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!".

The retired teacher who uses a permanent marker on the whiteboard sign for today's date. Despite the notice we've put up saying PLEASE use ERASABLE pen on this sign. Lovely guy with other great qualities but honestly...we're on our fourth sign in two weeks and running out of replacements.

He was Head of English in a secondary school for twenty years.

@Fringepolitics294 Yes actually she’s been given a lot of training, writes lots of notes but still doesn’t seem to be able to get the hang of it. I actually feel sorry for her also, that’s why I just tend do to things myself rather than adding to her stress!!

I used to work with someone who watered down liquid medication for animals to make it last longer. She hadn't bought enough, you see.

I used to work in a well known TV Production Company (as a Producer). We hired a English with Film graduate that had a decent CV and who interviewed REALLY well. He was brought in to do a first read of script submissions. He clearly thought this was a bit beneath him, but he banged on about his similar work and obsession with film scripts and his English degree. We had many script submissions as you can imagine and we had a self-imposed deadline of twelve weeks months to respond to each of them.

His job was super simple. To read a script and fill in a basic BASIC piece of paper:

Genre: ie horror/romance/thriller
Summary: Two sentences
And then use a sticker system:

Red: Illiterate gobshite - Reject via standard template letter
Orange: Pretty basic but legible and conforms to basic script writing principle - hand to junior script-reader
Green: Potential - hand to a producer
Black - This was his 'golden buzzer' and he could use black stickers to highlight anything he really got excited about

This was his only job. It was explained several times and he was shown the basic form which you attached to the front of each script and the rejection letter for the Reds.

He was allowed to work from home a couple of days a week as it was basically reading and he complained that tubes made him feel anxious (central London). Fine.

After about six weeks, I asked him to hand me his 'Greens' (and any Blacks) and to share his Oranges with a Junior Reader and he just looked completely blankly at me. I asked him what the problem was and started to go red and look uncomfortable.

I asked him to show me his script pile and he sheepishly showed me a pile of around fifty scripts with no covering summary and every sticker of every colour on the front of each one.

I asked him why he had used all the stickers on each script and he said that he thought someone else would read them after him and 'circle' the right colour. I then asked him about his summary sheet and he said that he thought 'they' would do that too.

I asked him what he thought the point of him reading the scripts was if he wasn't going to convey any information about them to us and he said that he hadn't actually been reading them. He thought he just had to put the stickers on.

It was like he morphed from this confident, swaggering interviewee, to a toddler with a sheet of shiny stickers.

I cannot deny that we cried with laughter after he'd left

@Newestname002 no actually everyone just kind of puts up with it…we know what she can do and just do the rest of it ourselves!

I worked in roles where I could use my language skills and was frequently wheeled in to an interview to chat to prospective employees in the language in which they claimed to be proficient. All I can say is you would be amazed (or not) at how many people lie on their CV...😙

I remember having a temp to help me out in the office for a couple of weeks when my colleague was off sick after surgery. This was back in the late 80s when we used electric typewriters.

The first day she didn’t turn up because she got up late and missed the bus. Didn’t occur to her to get the next one. She arrived the next day and I showed her around and explained how everything worked. I then asked her to type out some address labels, gave her the list and a roll of labels. She typed the first one then said the label was stuck. I thought perhaps the roll had slipped but no, she’d taken a label off the paper backing and stuck it to the typewriter roll. It was still there a couple of years later when I left.

I would say the incompetence here is in those who did not provide training in these basic functions when it became clear the employee did not know how to do them. Its easy to upskill someone in these basic tasks.

There is a really simple remedy to this simple problem, moaning and 'I'll just do it myself' is not it.

My manager from my former job left and was replaced by someone who essentially got the job because they were the only person who applied. They were promoted far beyond their capabilities or experience and were petty, incompetent, unable to communicate appropriately with people or maintain confidentiality, tried to delegate every task in order to deflect from the fact they didn't know how to do them, encouraged backbiting and gossip by playing favourites and created a truly unpleasant working environment in what had been a pleasant and well run department. This person was self important and arrogant and their priority was the status of the job title with very little interest in actually managing the department effectively. It was the reason I left the NHS.

