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?

I had a weekend job in a kitchen, nasty people, pushed their way passed you, gave everyone cake and then hid your slice when you turned your back, then told me i had to clean down the whole room before i could leave, all stood round watching me
it reminded me of Prisoner Cell Block H
so glad that i walked out... no money is worth that bollocks.

i did come on to moan about the bad tempered woman i am currently working with but she is totally small fry compared to this thread,

This will be long. First job was in a ratty theme indoor theme park. I moved from tills and rides to admin in 6 months or so. Wish I never, the manager, who I didn’t have anything to do with before, was Satan in tie. We used to have to watch the car park CCTV for him to arrive, as if we didn’t have a coffee on his desk within 30 seconds of him sitting down he would shout at us. He took a dislike to me immediately. The first time I answered any phone call was to him. He screamed at me that it was unintelligible and to put the senior admin on. She was sat beside me training me and said I sounded fine. I never got proper training so some jobs would take me longer as I didn’t know how to do them properly. If he asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer I would say “I’m not sure but I’ll find out” but he would scream at me calling me stupid for not knowing. I’d been there less than a month so I couldn’t know everything. The girl who I replaced had been there for 5 years so knew the job inside and out so I felt like he hated me for not being so knowledgeable as she was.
He was in his 40s, very overweight and gay and just seemed to hate me. Even more so when he invited his new 20 year old boyfriend to work in the admin office. We got on like a house on fire, and it eased the managers hatred to me for a short while. Until they broke up. The staff had a night out and myself and his ex had a cheeky drunken snog (the ex bf was bi) but it was a silly drunken thing we were best mates and both shrugged it off. Unfortunately one of his cronies saw us so grassed is up. He just started ignoring me and ramping up the bullying behaviour at this point. He refused to even acknowledge me at times. I would try and transfer calls to him, I could see him in his office he would look at the phone, look at me through the window and ignore me. Then later would shout at me for not passing him the call. I could do literally nothing right. I started applying for other jobs, I asked my old till manager for a reference but he passed it on to the manager who took it upon himself to question me about it. Ok, but it was in-front of several senior staff members and people who worked in the park. He was vile, said if I wasn’t good enough to work there how did I think I was good enough to work for the council? Called me stupid, lazy, backwards, thick and incapable. He started not allowing me to go home at the end of shifts, which in hindsight was stupid on his part as we got paid hourly and we used a machine to clock in / out so wages were automatically calculated so I was getting a better wage but often I would be kept back 2/3 hours. I asked one day if I could leave and every time would give me pointless tasks. After every task I asked to leave, this was over the staff walkie talkies so all staff with a radio could hear. (It became a running joke with all the staff how much he hated me) Eventually after being kept for 4 hours I said “I’m leaving now” he started ranting how I don’t tell him when I leave I ask for permission. So I went onto the park tannoy and basically made a public announcement to say the manager was a bully and vindictive, horrible little misogynist and how I’d been kept there for 4 hours. I ended it with “Manager, I quit” grabbed my bad and scarpered as I thought if he saw me he genuinely might hit me. It was awful. My dad was furious. I was 18 and it has seriously scarred me. I’ve got constant imposter syndrome from being told I wasn’t good enough all the time. Despite the fact I have a glowing work history since then. Horrible horrible man. Oddly enough the theme park closes a year or so later and he went to Thailand with one of the 16 year old park workers to set up a school teaching English. He passed away not so long ago, and oddly enough I did not feel any remorse.

Mine isn't dreadful but it was yet another bad tempered, entitled older lady who had been working at the company for years and basically thought she could say and do as she pleased. Horribly cantankerous and very cutting with her choice of words. But the second anyone called her out on it she would get upset and cry 'verbal abuse!'

The problem with people like this is that they're too hard to deal with and it's not always easy to get rid of them so management end up making allowances for them and people are supposed to just accept 'that's just how she is'. Really annoys me how some people are able to get away with being rude and unprofessional because lazy management don't have the backbone to discipline them.

I just left somewhere in June where you couldn't eat anything remotely smelly at your desk as someone would definitely say something, no where else to eat lunch so unless you had a sandwich, you got a telling off. One woman constantly verbally fought with her manager (only two of them in that department), you had to constantly watch your back with this woman, the person I worked with (only other person in my department) was horrible at times. She used to question why I did work a certain way, even if it got the job done, she used to undermine my ideas and suggestions and leave me to do the really shit jobs even though we were on an equal level. There was lots of bullying in that place from senior management. It was very toxic.

