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!".

I had to look up word track changes. All these years, never needed it!

Vegetable preparation warehouse trainee told to slice the carrots a certain way for the client and box them as shown in the prep leaflet, I can’t do that, she said I don’t like knives. Really!
started at 6 30 gone by 7

Don't make friends with him - it'll just make it harder for you later on when you end up doing all the heavy lifting at work and feel unable to report it up the chain

I use Word a lot and have for decades and can't cope with Track Changes.

When I was first sent documents with it on, I didn't know so all the changes were lost. It happened a few times and my manager told me I was useless in front of a meeting. (He was an useless arsehole)

It was only when a kind colleague pointed out to me to use Track Changes that I twigged.

Have you ever worked with or hired someone where it went beyond just incompetence and you thought "WTF is going on!".

Yes.
We were working together on a publication. They spent a lot of time making personal phone calls to their partner, and once everything was ready to go to print I could see that they had completed just 3 pages to my 83.

I didn't want to be a grass, so kept quiet, then one evening as I was working late with my colleague they were taken off for a meeting. I guessed what was going on and went home.

My boss rang me to say that the colleague had failed their probation and wasn't being kept on. I then told him about the 83 vs 3 pages and the phone calls, and he said that he already knew.

They had a look at ex colleague's PC and discovered that they had bookmarked loads of websites that were nothing to do with work.

In spite of their work ethic I got on well with said colleague and we stayed in touch for years afterwards.

I am trying to build up a collection of evidence but a lot of it is intangible.
He could realistically claim that going through my colleague is proper procedure even though that's not the culture of the organisation and doesn't make sense as it just adds another person to the line of communication.

I worked with someone in the Civil Service who had a degree in journalism but was incapable of writing a letter. He had transferred in at the same grade from another dept and it was impossible to get rid of him.

In the end he got a promotion to another dept and soon after yet another promotion. He was highly skilled at bullshit but not much else.

I had a boss who was completely incompetent.

Earned £250k, was effectively a glorified proofreader. To cover their inadequacies, they were nasty to everyone around them. A rampant racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic bully is the kindest description I can think of.

Me and the other two direct reports spent all our time either explaining basic concepts, or doing the job for them.

I left that company after 12 months, having had the boss push me out. Was careful to keep all my receipts, and received a nice payout on walking straight into a new job.

They got rid of this boss 3 months after I left, so looks like they finally clicked on who was doing all their work.

We subsequently found out this person was a friend of the "independent" Board member who hired them 🙄🙄🙄

I've sadly worked with several incompetent teachers (been a teacher myself for many years) - nb they were the minority, most teachers I've worked with have been excellent.

One couldn't/wouldn't keep an eye on the kids or the equipment, kept in trays at the back of the class. At the end of the lesson, the technicians would come in and find mini light bulbs trodden on into shards of glass, and fairy liquid squirted neat onto the floor (very hard to clean).

How did he not see this happening during his lesson!!

You could be right @Medsy

It sounds like he's a chancery.

I interviewed one once, and he said he'd worked at the World Bank, went on about delivering £xyz of value, and then later changed the number to £abc. I exchanged looks with another person on the interview panel. He knew he'd been rumbled. We were lucky he made a mistake...

But by far the most incompetent person I ever worked with was an undergrad (sandwich year). I asked him to go through the filing and make sure it was ordered in alphabetical order. When I couldn't find a letter, I asked him where's tge letter from Mrs Anderson and he said under the M's for Mrs. He was told to reform tge whole system and this time I explained it like you would to a numbskull. He also called me panicking about a reading he'd got when he was out testing for gas - there was an explosion risk. I had flu. I drove 55miles to work to find it was an error....

I worked in admin and had a manager who asked me to set up a word document with a table three columns wide and eleven rows deep. I did, then asked her what to put in it. No, just email it to her, that was all she wanted me to do.

She was also the person who emailed the whole department asking if they had any pacific stationary requests.

We had a departmental PA once who didn't understand how to use an office telephone system. Or email. Or book accommodation (we all travelled a lot and it was clearly stated to be a key part of the job spec). The last of these was the cause of some interesting conversations in hotel receptions up and down the country.

