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!".

Not sad that she’s got someone to support her. I am quite envious!

I cannot believe the injustice of that!

A different world in teaching in those days. Still… 😀

I bloody hate those IT skills tests that some recruitment companies make you do.

I did one many years back that wouldn’t allow you to use shortcuts at all. So the task would be to copy and paste in either word or excel, and you couldn’t ctl+c, ctl+v, or go via the right-click button. You had to go via the taskbar. If you made ONE incorrect click anywhere on the page, it would mark you as failed on the question and move to the next.

I would say most people mainly use the shortcuts, and if you didn’t know where a function was, you’d click around the taskbar for a few seconds to try and find it. When most of the questions are set up like this in the tests, even a reasonably proficient MS user wouldn’t do well on them.

I think a lot of people labelled incompetent may actually be undiagnosed and unrecognised as neurodivergent, which should be explored with the person as they may need adjustments, support and understanding of their specific needs to be able to do their work to the best of their ability. I know this because I am one of those people. I'm not daft but I know I had specific difficulties and even I didn't understand then when I was working. But as a carer to my autistic child, I get it now qnd am on the waiting lists. There are a lot of undiagnosed 40, 50 somethings out there because that's how it was in the 80s. No help and no recognition. Things are getting better now.

Well it can’t have helped, can it?

Iffyi - ‘adultist’ !! 🤣Laughing my head off at that one. You weren’t actually serious, were you?

Not necessarily, @RachyRoo24. The average IQ is 100. That means half the population's IQ is 100 or less. It's dishonest, and in a way elitist, to imagine that everyone of average intellect or lower has a neurological 'difference' and could be elevated with suitable interventions.

Some neurological disorders make people unreliable, untrustworthy, unable to work in a team or with customers, unable to communicate effectively or at all, unable to work with numbers, etc. Some mental and physical disorders make people unsuitable for formal employment of any kind. Many milder disorders limit a person's capabilities, as does intellectual capacity.

You don't have to be constantly trying to make people into a better fit for your needs. What they need is a situation that works for them, and it doesn't mean every employer must create such situations.

I have used word in its various incarnations since 1990something and couldn’t reliably use that feature so I wouldn’t see that as a failing in anyone.

Not so much incompetence as massively under qualified. But he was extraordinarily charming and made a good impression and as our boss didn't actually understand much of the business either, he'd hired him without noticing how clueless he was. We worked in investment banking communications.

I could live with that, annoying though it was, but what did INFURIATE me was that in the almost 18 months we worked at this same place, nothing really changed. I went off on maternity leave for 7 months and came back fully expecting him to be at least vaguely aware of the products and services the bank offered by then... he was not and the other women in the office told me that one of the persistent issues while I was on leave was that boss man kept trying to pass off some of my internal clients to this guy (over more qualified, experienced, senior press officers) and it had been a disaster to the point where apparently half the bankers refused to even take meetings with him.

The week before I left the bank, bearing mind he'd been working in our team for 18 months at this point, he had to go and ask someone who he should direct a call to about something. Not that weird, you'd think? Except, the thing he didn't know who to direct a call to was the single most profitable part of the bank's business and was a huge part of the day to day work for me and my team.

I am with OP on this - it's a pretty standard feature for any sort of corporate environment where documents are edited extensively by multiple people. More importantly, it's actually pretty easy to get to grips with, so even if you don't know how to use it, you should be able to figure it out quite quickly or just be shown once, assuming you have basic Word skills.

Having said that, going back 20 years ago, a pet peeve of mine was how often men would claim incompetence in office technology - "oh, I can't get this Word document to work, can you (woman) format it for me?" But I assumed that was to do with men who'd started their careers expecting to have a full time PA to do all their typing and formatting and admin. The same men were somehow never able to hear an office phone ringing unless it was theirs. I thought that sort of thing had stopped now but maybe not?

Same time period, I worked with someone who was very good at the talking/in person part of the job but awful at anything in writing. Eventually it turned out he had dyslexia but didn't feel comfortable disclosing that. It was incredibly frustrating though as once we learnt about it, we were all happy to accommodate him. Before that, we just felt like he was being a massive dick becuase he'd not only refuse to do anything in writing, he wouldn't let any of us do it either:
Me: "I just sent an email to the client with the outline of the plan for next week and cc'ed you."
Him: "No, you need to call him and talk him through it , or plan a meeting"
Client: "Why are you calling? I got your email, thank you, and I'm just reviewing the schedule and will get back to you with any problems."

People saying that 'Well I can't use track changes so therefore it's not an issue' - it is an issue for everybody else. How would you even work with a document where multiple people are editing and commenting on other people's edits? Just go around and around with this one print-out until all 10 people have commented on everyone else's suggestions?

You can get rid of people who lie on their application form/at interview though. I've even done it in the NHS. (Admin who refused to take minutes despite it being a key part of the job as detailed in the JD & job advert).

You just need to document everything and follow procedure.

Many years ago I used to work with an otherwise competent man who "couldn't type". His secretary worked offsite so he'd fax her his notes (in cramped handwriting that didn't fax well), get her to type them up and fax them back, annotate the errors in pen then fax them back etc etc. It was painful to watch. I showed her how to save her drafts on a shared directory so at least the second and third rounds of faxing were eliminated, but it was still mad.

He could do two line emails but anything longer he used to dictate to me (obviously I wasn't a trained touch typist, but the possession of ovaries magically enabled me to hit the keys at more than one word per minute). Eventually he was moved to another department where they had PAs but not secretaries and he miraculously gained the use of his fingers.

Not incompetent as much as 'green as grass'. Many years ago when Faxes where a 'thing', we asked an office junior to fax something to the court. She was standing by the fax machine for ages but we didn't think much of it.

It was only when the Court called us and asked us to stop faxing them the same document over and over that we realised there was an issue.

When we asked why she had faxed the same document over forty times she said - I feed it in but it keeps coming out the other side, it doesn't send. She thought the document went into the fax machine and then was transported to the receiver. She thought there was an error as it kept coming back out.

We did laugh about that. How on earth she thought documents got out of that small box and over to the receiver we never found out.

@NoNotMyFirstChoiceofName can you give an example of your anti misogynist boobytrap questions? I could do with deploying some when I'm interviewing in a very male field!

@newtoallthisshizzle I replied to this and then read your post and had a horror sinking feeling you were the poor girl in our office all those year ago. Then I realised you were trying to fax from an unplugged printer

I once hired someone who, it soon became apparent, had got someone else to fill out his application. Nice guy, but functionally illiterate, and the job required daily written reports. Unfortunately HR insisted on an extended probabtion with (clearly unattainable) objectives, which just increased my workload and gave him false hope. I felt as if I was kicking a puppy when I finally let him go. Terrible day.

I went to an optician that did this! I went back and said I couldn't see as well in the new lenses and she said she thought it would be easier for me to have both lenses the same prescription?!
What would be easier for me would be to see properly!

Funnily enough I had an email today with an article about how to create pivot tables! It wasn't sent to me specifically, just a round the firm thing.

Yes I didn't believe that one, particularly given how difficult it is to get a training contract!

An admin assistant was hired who was practically illiterate. Don't know how she slipped through the net, but she genuinely didn't know her alphabet. We started not being able to find things in the (huge) filing system- this was late 80s, until it was realised that she would take a bundle of filing, unfiled, and stuff it at the back of the "z" files.

Love this!

Bloody hell, I have been a copywriter for years and never knew of, or used that feature.

@maddiemookins16mum But if you are nearly 60,and this woman is 7 years older, is she not about to retire? She sounds useless.