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 an awful boss, just dreadful. I have blanked most of it from my memory but I was an absolute nervous wreck around her, when she was coming to my office I would be there really early as she would yell at me about everything. I eventually handed in my notice, then realised I was being a fool and contacted my Union (NHS) and my letter was retracted and I was moved into another position on the account it went no further. It was the run up to my wedding, I just wanted it over. It actually worked out for the best as I actually wound up on a slightly different career path which I am more happy in.

However almost 20 years later I still fear coming across her - either as a colleague or as a patient. She has left me with imposter syndrome and also an absolute fear of any manager who now says that they need a quick word with me - a quick word was always 'you are completely rubbish'

I am currently having issues with a (long arm) colleague, I can't really explain as it is very specific but he is basically trying to score points and get one over me. He is just chucking his weight around basically - which includes telling outright lies about things that others have said (or not as the case may be) Two of my colleagues are aware of how much he gets to me, not many people get under my skin but he really does. He has always riled me, but he has recently stepped up his efforts lately.

@TeamUnicorn mine asked me to "pop in" and then told me I was being put on a performance plan. So the next time I am asked to "pop in" I will be taking notes and possibly a witness as well

I worked with a woman who used to complain to the facilities manager if anyone farted in the lift,

ANY male boss who says, 'I'm old fashioned'. It's a euphemism for misogynist, sexist weapons grade dickhead. Run a mile!

One had to ask, every single time he asked you about a costing and you replied in pounds in pence, 'What is that in old money?' Who gives a flying fuck, you backwards bastard! He thought this was cute. It was about as cute as shit on a shingle. He bitched about how he didn't have a 'secretary' who'd bring him his coffee with one sweetener tablet resting on the saucer. I'd have shoved it up his arse.

He bitched about how he didn't have a 'secretary' who'd bring him his coffee with one sweetener tablet resting on the saucer. I'd have shoved it up his arse.

I work in a small office.Three of us in there. One of the ladies in the office with me is disgusting.

She's lazy. Rude. Incredibly unprofessional.

She farts and belches in front of customers. She swears and shouts at other staff and customers. She pays no attention to what is going on. Always eating and slurping and gulping.

Always on her phone/tablet facebooking/playing games/watching catch up TV.

Makes mistakes constantly which results in very unhappy customers which we then have to deal with. Just isn't interested in doing a good job. The rest of us have to pick up her slack and sort her mistakes.

She's smelly and wears unwashed clothes. She sneezes and doesn't cover her nose. She's falls asleep on duty. She loudly talks about her toilet habits "I've got ring sting/got to go to the loo my guts are gonna drop".
She's racist. Deliberately unhelpful to customers and other staff whos English is obviously a second language.

She's is just vile to work with. Makes a simple job unnecessarily hard and stressful. I really dislike her.

Oh I had another awful manager when I was a graduate trainee. She called me into her office a couple of times to basically shout abuse at me for basically not being experienced enough to do the job super-fast (I hadn't made any mistakes), but made it really personal when I didn't react by repeatedly questioning me along the lines of "Is there something wrong with you?" Me: "no" Her "Why are you telling lies? Do you think its clever to tell lies at work? Theres obviously something wrong with you, and if you don't admit it, I'll find out and make sure you get into trouble with it". Deliberately undermining behaviour, never constructive. Her voice would get louder and louder and she would get more and more angry, but obviously there wasn't much I could say in response to such ridiculous questions.

I'm a very calm person, and I knew perfectly well that she was trying to goad me into shouting back at her, so she could sack me for being rude. Equally, I knew I couldn't damage my career prospects for the sake of her and I only had to stick it out for another 8 months. So I just glared at her ferociously while sticking to one word answers for the ridiculous questions, and giving her nothing that could be used against me.

She was rather a rough woman with a rough sort of voice who was perennially single and constantly meeting different men after work, none of whom stuck around. I was younger, privately educated, and happily married. It was clearly jealousy.

