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!".

Excellent point - so many jobs I see advertised in my niche area of IT are actually the work of 3 people......

Absolutely, speaking from someone who is currently doing the work of three people - it is madness.

Another one here of even greater age (nealy 68). My first computer (in NYC in 1984) was basic, but we writers were still supposed to use secretaries, who were in the scheme of things, not all quick on the uptake. We swiftly learned how to use GML tags to personalise company notepaper and many more complicated tasks. I have used a PC for so many years through Lotus Notes and WordPerfect before Word and my first email address (about 1992) was all numeric apart from the @ and compuserve. And track changes has been in use since the early 2000s.

MS Office is a doddle compared to its forebears.

I often see job descriptions where the required skillset is really two skill sets, and unlikely to be something one person will have.

See, I strongly disagree with “tell me about a time when…”. My job is so fast paced and varied I simply can’t remember specific examples. Once it’s done I forget about the details. But ask me how I would deal with something, and I can reel it off, because I’m good at my job.

Also me!!! I turn into such a clumsy dick under pressure 😂

To which you answered, "No, just put them on hold"

Lecturer who said wildly inappropriate things to students, marked assignments based on his personal feelings about the students, unpleasant to women (boss, wider team, students), and then engaged in some very bizarre behaviour when challenged about this. He also failed to do some pretty basic things involved in his job which left us with an absolute shit show. He lasted about 6 weeks.

Ugh I hate the "tell me about a time when..." approach. You can anticipate what the questions are likely to be and think up a few anecdotes in advance. But then you'll get a question that you didn't prepare for and have to try and scramble to quickly remember something that has happened that fits the question. Of course you're going to get people making up bullshit stories because they panic.

Asking how you would deal with a specific situation is much better imo. It encourages the candidate to use knowledge and experience to answer, and can often then lead to them remembering a similar situation organically, and talking about what they did. It just flows so much better and puts less pressure on an already nervous person.

I hate that question because I literally can't answer it. I have on three separate occasions stared at the interviewer and thought "no, I've never done that". (The first time I actually said so. The other two times I bullshitted. I didn't get any of those jobs.)

Every job I've ever had I've been really good at. But I can't answer Behavioural questions. (My current job I only got because they pitched it as an apprenticeship so only asked about Strengths )

Unfortunately the trend is away from asking your managers how good you are (because that's not fair on the people with shitty managers) so my main aim over the course of this apprenticeship is to gather some Examples for the next set of interviews...

I was once the incompetent one. Hired as a secretary when I was 18 in a very traditional office…beating two older ladies with experience because the boss wanted some eye candy. I’m dyslexic and didn’t have a clue about basics of the job. I tried my best, but it really was round peg, square hole. A number of staff were very bemused by me. Boss allowed me to set my own hours and I didn’t do much work as long as I brought him tea and wore skirts and perched on his desk to tell him what I was up to. I did realise after not long, but I really needed the money so stayed for almost 2 years!

A temp senior lawyer (hired from an agency at eye watering daily rates) who could not grasp how to open a client file despite 4 different people walking her through it! Her work followed a similar pattern 😳

MS Office is now huge by comparison and of course easier to navigate than originally starting from DOS (appox.1989? I’m 63). Our first PC was on loan from Wiltshire County Council because my ex needed it to work from home. We’d never had a lesson but we found the drop down menus and function keys so logical and easy to understand we worked it out quickly. I bought the ex a Star Trek game for Xmas but it never finished loading to be able to play!

In 1994 our first PC was built for us when we started a business and it had 200mb memory which we were told was top spec and we would never need more. 😂

I bloody loved WordPerfect in the 90’s! We ran it alongside Word for as long as possible because things like printing labels and envelopes were sooooo much easier.

Apologies for the derail, this thread is sending me down memory lane 😍

When I was a bar supervisor back in the mists of time, had a new girl start, apparently had experience behind a bar and was good to go on her first shift with me after being shown the till system etc. 10 minutes into the shift she'd wasted a ton of beer unable to pour properly, then asked me what was in a vodka cranberry, she lasted a week.

@ChampagneLassie I can't figure out how you think you're proud of being that person!

@SmilingMoon

The worker may be working but not be at home

They may not be in an 'information secure' area and still be sending confidential emails

They may not have security features enabled, giving anyone access to the email account

People are allowed to work from home only after an assessment and breaching those conditions could be an act of misconduct

The AppleMac was introduced in 1984. The Apple II predates it (1977).

wow, cold. People don’t choose when to go through a life crisis you know.

I agree, when recruiting I prefer the 'What would you do if...?' questions. You can raise situations that have actually occurred and see if their approach to resolving this situation complies with best practice. I agree that when you have dealt with countless situations it can be hard to recall a specific one. Paradoxically it can be easier for less experienced candidates to answer specific instances as they have fewer to recall. But if you are asked how to deal with a situation effectively then it is easy for a skilled person to answer.

This was really my point. The original comment seemed to imply that adults over 40 could not be expected to know how to ise computers. I was simply pointing out that at 63 though I started university and grad school pre computer (desktop that is) I have been using them professionally now since I was 22. All the programs in use at this point are all much easier and more user friendly when I started. Anyone, even old coots like me, should be expected to be able to master this crap.

In one of my first IT jobs in the late 80s we used "green screen" apps in a suite called Uniplex - it had a Word Processing app and a Spreadsheet (which we used). We could share and send docs and sheets to each other, and we had a form of e-mail - although that only worked in-company, it was possible to message people at any branch. We even had an instant messaging facility (like an early slack/teams).

Universities had email long before most other organisations. My husband first used it when working in an IT job at a university in 1985. I was working in accountancy at the time and we didn't have it. I went on maternity leave in 1992 and we still didn't have computers on desks or email or anything like the internet. Audit papers were written longhand. Letters, memos, tax calculations and so on were written out by hand or dictated onto a dictaphone, and given to a word processor operator to type up. Endless process of checking drafts, marking up corrections, waiting for it to be re-typed, checking again. Could take days to finalise a simple letter or memo.

I know many people who have gone through truly gruelling personal situations and have held it together at work as best they can. I have a lot of sympathy for anyone going through tough times, I have been through some myself. And I think employers should be as supportive as they can, I don't want to work for any who are not. I agree you can't choose when these crises happen; but as I said, if you are going through a personal crisis it is probably not the time to take on a new and demanding job.

I didn't cover all details of the situation in my post. We tried to talk to and work with this employee, suggested having some time out to recover and offered to arrange a new start date after a few months with the next batch of trainees. She wouldn't listen, wouldn't work with us to try to resolve it.....just kept trying to come into work although she was obviously incapable.

Trying to manage induction training in these circumstances (with the other people involved in this and pulled from their other duties) was a nightmare. There were also other people at that workplace including some who we knew were going through difficulties themselves, we had to think about the impact on others of having these repeated situations at work. It was just not sustainable.

Sorry you think it is cold however as a business you do what you reasonably can to support people at work and you can't do more.