There was someone in my last department who was combative to the point of being unhinged. To give a hint as to how unhinged she was, she attended a conference masquerading as a Professor when she doesn't even hold a doctorate. Most colleagues got a turn; if one of us shut her down she simply moved on to the next. Meetings were her usual platform for being obnoxious and trying to humiliate people. She was also a saboteur, but thankfully she was stupid enough to become abusive to colleagues in front of line managers who had her measure.

My way of dealing it was to approach the Head of Department, tell her I would trust the department to call her out rather than going through grievance channels, but in return I wanted their support with my strategy for dealing with it. This was to give her nothing, to leave meetings if she starts, and to turn my back on her in mid-flow if need-be and walk away. This I did. So, with her supply of entertainment cut of, the departmental bully did what bullies always do, quickly tired of me, and moved on to the next target.

Noise-cancelling earphones are also a great invention.

Commiserations for having to deal with this when all you want to do is your job.

NB - she tired of me but not before becoming enraged on one occasion when I walked off on her, leaving her arguing with herself in a corridor. Thankfully she reacted in front of my Line Manager, who on that occasion actually feared she was going to strike me!

I wish she had.

I worked for a company that provided technical services for big multinationals.

One of my colleagues, a "ladies man" was always travelling to exotic locations (often Thailand) for a big client. You always knew when he was on his way back to the office as various ladies would be calling his office number from abroad and home asking where he was. When he was in the office he would roll in well after 9 am and be the first to leave, especially on Fridays when he would vanish after lunch. He told me he could get away with this as he made more money than the rest of the department put together so no one paid any attention to what he got up to (his client paid per day away including travel time and he got a daily bonus for each day away).

My boss thought it would boost morale if people pinned up pictures of their work. The next time matey returned to the office he asked why there were boring photos everywhere, so he pinned up pictures of pretty young asian ladies (one in a fur coat - who would wear fur in the tropics!)

One day the fax machine started spewing out sample menus for a wedding reception - matey was getting married!! Sadly he became stepdad to a teenage girl who went off the rails (I used to hear him on the phone shouting that she had ruined her mother's life). This poor girl took up with a crack dealer and got syphilis (all shouted about on the phone naturally).

After he left, his replacement used to travel to locations either in the uk or as close as possible to carry out the same work as he hated being away from home!

Having checked Mumsnet this morning, I was delighted to see so many replies!! Thank you all so much for your stories, it really has made me feel more reassured that I am not the only one in this situation, and to be honest many of your colleagues seem so much worse than mine, I am lucky!!! Did have a good laugh reading some of these this morning so thank you once again.

Oh I got more yet. I have a current challenging person to deal with but it's too outing at the moment. But after all the other shitty bosses I have had, I now know to just leave before my mental health suffers.
So I had to sleep with one boss. Its back in 19@#
But yes I kept my job solely because I slept with the boss. Didnt want to but there ya go. And no pretty sure the man is dead so not going to report it after all these years.

Another place the rules were changed weekly it seemed, deffo fortnightly.
So in summer when we could sit outside til we had to start, the boss of us said gotta be in 20 minutes before start time, in winter we had to wait in the cold til 3 minutes before start time. Door that only opened when someone inside let it. This was the winter when it snowed for 4 months, was minus temperatures for the same time.
We had to leave our bags and coats behind reception, no on this table, no in the restricted access area, no behind the other reception etc etc.
He once overheard me talking about him when I was outside but not in work time. He was mental about it but my line manager stuck up for me. From that day I could do nothing right. So I didnt bother. I just turned up, did sod all, went home.
It was a cleaning job in a casino and i used to Hoover up money that had been dropped, take the Hoover back to where there were no cameras and rip the Hoover bag apart for the money. He never clocked on what I was doing however I made a few quid. Oh he used to watch us on the camera and 'tell on us ', he stole from the company all the time then wiped the footage, he did a ton of dubious things. This boss man, was almost as low in the pecking order as us. He simply was there to fix stuff, lights, plugs, shit like that. Arsehole and now I am going to see if hes on Facebook

One of my first bosses was vile and shouted at everyone including me. Then we went on a staff night out and he offered me drugs and asked me if I wanted to go back to his with his girlfriend (she also worked at same place) for a threesome! This was 25 years ago. I left after a couple of years then went back to work for him till he got sack. He randomly messages me over the years offering me a job haha

I had a very angry boss once, who when stressed, would bite the actual side of the door. I put up with nonsense for months, going into the ladies in the afternoon to cry, until one day I thought, why am I putting up with this? On the surface it was a glamorous job, but the reality was miserable. There came a last straw one day when he stood there shouting and nagging, and I picked up my handbag and threw down my keys to the office, and walked out. Never to return. It felt fabulous!

