable.

She is at least forty years older than myself, and I believe it is for this reason that she finds it justifiable to treat me like an idiot. She is rude to me, inconsiderate, critiques everything I do (even if it isn't actually incorrect) and as far as she is concerned, the sun shines out of her peachy arse. ARGH.

She was nasty to me today in front of our boss, and while I just shrugged it off as I have found this is the easiest way to deal with her, my boss called her out on it, asked her why she thought it was acceptable to speak to me like that and had a stern word with her (much to my amusement).

Please tell me I'm not alone?! Has anyone else worked with someone rude, and if so, how did you deal with it?

I'm not going to run to HR telling tales, and my boss knows what she is like but tends to adopt the same 'shrug it off' idea as myself when it comes to dealing with her.

Any phrases or techniques on how to deal with shitty colleagues? Or tales of a colleague even worse than mine?

anyone?

I worked with a pretty mad woman for years, but its hard to put into words- it was more her manner. She was very superior, patronising and passive aggressive. I can give a few examples

• she reported me and my now DH for holding hands in the car park. We were leaving for the day!
• she requested that a colleague stop wearing heels because 'you are quite heavy footed, you do tend to clump along and it's very loud'. The woman was quite large (18-20) and was mortified.
• we had a printer repair man come in, she approached him and told him to leave and come back later because it was lunch time and she was trying to eat in peace.
• she told me off for putting suncream on before going out for a walk on lunch, mid August. I am incredibly pale so always wear factor 50. We had a bit of back and forth and eventually she said 'well I've been hospitalised twice for sunburn so I know a bit about it'. Surely that means I shouldn't listen to a word she had to say!?
• head office sent down notice of a new form we needed to use. She tried to rally people against it, then stood up in a meeting and announced 'this form is like Hitler- we all know it's wrong but nobody is brave enough to say anything'. (To me this was the worst one- a form you don't like is not genocide!)
• she kept a log of a co-worker's movements because she was convinced he wasn't working enough, then reported him to HR.

I'm sure there's more. Such a pain she was!

There was a lady at work who used to be utterly vile to everyone. She was rude, snappy, really unfriendly despite everyone trying hard. If you went round to offer tea and she accepted when you brought it to her she would just grunt.

She was visually impaired and had a guide dog. People used to make allowances for her because of this and took much longer for people to start to mention the bitchyness as no one wanted to be seen to be moaning about the behaviour of someone who was visually impaired. But everyone soon realised that was irrelevant, she was just horrible to everyone.

I left working there but heard she is still as vile to everyone, most recently throwing chocolates in the staff kitchen bin that someone in the office gave her for her birthday. If she didn't want them she could have put them in the communal office snack area/taken them home and given them away/binned them thetr if she must.

I spent a year covering mat leave in a department of 2. The other guy who was a manager was the strangest man I've ever met. To tell you everything would take hours! He was a compulsive liar. He got into running and did a marathon, he hadn't run for years and told me that he used to run and had run 82 marathons, given his age and 5 years of not running he either started very young or ran an average of 5 a year since he was 16! He used to take the paper into the toilet and vanish for hours. Once I was going on holiday and had to leave at 3. He went to the loo at 2 and I nearly missed my flight waiting for him to come back for the handover. Once someone came over to ask for some paperwork for the CEO, he leapt up from his desk to get it and sprinted off, he tripped over my chair, fell flat on the floor and then bollocked me for having my chair not pulled in enough! The worst thing was the Xmas party, as there were just 2 of us we could have joined another department but he booked a table at a restaurant- the same place my sister went for her wedding anniversary! I was skint at the time and went because I wanted my free meal!

The above doesn't really get his weirdness across. It was also his strange creepy manner. The best way I can describe it is that if I saw on the news that he had murdered someone and had them under his patio I would not be shocked at all - still can't believe I went for the dinner for 2!

i worked in place where one of the managers was the MD's wife -
she complained about people typing too loudly
she didn't like me and sat with her back to me during meetings
when moving offices insisted that one room was made available for naps (one of her favourites, who was also insufferable, liked having an afternoon nap)

One ex boss used to scream and shout only at the female workers for the most minor infringements - the men could get away with anything. He wouldn't stop until they cried.

