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!".

This made me laugh. I PROMISE, my documents look GREAT and I am the one who is usually fixing other people's weird formatting issues.

Admittedly, even long documents that I work on are fairly simple. So no need for 10 different styles in a document or lots of images etc, so that does make it easier I guess than if I was doing something that was more complex.

And to clarify my consistency in formatting comment - I always get it right, I just know that if I used Styles more consistently it would be quicker/easier.

Current boss. She's a major reason I'm leaving, yayyyyy. The senior management think she poos sunshine though and she makes sure she's a rep for every daft HR initiative going. I'm grateful to hear for reminding me how not to manage.

@JadziaD , the way you worded your post suggested that you didn't have a clue.
A document doesn't necessarily need a lot of styles but the structure needs to work.
I don't really care how 'GREAT' a document looks but it needs to be structured correctly, be readable and the content needs to be right.

I definitely don't have a clue about the correct terminology - because I've learnt all this stuff as I go. To your original point (or maybe it was another poster?) I've been using Word since the old Word Perfect days and have learnt and expanded my skills organically rather than with formal training.

But my documents are 100% structured correctly, and are readable. And the content better be right - that's where I make my living!

@JadziaD , I've been using Word since the 1990s and before that I used WordPerfect, but I've been using it for fairly expert things, not just say typing letters or straightforward documents.

Not sure how you can do things without knowing the terminology, but maybe I'm thinking too deeply. I've used it for creating multiple document books and things.

I'm self-taught but have had training in related subjects/applications.

For example, I've used styles to a greater or lesser extent. Not always completely efficiently, but I do it and it works etc. However, until this thread, if you'd asked me what it was called - I wouldn't have known. When you first started talking about it, I intuitively realised what you meant and went to check that I was right.

OP - sorry we've derailed this thread with some random chit chat about the use of Word. Apologies. But I'm always interested in how much more advanced (or less advanced) people are on Word. KirstenBlest's competence is astonishing seeing as I've met people who can barely save a document and wouldn't know how to do basic formatting if their life depended on it - and as she (or someone else?) pointed out, it's not us Oldies! I had to have words with an intern once who didn't think it was a problem to send a client a press release draft with multiple fonts in it and no headings.

If I've been using WordPerfect in the early 1990s I'm hardly young.

I get asked to create a template. Someone then uses the new document and puts in their formatting, usually line breaks to create new paragraphs and page breaks, changing font etc and claim my template is rubbish.

The worst ones are either older men who have been quite high-level managers or young whippersnappers who have written a dissertation so know everything.

Sorry for derailing the thread.@JadziaD, you are probably pretty swish at Word.
I wouldn't say I was an expert but I have probably used it to expert level.

I don't like using Track Changes.

I think the most useless colleague I had was one who never did anything wrong whereas most of the team was criticised for making the tiniest mistake.
We had sussed him out but the manager hadn't.
The reason he never did anything wrong was he never did anything.

this is a different take, but I was that incompetent employee. When I was 19, I needed to get a part time job whilst in college and I was desperate so I was applying for everything regardless if it was something I wanted to do or really could do. I passed an interview, somehow, and managed to get this job working in a quite fancy pub. Anyway, it was my first real job and being very introverted and socially awkward, I was not set out for this type of work. I don’t remember much of the work, but I vividly remember this one day where I was getting all flustered carrying things from the table, I knocked a candle all over my hand and the wax had hardened by the time I could remove it. It made me even more flustered and I managed to drop the tray with glasses on in the process.

Safe to say I quit shortly after and never went back to that field of work again.

We've all been there, different when it's your first job and are learning.

I think incompetent as in someone who's meant/claims to be good but isn't.

Also at 19, I took a job in a kitchen thinking I could wing it. Except, it was an industrial kitchen with everything bigger than normal.
Struggled to carry the big pans, even the mop was huge and heavy.

I cried into the sink as I washed the pans, a supervisor saw and helped me.
Turned up next day as I was desperate for a job and they hadn't cancelled me (agency) as probably thought I wouldn't turn up.
Was instead sent to one of the shops the kitchen supplied. Left the agency and stayed there for 4 years thanks to that supervisor's kindness.