After years under a weak manager, who was bullied by his manager, who didn't like me, because I stood up to him, and thus bullied my manager more - my complaints (and others, proving it wasn't just me,) have helped trigger a departmental reorg, which was long overdue for operational reasons, but was also used to break up certain "unhelpful" work relationships.

My old manager has thanked me, and is clearly far more relaxed. After 6 months, I am getting used to not having to justify every breath I take, and I am feeling more confident about making suggestions about ways we do work better. I am driving my work and collaborating with my manager, rather than being told what to do and ideas never being listened to. And my productivity is much higher.

Speak up if you can. Things can be changed, though it may not be easy or quick. And focus on your needs. No one and no company is worth trashing your mental health over, but it can be so difficult to realise the effects on your confidence and self esteem because they get ground down over years.

I don't understand how so many crap managers get away with things for so long, though. Especially the active bullies, rather than those who just aren't very good at what they're meant to do.

TheKrakening3

Wow! Sounds like the plot for a psychological thriller...

‘i worked with a man whose CV included 'Paramedic in Bosnia' 'Worked at Chicago Hope Hospital' plus many other odd places......as he was in his thirties he would have been a paramedic when he was 9 and George Clooney was a doctor at Chicago Hope !..’

Disconcerting that no-one noticed during the recruitment process...

Previous job - Lady nearing retirement was redeployed to us with absolutely no experience in the field she was moved to, so initially had a lot of sympathy and lots and lots of allowances made for her.

However we were only a small team and it quickly became apparent she was absolutely useless. She couldn't do even basic admin. She was lazy. First thing in the morning would go off to make a drink and be gone about 45 minutes. Disappeared whenever it got busy.

She had her supporters who said " Oh poor X, she's trying her best." and then myself and others who had her card marked and watched her with raised eyebrows

The same staff would spend long periods of time showing her how to do things. Training her. When she cocked it up ( inevitably) she would then complain that she had received no training and no one had showed her how to do it.

A friend of mine spent ages once going through step by step a process to do with finance with her on the phone and basically did the job for her. She was working in another building that day. She took full credit for the job.

She threw away £200 worth of a particularly much needed resource (education based) and let people think the cleaner had stolen it.

I refused point blank in the end to have anything to do with her and told the Manager never to ask me to train her. She was wary around me but manipulated a lot of people and knew exactly what she was doing.

Throughout this period she was actually being paid a grade higher than most in the team, despite doing nothing.

It culminated in her work being monitored but she would not retire and they couldn't force her. Despite pretending to be clueless she was always first on the phone to complain to SMT or the Union if asked to do something she didn't want to do.

It culminated in us both going for the same job. This included a particular test which she refused to do. I got the job and she was pissed off.

I think she finally retired last year but I heard from another Manager who had worked with her years before and she said she was a nightmare then too!

@Lemonlady22 I know his wife. She's lovely. He's a bit weird but I hope he's good to her as she's not had it easy. We had no idea until it was in all the papers. Feel sorry for her.

In a toxic situation at the moment and no idea what to do. A male equivalent was hired to replicate what I do in another country. I was managing it globally but scope was growing so was to be split.

I could not hand anything over to him. For a full year he ignored me and my team. Ignored all requests, emails, messages and follow up on meetings.

He would try to belittle me or my team members on calls by saying things like 'not everyone will understand what is being said here'.

We had a big team meet up and I am sure he walked at me in the corridor.

So que big reorg and I now have to take on his area and he has been given more power in another role that feeds my area. He wont do a handover. Had blamed me for why he didnt handle a contract for a year saying they said i was too difficult so wouldn't work with him.

He will say one thing to me in meetings with our new manager then another thing to my team members to make me look wrong.

He dropped all his worked straight away and moved all his team into new area leaving me 4 people short and refused to any kind of handoff.

Today my new manager didnt understand why I think I have lost half a team. He didn't know this person was replicating what I do in another country. He had obviously been played and cant see it.

When I give another opinion this person will say I am bickering.

Tbh I feel sick about work.

Oh another (glad this thread making you feel better op)

Not a malicious boss per se but incompetent and did that crappy thing of changing things JUST for the sake of changing them (basically to mark her "territory" as our new boss, previous boss was fab but had retired) - including but not limited to

Retail position

Changing people's shifts without even checking contracts and WHY they were doing those shifts - 2 of my colleagues only did evenings as they had caring responsibilities, one had a young child with Sen, the other an elderly frail parent, she put them on fucking mornings!