Eventually, I complained to the Staff Partner about it and he was very nice and I was moved to a different department, which was also a lot more interesting. However I also decided to lose weight around that time, going from a size 10 to a size 8, and everyone in the firm thought it was due to stress and bullying at work that I was losing weight. So they all started being extra nice to me. The more I denied my weight loss was anything to do with my work (which it wasn't, I just had a nice routine and wanted to be skinny for a certain look), the nicer they were to me. Clearly everyone in the firm thought I was losing weight because the stress of working with that colleague was making me ill or something.

They even gave me a really nice leaving lunch and gifts when my graduate training scheme was over, and amazing references. I wasn't even unhealthily thin by any means, but it was an office full of overweight people and that probably made my weight loss stick out all the more. The nasty colleague never spoke to me again - I honestly think the whole firm got so worried about my really quite unspectacular weight loss, dropping ONE dress size, that she got some kind of official warning about it. I'm sure inwardly though she thought I deliberately lost weight to get one over on her. That was the way her mind worked.

Not me but my partner.

He is amazing at creating spreadsheets and his boss always asks him to create them for the team. One full team meeting a spreadsheet was asked for he did it. A colleague (who alleges bi-polar disorder - I'm not being harsh it will be explained later) decided at the time in the meeting to pretend that they had created the spreadsheet. Boss had a smirk on their face and said go ahead explain the figures for the past half year. Colleague stumbled and muttered the way through it, got to a column that they didn't know what it was about. Boss asked what that column was for and colleague went "eerrrr I can't remember why I did that column." Boss burst out laughing and said "xxxxxx do you care to fill us in" and my partner had to explain what and why he had created.

Afterwards he pulled colleague up on it and colleague said they had a "bi polar moment and didn't know why I did that".

The problem is colleague always tries to take other peoples work as their own and when they get caught out it's always a "bi-polar moment. They may genuinely have the condition but no one believes them at all as these moments only happen when they are caught lying and that is always the excuse.

I used to work for someone who claimed that MRSA was in hospitals because "n£ggers cleaned them." She was bigoted, indiscreet, horribly patronising and nit picky and had done everything the same way in her role for 15 years.

I reported all my concerns to HR, managed to keep my temper for 6 months and then I lost it one day, got very sweary, threw a magazine at her and said I was sick of how she spoke to me and that I couldn't stand it any longer. She ignored me until the day I found a better paying job working for their main competitor. HR were no help at all and dragged their heels over a reference because they sided with her. No excuse for how I behaved but I couldn't take it any longer. Interestingly the director she reported to fully supported me.

I was the eighth person who'd worked in that role in 5 years. Which of course I only found out once I started.

Anyone else dreading work tomorrow, or is it just me?

I worked with someone who had to always be in control, she would one minute be your best friend and the next minute belittling me, it was like it became her mission to destroy me. One day I stood my ground and she realised she had lost control but it took me years before I was brave enough. I had
Counselling, I was on antidepressants she destroyed every bit of confidence I had, she had me convinced everything was my fault and that nobody would believe me, she was toxic and one of life's constant victims 🙄but one day I just snapped. when I look back I feel like I've left an abusive relationship.
She's a nasty women and still likes to try and control me when she sees me but I see through her now.
I believe in karma, and I look forward to seeing what it has in store for her.

Only got to page 2 but wanted to share mine. Will obviously change a few details but you’ll get the gist of it.

Got seconded to her team. No one liked this line manager at all. I’d heard horror stories but just wanted to go in, do my job and go home.

It was office based, my salary wasn’t great but I did my best.

She picked on everything. Hated the fact that sometimes I was called on to support management in a secretarial role to cover holidays etc.

I’d be in tears at lunch time, tears at home. After a year I’d had enough. Just before I left it was her birthday so we was expected to decorate her desk, wrap the presents from the collection that had gone round the section which we duly did.

She sat there enjoying all the attention opening presents and cards until she came to my card, it was personalised and was the shower scene from psycho. I thoroughly enjoyed the look of shock and fake smile while everyone laughed their heads off.

Handed in my notice, management urged me to complain but I just wanted out. She was awful and once I left she started bullying someone else who also left.