Admin role. Started job, said they can’t answer the phone, makes them anxious. FFS.

They were either related or shagging

100 per cent not

Word isn't trivial at all. I have a part time job alongside my main one, and in this job I have a colleague who is The Typesetter. Literally, her job is to receive my (and other writers') mis-formatted Word drafts and format them properly.

I hold up my hand, I cannot get the hang of the Styles function. I hate Track Changes and I always view it in latest iteration mode.

I have just about learnt the difference between an em dash and an en dash and that is my limit.

That function where you see the spaces as dots - I call it the Wonky P mode, no idea what it's called. I do use it though.

I'm the same poster upthread who declines to use the projector at school because I can't always work it!

Ps just seen mumsnet put in an en dash in place of where we'd need an em dash. Just wanted to assure pedants that I did notice! Not comic irony!

yes, my post was worded badly! I was on my phone - I really shouldn't post on MN from my phone. It always goes badly for me!

I meant that it's not us oldies who used Word Perfect back in the day who struggle, but the young 'uns! But you are clearly even far advanced of relatively long-term users like me.

What annoys me is when people copy and paste from other places which brings new, incorrect formatting. And then, to rub salt into the wound, don't FIX IT.

Also, lawyers who can't cope with making changes or saving new versions, so they print it out, scribble on it, and then get their PAs to send it back to me as a PDF....!

"... who can't cope with making changes or saving new versions, so they print it out, scribble on it, and then get their PAs to send it back to me as a PDF....!"
Yes! I sympathise.

This thread has been completely derailed by posters droning on about their formatting skills in Word.

Agree!

It was in the OP, @Nothatfunny .

We had a team assistant who would turn up 20 minutes late every day then proceed to use the company kitchen microwave to make herself an elaborate breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs which she would then proceed to eat slowly and appreciatively at her desk before commencing any work.

Would then order in a personal dominos pizza at lunchtime and spend 40 minutes waiting outside the building so the delivery guy knew where to do.

Didn't know how to use PPT templates despite PPT creation being a central aspect of the job.

No idea why my male midlife crisis serial cheater boss hired her. She was young, slim but curvy, very beautiful....hmmmm...

But even so she only lasted a month or so.

I started working as a teacher (adults) at a company at the same time as another woman. I'd never taught before, they hired me based on interview involving demonstration of my teaching, the fact that I had an M.A and just generally liking me. I actually loved that job but unfortunately the company went bust.
Another woman started at the same time as me and I am SURE she lied on her CV. Not just the little exaggerations that a lot of people do that don't really matter, but honestly she was useless.

Students didn't understand her teaching, she didn't know how to mark, she took weeks and weeks to pick up on even tiny 'rules' involving how the marking system worked or how the actual company programs worked, and she often repeated the same mistake again and again. She used to contact me often asking for help with teaching methods, and up until then I'd never taught a day in my life. She didn't know how to use 'zoom' either and often asked me how to login and things like that. She'd apparently taught for over twenty years and had so many teaching qualifications and advanced certificates.

Not only that, she'd often be not working when she was supposed to be. We mostly worked from home, teaching a couple of days a week either online or in person so most of our work was marking, content writing and other bits like interviewing new students or other jobs involved in the course. When she wasn't acutally teaching, she'd often be rang by another member of staff and she'd say 'Oh I'll ring you back in an hour, I'm just in town' or 'Sorry didn't answer, I was at the chippy! I mean, we got a lunch hour? But this was just at random times of the day when she should have been available.

My boss rang me one day to ask if I was able to commute to X city (I was, only up the road from me) and I asked her why, and she said she was (finally) fed up of Miss Useless and did I want her job.
Then I had to redo all of her marking, which really annoyed me as I couldn't read her bloody writing.

Sorry to continue the thread derail but I thought this might be interesting for the Word fans:

I agree. Twats.

I dunno. I disliked the initial derailing but have actually been quite taken aback by the passion (!) and love for Word.