Changing when the fridge and freezer temps were checked WITHOUT understanding or checking WHY they were checked when they were.

This was in the days when store managers still did their own ordering (yes I'm old!) - she cancelled certain VERY popular products - again WITHOUT checking in any way why this might be a bad idea! Customers livid and we got brunt of it!

Fucked up ordering items we needed for maintenance/cleaning, resulting in us running out of certain items.

Just bloody useless! She also weirdly thought ALL the male staff fancied her and made seriously inappropriate comments (more on this later!)

Anyway, her bullshit caused problems for me too and as I had only intended for it to be a temporary thing for me (was undergoing some medical stuff and tests and needed to have weekdays off to attend appointments, so working a Saturday instead suited) so I found another job...

...as it happened on the day I had my letter of resignation to hand in, the regional manager had decided to visit for an inspection of sorts (I suspect in hindsight they knew she was useless) so I go into the office at the end of my shift.

She was normally a somewhat brusque sort but with the "big boss" there was being all nice as pie

"Oh! Well we'll be very sorry to see you go, we all get along SO WELL, must be good pay they're offering"

Well! I hadn't planned on saying anything in particular but I'd honestly had enough!

"Some of us do! Some of us not so much. As for WHY I'm leaving, you and I BOTH know the real reasons whatever you might say to anyone else!"

Yes it was unprofessional, yes I shoulda kept ma trap shut but oh my it WAS satisfying to see her doing a goldfish impression!

Oh and that bit I was coming back to? Higher management apparently had several complaints about her sexually harassing the male staff, this culminated in her basically sexually assaulting the youngest one at the Christmas do! She was fired at that point!

"I don't understand how so many crap managers get away with things for so long, though. Especially the active bullies, rather than those who just aren't very good at what they're meant to do." Surely you can understand people feeling in fear of losing their jobs (especially in the current climate), plus these bastards are unfortunately usually very clever at doing their worst behaviours/comments when there aren't any witnesses so it's your word against theirs. They also have longer service and so are harder to get rid of as they've acquired more rights themselves. Plus of course too many upper level managers are shit at actually managing - they've got their promotions due to their industry skills rather than being effective managers.

"she would not retire and they couldn't force her." See Re "hard to get rid"?

The place I worked as my first proper job was a kitchen. We made all our own food including cakes. One of my jobs was to ice the carrot cake and decorate it which I was good at. This was all done in a room at the back then brought to the front. The other woman who did the job took a dislike to me as she felt I'd taken some of the budget for her job if sh ever wanted to go full time and used to leave me horrible notes about things I'd failed to do even thought they were things that were her responsibility. She once locked me "accidentally" locked me in the cake room - no issue really I had plenty to eat for three hours and told the manager I'd gone home early.
One day I had enough and put a load of stuff belonging to the cafe in her bag such as the spud masher and other various insignificant bit annoying bits of stuff. People looked high and low and thought she had stolen it. She knew it was me, I knew it was me but nobody could prove a thing. Needless to say she got sacked. As an adult I would have dealt with this soooo differently I was a stupid 15 years old.

Blimey these are awful! Sorry that people have had to put up with so much shit! I've got a couple but nothing as bad as what I've been reading.

I had a TA in my class team who comes out with so much crap. I took some students out with her and we were walking by a pond and she noticed some ducks standing on one leg. We pointed these out to the students. She piped up, "only pregnant ducks stand on one leg!"
Pregnant ducks?
Another time, this is outing! We noticed that a student had a gold tooth. "That's because he's been to Mecca. That's why happens when you go. My aunts have gold teeth. They've been."
Because I am petty I spent that evening contacting my Muslim friends about this and they all laughed at this ridiculous claim!
Unfortunately she is also a little bit spiteful and a total shit stirrer but thankfully she was rumbled very early on. And due to students leaving was moved from my class. I was happy about that.
Another colleague didn't want me to drink from a chipped mug as she was worried about germs. I saw that she had put it in the bin. I told her it was my mug and I was fine drinking from it. Only to find she had put it in the bin again. This time hidden under things! I made a point of taking it out and drinking tea for it in front of her although nothing was said about it. I keep said mug away from her but I refuse to throw it out!

These are all very tame compared to what I have read though. I hope those struggling find solutions very soon

My job while I was 18 and in in Uni was at a popular children’s store. DH (then BF) and I had just got a mortgage so I couldn’t just walk out but I seriously wanted to.