He gave me a bollocking for taking time off when my nana died (she lived with us, looked after me from birth while my mum went back to work. I found her body). I refused to cry so he demoted me.

Another accused me of doing something I definitely hadn't done. Refused to listen to me, called me a liar, stupid and told me to go back to my desk for an hour to think about a good reason for doing what I had done or be sacked.

I checked the diary and saw I'd been on holiday that day. I was on my way to her office to tell her when a colleague pushed past me, ran in and shut the door. She had done the thing, it was found and she told the boss it was me that had done it to cover up. Nothing happened to her. Boss called me back in and not only failed to apologise but told me off for not telling her sooner I'd been on leave and I'd made her look like an idiot.

I told her she'd done that herself, got my stuff and walked out. Never went back.

I'm currently sat outside on my lunch, fella I share an office with is standing next to me trying to make small talk, I'm ignoring him, awkward! Hes a highter grade than me and spends most of the day shouting at me for my perceived misdemeanors. Iv worked here 25 years, never had any issues relating to my work with anyone. He also grades my work using a red pen, purposely looks for things, if he cant find anything he will use paragraphs or spacing to mark me down, gives me ""7/10 must try harder" written in red pen. Spent yesterday afternoon screaming at me in front of contractors. Weve had countless conversations about how he treats me and he wont stop, when I raise this with my boss he doesn't believe me. I'm in my 50s. I go home in tears most days. I'm not speaking to him cos I just cant take anymore

I had a workplace that was fairly toxic. The department that I was in was very small and we all shared one large room. They had struggled to fill my job for over a year as they needed someone with very precise qualifications which are quite in demand.

The female secretary was very irritated by me as I had to occasionally ask her questions e.g. about whether work had been sent to another manager, and she simply started ignoring me. She would be literally 2m away from me and I could ask a question 3 times, including using her name - "Mary, do you know if the X file has been sent to Mr. X yet?" and she would completely blank me. The only way I could get her to respond was to get up, walk over to her desk and lean on the desk, at which point, if I was very lucky, she would say something like "Oh there you are Bot, I didn't see you". Sometimes though, she would just continue ignoring me or get really irritated and tell me she was too busy to answer.

The department manager was a Jehovah's witness. Before she stopped talking to me, the secretary told me that she had been at home one night, had come round to her house on a conversion mission, realised it was her and ran away silently on seeing her, and never mentioned it again.

She used to tell tales to management. I was investigated for timekeeping issues and found not to have done anything wrong. It was such an insult though that I resigned and easily got another job. A year later, they were still looking for a replacement. I managed a year there so it wouldn't look like I was job-hopping on my cv, it was really badly paid and I still can't believe I managed to stick it out for so long!

The higher level manager there couldn't work the computer system so couldn't read files unless they were all printed out for him, yet the entire system worked on this file based computer system. I don't think even then he read them. He had become de-skilled and functioned at a fairly basic level.

Basically the problem is that I was brighter than the lot of them and more recently qualified, and they had been dossing for years and driven everyone away who knew what they were doing. There was one nice colleague in my department, she was treated horribly by all of them but coped with it by keeping her head down and ignoring it. There was one female manager out of about 20 in that place, it was very sexist.

I had a jealous secretary at another job. She was very fat but quite young and pretty and I didn't realise how bitchy she was about me until quite late on. The only thing she could outdor me on was her being younger than me. She was 24 and I was 29, so she liked to say things like "You're ages with Mr. X", Mr. X being in his fifties...

I once sat on an interview panel where the person who was eventually offered the job was at the bottom of my list. His manager subsequently apologised to me for not listening to my concerns. Many years later, and following a restructure I have the deep misfortune of having to manage him. In the last 6 weeks he has:

Failed to inform me he "works from home" 2 days a week. There is nothing in his HR records to suggest this has ever been requested or approved and the manager who may be able to shed some clarity has left. I only discovered this when he failed to show up for a very important meeting dealing with regulatory changes that directly affect my team. We work on big IT systems and, while working from home is possible, he's failed to realise that I can see the system logs and know precisely how much "work" he is doing on those days.

Refused to make his work calendar visible to me. He had two meetings with HR to check whether it was "legal" for his manager to do this. Obviously he didn't get the answer he wanted either times. He's still not done it though.

Refuses to have his contact details on any directory, stating Data Protection. I suspect this is so nobody knows he exists or tries to contact him with work.

