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!".

Similarly to medsy, years ago I worked as a waitress part time and was at the same place for a while. A young lad joined, he told us he was just out of the care system so must have been, what, 17? He’d been set up in a flat on his own and I think had some assistance with finding this job, but then was basically left to it. He was incredibly anxious and so was hesitant and needed reassurance about very basic aspects of the job. The manager sacked him after a week. I still look back and wonder how he got on. I was quite young too and not very assertive, I think I did try to speak on his behalf but wish I’d done more. It could have been the making of him.

Boss advertised for a delivery driver, did the interviews and hired employee.

Employee turned up for work, Boss handed them the keys to one of the vans, employee said I'm disabled and DVLA has revoked my licence, I'm not allowed to drive. (Or words to that effect)

Boss blew a gasket, fired him immediately and was taken to tribunal, which he lost, it cost him thousands. Boss learned to ask at interviews if people have clean current up to date driving licences.

This is entirely the fault of your company's recruitment process that they are landed with an incompetent employer. Eg language skills could & should have been checked out through a 5 minute conversation with a native speaker.

I suggest you raise it confidentially with your boss and give examples, you really do not to end up carrying him.

I recall a colleague (in customer services!) who responded to complaints by being defensive, argumentative and pointing out to the customers all the reasons why he was right and they were wrong. It resulted in a whole lot of complaints about minor issues being escalated so that senior colleagues had to pick up the pieces. Huge amounts of time and resources, reputational risk, just because this person couldn't respond with a simple apology.

Went for an interview involving typing speed once. The girl checking my work started to manually check for errors. I suggested she use spellcheck.

Knew a teacher once, at least 15 years experience before I arrived, superb subject knowledge, but she just couldn’t convey it to her students. She lost coursework, took endless time off, had teaching assistants come to tell me they had no idea what she was trying to teach. I coached her, but as the head said, it was like having a brand new student who had no idea and got worse every week. She was quietly shown the door.

I did a trial shift in the local bar one day, they got rid of me because I couldn’t cope with food orders going somewhere and needing to be paid for separately and drinks being on a separate tab. I was hopeless!

I decided to leave teaching and went to work for an IT company but at this point, years ago, I hadn’t really used much IT, teaching was all projectors, write on plastic sheets etc. I lasted 2 weeks. 🤣

How the hell does he keep getting such jobs? Surely to god LAs are following up on references?

My boss hired an older lady who had been in the company in a different department for a long time, rather than taking the risk on a younger and less experienced hire. Safe to say my boss has regretted this every day since, as the lady she hired doesn’t know how to use any admin features of our it system, can’t book rooms, can’t manage diaries, struggles with meeting minutes. We’ve stopped bothering asking her to do stuff and just started doing it ourselves

Agreed. I’ve been interviewed and asked to interview in both languages every time I’ve joined a school/been interviewing.

Have you ever seen the episode of the IT Crowd where Jen pretended she could speak Italian and then had to interpret at a meeting.

Behind a bar with a woman who’d just left uni

never missed on opportunity to tell you she had a degree
zero common sense or initiative had to direct her to do everything

trying to explain how you count of float in the till was like you we’re talking a different language

Currently have a colleague who, almost 4 years in, clearly doesn’t understand the job at all.

They lie constantly as well which makes them very difficult to work with and take an insane amount of sick days.

I think they thought the job was something different.

Had a manager who could talk the talk, looked beautiful and everyone was so impressed. Reality was she could not even do basic maths, tried to get her underlings to undertake budgets for a small remuneration so she could blame them when matters went wrong. It eventually did forcing a community initiative to collapse. She was £20,000 adrift.

Made absurd demands - for me it was continually moving a library from room to room, involving heavy lifting, carrying heavy furniture down to a cellar for no obvious reason then she would change her mind. Once a shelf collapsed on me and she refused to sign the HS incident form. Insisting on huge mailouts when a simple weekly email would suffice. In the end the CEO actually asked her if it was a good use of my expertise.

She would send us numerous emails each day whilst sitting by us. Often in capitals asking why a job had not been completed after working hours had finished, why I had not set up a room when I was on holiday etc.

She had the attention span of a gnat and wanted me to undertake a huge new role on a project doomed to failure. I decided then that I would resign if she forged ahead but she lost interest in the meantime. Colleagues told me not to worry as she would forget about it.

I sometimes wonder where she is wreaking havoc now, but understand she just keeps studying for more degrees.

Worked in a cafe when I was a student as supervisor. We had the mum of one of my colleagues join the staff as we always took on more over summer. Her daughter was great…the mum, not so much. She couldn’t actually do enough to be helpful cause she didn’t want her benefits cut…she couldn’t actually get to the place on time cause she didn’t drive and due to wanting shorter hours, couldn’t get a lift with any one…and she didn’t do much work. Eventually, when I politely asked her if she could do a task because we were very busy and it looks terrible if staff are standing around chatting when customers are waiting, she whipped off the apron, told me I was bad for her mental health, and walked out never to return. Her poor daughter was mortified!

Out of interest, was any proper training offered to this woman? Reading this I feel sorry for her. (Obviously not great for you and your other colleagues either.)

@Testina London, Birmingham, oranges, trays, trays and more trays.

I might have trouble with that.

I was horririfed when my boss at my first job after leaving unversity, in scientific research, was referred to by pretty much everyone as "the self propelled lobotomy". He was a really nice bloke, but a bit like an overkeen boy scout. To acheive anything from the project, I really needed at least someone who had a clue what they were doing to show me the ropes. Sadly this didn't happen, and I didn't have the skills to dig myself out to the hole (or so I thought). So depressing. Especially depressing as he was actually a very lovely man.

I joined my current company a year after this other woman, and 2 months in she was placed next to me to do some side by side "upskilling" because she didn't understand the very basics of her job.

I remember being interviewed for a job where another language was required and the interviewer simply, without warning, swapped languages half way through the interview. There’s no hiding with that method.

A few years ago our HR hired a man to work in our technical projects team who on his second day asked ‘can someone tell me how to copy and paste on excel’

Oh yes. Manager hired a chap who she thought was “sweet” and wouldn’t cause her any trouble. Couldn’t do one aspect of the job. The whole office had to change its way of working to accommodate him because management wouldn’t pull him up. He was treated like a King and had smoke blown up his arse. I’m still baffled

A work with a lazy narcissist who has consistently failed up over the last decade by latching onto senior managers, flattering them and taking credit for others' work. They have now ended up in a senior position they were not qualified for (I interviewed them, so I am well aware of this) and I'm having to work with them. It's very depressing and I'm trying to come up with some kind of strategy to get what I need out of them on a major project.

Relative

Trades. Builders. Most of them.

In retail, years ago. Cashed up her till at the end of they day and it was miles short. She’d previously worked in the pound shop and apparently had good references. It turned out she had no understanding of coins having a different monetary value, just counted them all as “1”. She was around 19/20 and did not last beyond day 2.
Looking back she must have had learning difficulties.

cherry i know about spellcheck but I wouldn’t use it. It Americanises things

Had to train someone who had just finished a degree in the field but didn't know the first thing about it. After I went home mid afternoon (part time) one day, she apparently sat and cried because she didn't know how to open excel. Also didn't know how to switch on a computer. There have been many others (including one who shot up in the toilet!), but she was the one that caused me the most frustration!