My manager in my appraisal apologised for shouting at me by telling how his wife despised their sex life. This was to explain my complaints about his anger when I brought up how uncomfortable it made me. He then cried

And yes I got redeployed not him, I loved my job, he got got counselling

Life is too short to work with a person like that. I would leave before their behaviour gets worse. Not so long ago I had a bullying manager who I complained to HR about (the 9th employee to have done so) - I lost 2 good years of my life and would never waste my time working with someone like that again. Since I have left, she has received another 5 complaints of bullying against her, but still remains in post. I'd simply move elsewhere.

I had one. He was a shocking fannyrat, absolutely notorious for it (despite being officially in a relationship with another colleague) he was always starting relationships with other women and giving them jobs despite their total lack of skills/experience. It was a magazine publishing company 20 years ago and there was an unofficial policy of people giving their pals work; experience/qualifications weren't entirely necessary and, to be fair, quite a few of the people brought in that way turned out to be real assets - they were keen and learned fast.
But the fannyrat eventually found a woman as toxic as he was. he started shagging her, brought her in and gave her a job, and she disrupted everyone and everything - all charm one minute and nasty whispers behind your back. At the time he started seeing her, though, he was still in a longterm on/off relationship with a pal of mine (one of the reasons I hate him is the irreperable damage he did to her mental health). She found out about Ms Toxic when she went round to his flat to pick up her stuff - she still had a key - and it was clear Ms Toxic had moved in. So my mate did break some of the crockery. She told me what she'd done, I went round after work to do a bit of hand-holding... and then the police turned up to nick her for criminal damage. (I still think she was an idiot to do it in the first place but the story gets... even better.)
I got a three-day suspension over the incident - my 'crime' was being friends with my friend. It was only lifted because the rest of the department called a meeting and threatened to walk out.
A couple of years later I found out the final twist, becaue it had always seemed a bit odd to me that the descriptions I was given by other people of the damage my friend had done didn't tally with what she had told me. Ms Toxic had got home before Fannyrat, found the (minor) damage and proceeded to smash the place up herself and blame my friend for it...

Most people I work with are fine, except for a couple of cliques. One is a couple of youngish (early 30s), woke, hipster men and their female hanger on. They pontificate their political/social opinions endlessly and constantly talk about how stupid their colleagues are and the mistakes they make. Of course, their work is perfect(it's not). In their own way, they are as sexist as my dinosaur old grandad. I feel they are seriously patronising with women, especially the older ones, just waiting for one of them to pat me on the head.

I currently sit near a group of 4 young women, they spend all day moaning about other people and their petty squabbles, one in particular has a real chip on her shoulder. Aggression just radiates off her, over anything.
One of their peripheral members has "issues" with food smells, these are not allergies. She doesn't like the smell of cheese or mushrooms, so therefore no one can eat these. I had a cheese sandwich the other day and got glares and passive aggressive comments about "the stench". I thought "screw you", and carried on.

Had one dreadful colleague who hated me passionately as she was jealous of my party lifestyle ( I had no commitments at the time whilst she had 3 kids and a long suffering DH) and the fact I became good friends with another colleague who she classed as 'her' friend. She was so immature and insecure it was pathetic.
When we had to work together (12 hour shifts) she would put on an act with others and try and be all fun and frivolous- making up stories of wild nights (sex in graveyards and extra- marital encounters) trying to make sure I heard and shooting me evil looks. She really was pathetic.
I started dating someone she vaguely knew and when she found out she went so far as to hunt down his phone number and ask him on a date (wtf- she was married!!)all to try to get one over on me as she was so insanely jealous. He told me straight away (he knew who she was) and we laughed at what a desperate she was. I didn't confront her as I didn't want to play silly games and lower myself to it.
Not a chance she'd have got my man and she knew it.

Both of us were senior managers. We had to write reports on staff. She wrote a damning report on one member of staff and signed my name on the report.
I wasn’t even aware of this until the member of staff involved approached me and threatened to put forward a grievance because I had written ‘lies’ about them.