Refused to attend any training regarding the afore mentioned regulatory changes on the grounds that he would decide whether or not the training was "appropriate" first. Funnily enough he's not come across anything appropriate yet. He did turn up to one external meeting on one of his working from home days, but only stayed for 30 minutes of a 3 hour programme of events then asked about how to claim travel to the meeting on expenses. The meeting was 20 minutes walk from our office, on a fine sunny day.

Has tried to contradict my instructions to the rest of the team regarding work projects and directly told them to ignore my instructions in some cases. He's also managed to avoid doing any of the tasks I have set him.

Complained to the director that a vital mistake was made in the restructure in moving him into my team. He felt I should have been downgraded and my job given to him.

these stories are making me feel so much better - knowing that I am not the only one battling with this

I had a boss who hated me from the offset. She'd write in the works diary alleged slights/ accusations etc which always involved me. She never ever asked about them to get my side and they were so rude. Thing was this diary was for the whole workplace so everyone saw. When she eventually left I got her job and excelled but she'd damaged my relationship with my line manager who'd heard these stories for 18 months and clearly believed them. Almost broke me and I don't know why I didn't confront her about it all

It was my first really proper job.
It was coming up to Christmas and all of the Christmas lunches were happening around the area (different teams were going out on different dates and a different times for their celebrations). Basically everyone was in a happy mood. As I mentioned, it was my first really proper job. The team I was in was being wound down and staff were being redeployed to different teams throughout the business, so it wasn't as though we were busy. Anyway, I got invited to join a different team who were going out to Christmas lunch. I checked with my team leader (there wasn't a manager of this team as I mentioned it was being wound down) as part of my role was to be phone technical support to a select number of companies in the UK. I was getting on average about 10 calls a week looking for tech support, and there was the facility for them to leave a voicemail and we could get back to them the next day.
My team leader was also going to Christmas lunch and as it turned out it was just fate that his lunch was "clashing" with the time that the lunch I got invited to, which would have meant that the phones could have gone to voicemail.
That wasn't good enough.
I wasn't allowed to go to Christmas lunch.
I got ZERO technical support phone calls and none the day before and none the day after, so I could have gone with this other team to lunch.
I was so upset I think I ended up crying at my desk.

I vowed from that day on, I would just do my job. Nothing more than that. I would make sure that I left on time and that I wouldn't be available to do things after my working day had finished.
Before that, I would have had no objections to staying back and finishing something or answering a phone call that would have come in just as I was leaving. Nope. Not happening now. He really was an obnoxious prick. Throwing his weight around. Being Mr Big Boss Man (even though he was only a team leader of a soon to be defunct team).
Still hate that team leader!

After that, in the new year, I was redeployed to a different team and never had to work with him again.
I've been working for over 25 years and he is the one that really sticks in my brain for being so inflexible and obnoxious. Sorry that was so long.

Oh I forgot one - latest boss (she's moved to another team) had a proper go at me for taking a day off after DS(13) 'fell off his bike' and I was being dramatic.

He hadn't 'fallen' off his bike. He'd been run over. Thankfully not badly hurt but bruised, shaken up and mild concussion so he couldn't go to school.

Made me take unpaid leave when a close relative died rather than annual leave (I had plenty left) as I hadn't given enough notice.

Oh we had a vile lady in our accounts department. Short tempered, blunt, rude. We used to say that you hadn't properly worked for this company until you've had a fight with Susan*.

She screamed at me one day and accused me of taking papers off her desk. I hadn't and there was no reason for her to talk that way anyway. I had some of my own papers in my hand and threw them on her desk and said: "Go on have a look! None of them are yours."

They fluttered all around her and I stood with my arms folded waiting for an answer and an apology. Funny enough, we got on after that.

I heard that they have recently asked her to take early retirement because she was actually getting worse. Not sure how that can be possible, but she has left.

I worked with an appalling bullying snob in my first job, she was a lazy cow to boot and expected me to do all her work as well as my own.

Whenever I asked for annual leave she would claim she'd already bagged that date, I started to ask for days I didn't want, she used up loads of annual leave just trying to "block" mine, it was hilarious.

She objected to a perfume I wore so I started spraying it on her chair but would wear a different one to mess with her head.