F

In uni I worked in a call center and the girl next to me was too scared to use the phone. She didn't last long

My friend did this when he was young. Claimed to speak Swedish and was appalled when the interviewer started speaking to him in fluent Swedish! : )

Not hired, but at interview. The job was working with American clients, and fluent English was the top job specification. This guy had clearly got someone else to fill in his application form because it was apparent about two minutes into the interview that he barely spoke a word. I have no idea what he thought would happen at interview!

I had a trainee teacher with me. As I was teaching at the front she sat at my PC, logged on to her emails. When I went to do register she said could I wait as she was busy. Mind boggling.

I worked in a building society, this guy was taken on as he’d finished uni and studied finance. Great you’d think he’d know a thing or two about the industry/terminology etc. Asked if he knew what an ISA was and how it worked after he’d had his full training, he couldn’t answer. I do wonder if he was asleep during the course 😏
Now this was the fun but, I kid you not he couldn’t fold an A4 letter in half and put it in an envelope. I was carrying this guy and constantly cleaning up after his mistakes.
Later it turns out he knew someone at HO who squeezed him through and gave him the answers for interview.
They let him go at his 3 month probation. To say I was pleased was an understatement.

@Morningmeeting Not the case actually, she has had repeated training but finds it extremely stressful and cannot get the hang of it. I am not her boss but have tried to show her simple functions many times which she still struggles with. Having to show her all the time adds to my workload and her frustration, so instead of adding to that I just do what I can myself.

It was still there a couple of years later when I left.

😁

This makes me really depressed ' Sorted myself out through a lucrative marriage '.

I'm glad you're happy, but please don't recommend this to nieces/ friend's daughters.

I suspect that there may be more of these in coming years. Ironically given that we all carry gadgets which we call "phones" around 24/7 the younger generation aren't telephone minded at all.

Perhaps you could have provided that key information in your first post.

We had a local CEO and a compliance manager in my old firm who'd gradually got into the habit of doing fuck all and disappearing down the pub at lunchtime for the rest of the day, possibly coming back at 4pm slightly drunk if we were lucky.

When we were taken over the compliance manager was unceremoniously binned with a "don't come in to the office tomorrow, we'll courier the contents of your desk to you" email, but it wasn't announced. It took a week for his department to wonder where he was and ask around. Funnily enough it had no impact on their efficiency.

I worked in a place where an employee was hired because she said she could write shorthand. After the first meeting she minuted, she handed the manager a page full of marks and scribbles. The manager asked her to write that short hand up into English. She said she couldn't, explaining, ' I said I could write shorthand, not read it.'

A woman was hired at a place I used to work and had her first breakdown on her 2nd day. She was obviously going through some personal crisis at the time.

Distraught, sobbing loudly, crying that she couldn't cope with her life or work....it could be heard across the office down the corridor from the room she was in.

During her first 4 weeks or so she was away far more often than she was in. She had 2 more breakdowns just like the first one, involving several managers, HR staff, first aiders, a paid taxi ride home and more sick days. Next to no work done by her. All the other staff were transfixed.

She had to be let go. I have every sympathy with someone going through a crisis but really it isn't the time to take on a challenging new job. Quite different from a long standing employee with a track record who needs & deserves support during a difficult time.

Carers in a care home. Multiple useless numpties. Had to argue with one that no, we don't throw away bedsheets that get a lot of poop on them (almost every resident got poop on things) we wipe it off best we can and put it into a sluice wash in the special washer soluble bags we use all day every day. Apparently this worker wasn't the only one. Her friends were throwing away perfectly usable cotton bed sheets instead of sending them to laundry. Then they'd stand around complaining that we didn't have enough bedsheets for the beds we had to make each day!

Job description was clear that the role required listening to complex discussions, summarising them, doing some quick research on further evidence etc and explaining it all concisely and clearly. All of this quickly, to immovable deadlines.

The successful applicant was severely dyslexic and the things they found hardest were listening to complex conversations, summarising them, skimming lots of written information quickly and writing quick summaries. The supportive software didn’t help at all. They tried really hard and listened to feedback, but couldn’t seem to realise that the job they had applied for was impossible for them to do.

Now, I always do an in tray exercise (or something similar) before the interview.