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!".

@LightenUpTheRideIsShort thank you, glad someone understood at least!

No, these are definite Gen Z specialisms:

always on 'wellbeing days'
He's on a PIP but said he felt bullied by it and it impacted his sense of self

😂

Every generation produces idiots who can't understand that the purpose of work is not to serve their ego, or that satisfaction is a two-way street. But only the youngest one expresses it in the terms described here!

Filing key documents is very important for audit trail in my industry. I once worked with an administrator who couldn't file for toffee and was generally sloppy in her work, such that I had to go over it to check for mistakes and often correct her work to avoid client complaints. Documents were frequently filed in the wrong section and I ended up searching for things for ages. I pointed out some misfiling which caused delay when a client had asked for information, and she said, 'sorry I did that filing with my left hand and it never works well when I do that'.

Another administrator used to book my travel and accommodation, but would never send details properly in an email, instead left messily scrawled post-its lying on my desk. I was on the move a lot and relied on administrator to be on the ball with booking hotels, as was often travelling straight from one location to another without office visit, so her post-it communication system really didn't work. On one particularly busy trip, by EOB she had not sent me details of my hotel for that night despite multiple reminders, and had to chase her up, finally telling her I didn't know where I was going to sleep that night. Her response, 'duh, what are you like'.

The other thing that works flawlessly is confiscating the permanent marker and not letting him have access to it.

Right! Im 63 and got one if the first desktop computers @ 1982 and my first laptop @ 1989-90. I used various programs then available to write my dissertation.

Me neither and I'm 55 and work in social media marketing. Just print it out and red pen correct.

Tbf

Tracked changes do my fucking head in, I hate them - and I often fuck them up.

Are you in legal op?

WordStar and WordPerfect all day long compared to typing on an old typewriter with a ribbon and carbon copies and tippex.

My colleague said her camera was broken for a year. (We work remote). Turns out the little tab was closed that covers the camera.

Mind you, that's the sort of thing I would do 😂

My former line manager. Classic company bully promoted into a role they weren't very good at. But made it possible for them to bully their team and say they were just doing their job.
They made up rules so they could boss us around eg wanted us all in at our desks from 9-5 when we were on hybrid working and flexitime and had been given equipment to work from home. Core hours were 10-3. This manager tried to discipline people for being 'late' if they were in after 9am. If we wanted to work from home you had to get approved by them and they were jolly awkward about it. No other team had this caper.
Constantly behaved in breach of company policy and legislation eg policy was that you checked if someone was able to take a TEAMS call, not just call the person. Oh no, this manager would just randomly call you and if you didn't pick up then accused you of skiving. The worst was them refusing staff reasonable adjustments put in by HR & occ health. Turnover and absence was higher in that team than any other!
Five years on this person is still with the company, still line managing people (thankfully not me, I got a move to a different dept and escaped!).
Ahhhhh that was cathartic.

I'm in exactly this situation as a patient who was treated dangerously by a 'nurse' who patently could barely speak English and was abusive and harmful to me, making life and death errors. I don't believe for one minute she's even qualified in anything, she can't possibly be.

I know when I complain how careful I'll have to be not to come off as racist.

I once temped in a telecoms company overseas when I was working my way around the world. Got put in to cover a woman on long term sick leave -the job was supporting a team of 5 engineers based in various Asian countries, organizing visas, sending supplies and collating reports. It took approximately 30 - 90 minutes a day to do the job. My biggest issue was looking busy enough for the rest of the time.

I doubt your desktop in 1982 was running Microsoft Office.

The Mac wasn't launched until 1984....

I am a solicitor and about 16 years ago who was absolutely useless
She is now a partner in a big London firm
Life can be very strange

Sorry meant to say had a trainee

Not so much "worked with" as trained - or rather tried to

The guy who came to an introductory day and found himself faced with an industry leader, who frankly I was very lucky to get on board.
This happened to be a woman and he promptly told me he found it "deeply offensive" that I'd expect him to be taught by one and demanded she be "got rid of immediately"

It could be for clarification, the NHS has lots of meds which have 3letter abbreviations /conditions that begin with H (hrt , HPV, hsv, ....) and sometimes patients get mixed up. The nurse could have been asking for the full name of the medication to ensure correct documentation,, particularly important if undergoing a procedure where drug interactions may be a concern.
Or they may be unfamiliar with that abbreviation and were honest enough to say so.
Or maybe thought you said 'achearty' or something: I once told a friend I was going to see an audiologist, he said what's that? He heard 'ordylogist', and was very intrigued! Less so when I explained and he realised what I had actually said

I am a doctor. I have been shocked at the level of literacy and admin skills some of my colleagues have displayed over the years.
One particular job, all the junior doctors would sit together after the ward round and divvy up the day's tasks. One chap would readily offer to do such and such but when lunchtime or end of day came had usually barely done any of it, leaving the rest of us to frantically scrabble about to get it done. Things like 'call ultrasound to chase up when patient X's scan will be done'. His answer would be that he didn't know the number. No matter how many times it was explained you could pick up the phone and say to the automated thing 'ultrasound', or use the intranet's directory to look it up, or look at the paper sheet we all carried with the day's jobs which had the most common numbers we used all the time on, he still claimed to not be able to ring ultrasound. No appreciation that patient X might miss or already have missed their scan and their diagnosis and management would be delayed. He just did not seem to care.
It was so so infuriating. None of the bosses cared as long as the jobs got done which the rest of us juniors made sure they did because otherwise the patient was the one suffering.

It is just so hard to determine the true nature of a person from a 2 stage interview process. Interested to hear from those with lots of hiring experience as to how they weed out the potential wasters that might come actually say all the right things in interviews and look ok on paper.

Did you use Wikipedia to find that out?

Worked for a solicitor who was a mess of a person. Alcoholic, going through a divorce and house sale. Hated her life and everyone in it.

She was the worst boss I’ve ever encountered and terrible at her job. A bully and made mistakes. Lost clients due to being drunk. Lost company phones and a laptop due to being drunk.

She was terrible to me (and others). Now I can see it’s because she was going through turmoil.

Years ago I was in the same boat as you @chillichutneysarnie and it drove me crackers. Basic stuff on Excel was just beyond him, how he got the job I don't know.🙄Thankfully he moved on after a year😁

Just wanted to say @TheLogicalSong you seem to be getting a lot of flak from various posters which I can see no reason for!