I know that sounds awful but this woman was deranged, she once boasted about putting shit through a neighbours letterbox for some perceived slight so I didn't feel bad about my petty revenge.

I had a teaching colleague who used to wait for the head to arrive before getting out of her car with heavy books and claimed that I never took them home, she failed to pass on information to me that she should have, generally made my life a misery when I was pregnant, put me down to parents and undermined me constantly. She could not bear it if any child expressed that they preferred me. Every time I tried to speak up I got shut down. She then began stalking me, texting me 50 times a day when I was on maternity leave, waiting on my street corner for me to leave the house and turning up in cafes where I was meeting other colleagues. Head wouldn’t hear a word against her and neither did another colleague, we all started to see through her though, it was awful. She would report us to SLT for silly things all the time. Turns out she was sleeping with the head. When I left he apologised to me but it really was an awful time.

Current nightmare colleague who literally does nothing! My workload is huge due to her and I have to suck it up otherwise the children will suffer. She’s been doing the job an awful lot longer than me and gets paid more but doesn’t give a shit.

Refused to attend any training regarding the afore mentioned regulatory changes on the grounds that he would decide whether or not the training was "appropriate" first.

@slug that's a stonker! I hope you are well on the way to managing this arsehole out, & are able to laugh hysterically about it not too many months from now ...

While still at school I used to work in a pub kitchen.
The land lady was the cook and I was her assistant.
She screamed and shouted at the staff but mostly me because I had to work alongside her.She had a horrible temper......but lost it over the most minor of things.

She was fully booked for the Saturday night.
I had worked the afternoon shift.......she wagged her finger in my face and said you can leave when you have cleaned the whole kitchen down but I need you back early to help me out tonight,no excuses you are coming in.
I said ok I will come back early to help with the prep..........I never went back.

I've worked with lots of oddballs and probably some people have thought I'm an oddball but that's just life.

My most memorable was a man who was a compulsive liar. He was very pleasant and I assume it stemmed from deep insecurity.

I could regale you with tales of this man's amazing life, but it would be very outing if anyone I know from work reads this thread. But all utter, audacious bollocks. He's lived everywhere, speaks every language, is wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings, has authored many acclaimed scientific papers, has a famous partner.

But the odd thing is.. as far as I can make out, I'm the ONLY one in my team who doesn't believe him.

Despite at least some of the truth being easily available online (yes, I looked) and despite the constant contradictions in very simple matters eg one day saying he's an ethical vegetarian and hasn't touched meat for 40 years, the next telling everyone about his rack of lamb, or the centuries old silk he brought in that looked like it had come from Tie Rack, they all lap it up and think he is the fount of all knowledge and style, to be deferred to in everything.

No one questions why he has his current job which is decidedly non-glamorous.

I've gently sounded them out in case they're being discreet, but nope.

I expect more senior staff suspect.

He knows I know, because I've never pandered to him and he knows I speak two of the languages he's claimed to be fluent in, and isn't.

He's wary of me because of this, but I'd never call him out, he's really quite nice at a basic level.

I worked for a married couple and they had horrendous arguments in front of staff and customers. They just didn’t care

@Nautiloid my Husband works with someone similar . It’s quite embarrassing really. Everyone knows he’s lying. But they all sort of nod and smile as it’s to awkward to say anything

I had a colleague who had to leave who’s father was unwell, and she was a nightmare. She’d rock up late in the mornings, everything was traumatic and drama with her dc. She didn’t have ASC for them, but instead took her 3rd lunch break of the day to collect her kids from the local school and leave them in the car until she finished. My other colleague could see her screen and she’d spend most of her time on fb. She’d occasionally have her headphones on listening to music beating in mind we all have to answer the phone.
I digress, as now she’s been replaced by a lady who was a temp, and this one is a complete brown noser. Always asking if she can help us. Our jobs are completely different and quite frankly we don’t need help. We have to stick with the jobs we do otherwise it goes to shit. She keeps annoying my other colleague and interfering in her work. Telling people the wrong information and then having to message/call them back making more work.

I started looking for a new job 1 week after starting due to the worst woman I have ever met. The first week she screamed in my face when I told her no more 2 hour lunches and turning up when you feel like it.
A catalogue of vile awful behaviour and no management back up it took me 9 months to leave!