She also claimed to have been (at various times) a spy, a long-distance HGV driver, and a personal trainer. These things seemed somewhat implausible, to put it mildly

I have no idea what the track changed thing in Word is. Must look into that!
I feel bad for people who struggle to do/understand something work related (could happen to any of us!) but I do lose patience with those who walk in thinking it’s an easy job/no effort required or those who do minimal effort/want to leave early from day one/spend more time than needed checking their phone/looking in the mirror 😁

Wow I just googled the bloke I referred to above. He now holds a senior role in the Cabinet Office and has blatantly lied about his previous roles! FFS why don’t they check. He is useless!

Lots of the new carers, some of which do the training and quit before they start. People that have manual handling training and are then unable to use a sling/hoist. People that don't know that you put the electric toothbrush on when it's inside the mouth. People that don't talk to the service user.
Recently we had an email sent out about people having earphones in and listening to music when on shift (in people's homes). Or playing games on phones/texting/having calls on speakerphone.
Inability to use a microwave properly. All very, very basic stuff and bad for the people who have to explain everything over and over to them when they turn up for their shifts and have yet another new starter.
Some of these people also want a certificate after they quit for 'doing the training' which costs the company money for no work done.
I assume this is to get benefits off their back but company training doesn't transfer from one to another as they all have their own.

I've had some involvement with that august body in the past. That sounds entirely on-brand for their people

The young marketing person we hired who refused to email, message or call anyone ever. Seriously career limiting decision making there.

I used to work in retail and the guy who would eat the packing noodles comes to mind.

🤣🤣🤣

Oh Jesus....

Yup. I am beginning to suspect he didn't realise that he would need to use the language orally and maybe thought he could get by using Google translate. I was told he was "perfectly bilingual". This is going to be the deal breaker if this is the case. He has been avoiding calls, sometimes quite blatantly

A long long time ago, I used to temp in offices. I was sent to a solicitors' office where they still used typewriters. There was a mixture of sheer incompetence on the part of the secretaries and extreme tightness on the part of the solicitors.

I remember opening the filing cabinet and all the folders were empty apart from M. Every single letter had been filed there under M for Miss, Mrs or Mr.

What made it even worse was if they typed the wrong address at the top of the letter, they would use tippex and overwrite it. That obviously worked okay on the top copy which went out to the client, though it wouldn't have looked very professional but of course it was the carbon copies that were being filed so you had absolutely no idea who the letter was going to or the address it was going to. All you could see was Mr, miss, Mrs… apparently they were not allowed to throw away headed paper and the bins would be searched regularly

At primary school (aged about 9 ) we had a student teacher for a week who scored out my correct spelling of "science" and in large red pen wrote "SAENCE".

When I was at school in the 80's we used to do work experience weeks - I was interested in working with children so I did a placement in a day nursery.
Also we did business skills and had career talks from local employers to give us some idea about world of work and what was expected of us - also a lot of kids got 'saturday' jobs in shops and cafes etc from age 14. But I think for various reasons that is not common now. Maybe some young workers now don't know what is expected of them in the working world.

I work with someone who started a new career at the same time as me. She does live quite far away but she never comes into the office. We’re supposed to come in at least 3 days a week. I could understand if she arranged all of her appointments over 2 days to avoid the travel but she doesn’t, so the rest of us have to see people for her. The last time we saw her was early December when she was on duty. I was asked to find out where she was at half 10 as I have her personal number and she said she was on her way but running late (duty starts at 9am). She finally wandered in at 12:30. She can’t even blame travel costs for that as she still had to come in. The next time she was in duty she rang in sick and we haven’t seen her since. I think the last time I saw her in for a full day was October. I’ve also had complaints from other agencies that she doesn’t answer calls and emails so what is she actually doing while sat at home?? She’s also lied and recorded appointments as face to face appointments when she’s done them as phone calls (our job means it’s really important to see people face to face and know they are where they’re supposed to be). No idea how she gets away with it! It creates a really bad atmosphere in the office as the rest of us are always willing to help each other out and be flexible but it’s completely one sided with her.

Agree. In almost all roles. A friend of mine once summed up interviews as:
They ask all the bull- questions, you give all the bull- answers and nobody finds out anything.
Edited to correct formatting.