Most incompetent person you ever worked with/hired

[Medsy]

I've got a new colleague, he has been here for 2 months and I 100% understand it takes time to be eased/trained into a new role, but this is next level. It's actually making me wonder whether he lied on his CV or at interview. There are really, really basic aspects to the industry he doesn't seem to have heard of, the other day he was struggling to use a simple Word feature, and one of the requirements was a foreign language which he said he was proficient in.
Ultimately I am going to have to work with him as a pair and I am trying to be as helpful and generous as I can but a part of me thinks why have they hired him?@
Opening the floor....Have you ever worked with or hired someone where it went beyond just incompetence and you thought "WTF is going on!".

One of my trainees couldn't work out 10% even with a calculator. Remarked "but this job doesn't involve much maths does it!"

This was in HMRC.

She failed probation and was most indignant about it.

I have worked with teachers who don’t understand why we need to assess children to get a measure of their progress.

Also, one teacher who didn’t understand that lesson plans need to start with a learning objective from the National Curriculum. Most strange.

When I explained (gently) the reasons for the above being normal practice, they seemed confused. 🫤

This is why you have probation. Document everything in writing.

I had someone who couldn't work out how to switch on the laptop or connect it to WiFi

Several decades ago I worked with someone who just couldn’t seem to learn what the processes were, or why they had to be done in a particular order. We had to explain it to her over and over and she still made huge mistakes. It was frustrating.

One day there was a medical emergency and we asked this colleague to call an ambulance (she happened to be nearest to the phone). She said, “what’s the number?”

Probably me! I can work fine on my own but as soon as there are people around I get anxious and start making really stupid mistakes, like the example of someone not knowing how to work out 10% or do something basic on a computer, something like this I could do absolutely fine while I was alone but if I was with someone else and they asked me to do it I would just panic and not be able to do it.. I’m self employed now 😂

Once we hired an expensive IT consultant and he was playing silly games like Animal Farm all day on his Ipad. His Ipad was right next to his computermonitor and he would just “harvest” things all day and even plan meetings around certain events in the game. I don’t like snitching, but this was just so next level-weird!! I told my manager and in the next few days he send the consultant home.

I had a junior staffer who couldn't work out why I was pissed that he'd disappeared for a nap in the middle of the day 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, I had someone who was more concerned with his status than actually doing any work. He also had a very high opinion of himself and was not amenable to any kind of constructive criticism at all.

Thing is he's a really nice guy, I really like him! But this is like an IT person jot knowing what an IP address is, or a nurse not knowing how to give an injection. I'm wondering whether he actually lied on his CV or was maybe just great at being interviewed. I think I will try and get him to go for a drink with me after work some time next week

We had someone disappearing from an operational role and after searching for him around the whole building they found him in a storage room reading magazines. When he got told off he got pissed off and left for the underground car park and drove off. At least he left his company bought shoes at the car park.

I worked with someone who used to send lots of emails from her mobile phone when WFH. When asked why they were sent from there and not her laptop, she said that her table at home was too far away from the plug socket so it would run out of charge! We gave her an extension lead but she didn’t last that much longer.

Very small, niche IT consultancy back in the 90s.
The secretary was doing an office inventory - good thing, but was pulling plugs out of sockets to see which devices they belonged to (odd).
One of the plugs, she disconnected, belonged to the server (very bad), so we lost a day's worth of data.
A couple of years later the consultancy had been sold for a lot of money to a larger company, the same secretary tried to give herself a pay rise and almost succeeded.

Me. I was just shit and half arsed at every job I did because I couldn’t be arsed and just wanted to be at home.

I must have driven people up the wall.

🤣

What was the word feature they didn't know?

Using track changes to accept/review

I would ask questions about what he did on courses or in previous jobs.

I hired someone and a large part of their job was very basic number work. When they started it became apparent that they couldn't cope at all. They left the same day through mutual agreement. We brought in a basic test at interview, which was necessary but felt a bit patronising/demeaning.

Had someone that said she couldn't multitask, couldn't be asked to do ad-hoc jobs on top of her main job role. She cried when asked to do anything. She wouldn't have passed her probation but she resigned beforehand, never forwarded an email so fast to HR!

I worked in part of the Civil Service where there was a role that required a degree and a lot of testing, competency tests, maths and English levels, some role plays, it is a really rigorous couple of days. A trainee started who was extremely incompetent and was dismissed in his probation. I sat in some senior meetings and they were looking into whether he could have got someone to go to the testing days as there was no way he could have reached the required level there.

A co worker who had high functioning Asperger’s and used to self medicate with alcohol and we suspected illicit drugs. He was dealing with safeguarding vulnerable children and families and would regularly disappear when he felt under any pressure- often spotted sitting drinking in the local pub. He resigned before being pushed, but now jumps from one local authority to another in the same role , never lasting more than 6 months apparently.

What checks are made about what people know? It's so easy to say yes I know how to do that in an interview but you haven't got time to train people up on things that they say they know anyway

We used to give candidates an excel test at interview. We would sit them in a room and show them where we were sitting about 3 desks away. We went back after 45 minutes to finish up and One person who on his CV was ‘advanced’ level had sat there with a blank screen because the laptop had run out of charge. Hadn’t said anything, just sat there. He might’ve been brilliant at excel but clearly had no initiative so was not hired.

I work with a man that embodies all the negative stereotypes of gen z. He hardly seems to work, always on 'wellbeing days' turns up to work late, turns up to all meetings late, doesn't ever do any work,always saying he will make a plan or a trello board to manage a project but after making it nothing gets done. Explains he doesn't know how to do things which is why things don't get done but these are simple things that just require initiative e.g. can't book a room for a meeting, so ask around and find out which system you need. Don't know who Mr X is? Ask someone ffs or use the Internet (profiles are all online!)
He's on a PIP but said he felt bullied by it and it impacted his sense of self apparently. He won't be fired so I'm praying he quits.