Middle aged female manager hated me. The job came with a uniform of polyester trousers and shirt. I’m very slim (no hips!) and the smallest size trousers they had in the back were a size 10 but were too big when I tried them on. She laughed and said they’d have to order a skirt, I asked if they could get me trousers in an 8 instead but she point blank refused. I ended up in a long baggy skirt that was neither a maxi or midi but some boho bag lady length.

Having previously worked in a clothing store I assumed the priority would be stacking shelves. However, every time I’d try to refil the shelves she’d come martching over and say I should be interacting with the customers. Even though there were huge empty spaces that made it look like the place was going out of business. She’d mentioned that she didn’t like trolleys of stock on the shop floor so I carried out a small box the size of a cereal box to restock. She watched from the balcony as I wrote down what items I needed, filled the box and started putting them out then ripped into me for putting actual products on the shelves.

The store also had a loyalty card scheme and the people on the tills normally tried to get customers to sign up when making purchases. I hadn’t been deemed ready to be till trained (even though I’d worked on one since I was 15 in retail) but she handed me a wad of loyalty card fliers and told me she expected me to sell at least 3 per shift. I worked a Sunday for 6 hours.

Meanwhile my colleagues sat on the floor behind the tills so nobody could see them and dared each other to lick batteries.

I lasted 6 weeks before I lined up another job and thankfully escaped. Although I did have to speak to her again as she lied about sending my P45

My current job is stuffed to the rafters with people who do and say as they please. It’s a running joke that you probably have to set fire to someone’s office to get sacked.
In the 15 years I’ve worked there none of these have resulted in anyone getting sacked:
Sex in a meeting room during office hours overheard by a manager,
Senior manager flirting and being sexually aggressive with visitors,
Same manager making it obvious she’s not wearing underwear,
Trying to get rid of people on short term contracts so their relative/friends can get jobs,
Huge breaches of data/banking rules costing company £££,
Misrepresenting themselves by impersonating a trained professional (can’t say what field),
Creating jobs that didn’t need to exist, advertising it for 1 day over the weekend so nobody would apply and the new position holder has no training in because they were having an affair,
One all male department has a rating system for all of the female office staff they we’re not supposed to know about.

Just realised how many of those examples relate to sex. Makes it seem like it’s the set of Suits, I promise it’s not a glamorous place at all. Just a drab office filled with mostly average looking people.

Hmm, all of my jobs to date have had at least one shit colleague.

First job, worked in a nursery. I was a trainee but because I had some common sense they let me plan for a group of children and called it a privilege (I was stupid enough to believe it ) one member of staff was in her 30’s and she was an idiot. She’d come in still half cut from the night before and let her kids paint up the walls, year pages from books and on one occasion, two of the kids at the table proceeded to give the other 3 a haircut! If it had just been that I’d have lived with it but she was also a nasty bitch. A girl I started at the same time as and became quite close with out of work died in a car accident and the useless cow told anyone and everyone how close she had been to her and how devastated she was. She didn’t even know the girls last name. She was allowed to go to the funeral and I wasn’t because I “obviously didn’t know her that well as you didn't work in the same department as her”. Oh my god I fucking hated her. One day I went to sign out and was sent back to my floor and the manager told me I couldn’t leave until the kids toilets were cleaned. They’d been done by the housekeeper at 5 but the useless one had let her kids loose and they’d splattered paint all over the sinks. I was there almost 90 minutes past my finishing time and then o found the manager and told her I wouldn’t be returning because I was sick of it all.

Next job the management were manipulative and the lowlights of my time there was my boss encouraging me to have a termination because I’d only been in the relationship for 18 months or so and the other would have to be when she called me when I was in the hospital with my brother who was on life support which we were turning off in two days time. She wanted to know why I was having such a fuss because it was only my brother and I’d already been off for 4 days. She tried to get me to agree to come in after we pulled the plug because there’s be no point in me hanging around (he’d hung himself). I listened to the first demand but thankfully not the second.

That particular boss also told me I needed to work harder at my marriage when I broke down in tears because of how my narcissist husband was treating me which is a contributing factor as to why I stuck it out for so long.

Current role I have a mansplaining twat on the team. He makes misogynistic jokes, accused the super lovely cleaner of stealing his pen which made her cry and basically every second word out of his mouth is bullshit. When he gets called on for not pulling his weight he either plays the race card or claims he’s not been shown how to do things. Thankfully he pretty much ignores me as much as I ignore him so it could be worse.