What does it take to be completely untouchable at work?

[PithyMintFawn]

I work in a big corporate and I’ve noticed there’s this one guy who seems completely immune from any expectations or consequences. He shows up to meetings when he wants, barely contributes, and yet no one complains or even acknowledges it. It’s almost like an unspoken rule - he moves between teams every few years and people just know not to involve him in projects. If he does something unprompted, everyone reacts as if he’s done something amazing.

From what I’ve gathered, HR won’t touch his case, and there seems to be some underlying reason he’s so protected. This is unlike anything I’ve seen in my career. AIBU to wonder what kind of situation would lead to someone being completely untouchable at work? Have you ever seen this happen?

Either he knows or is related to someone senior, he has something on someone senior, he’s threatened legal action in the past or (and I am seeing this with someone in my office) people are either too scared, too lazy or too jaded to do anything about his performance, so they just let it slide and avoid doing anything about it.

In a healthy organisation, nobody is untouchable.

In a dysfunctional organisation, it could be down to all manner of different things. Maybe he knows something ? Or knows someone?

Does he own many shares? Or is friends with/related to someone higher up? That's the only reason I've seen it before.

Oh, or if he's previously been disciplined/fired and then got their job back via appeal/settlement. That makes people extremely cocky 😂

Nepotism.

Related to someone high up.

He's related to or shagging someone senior.

As others suggest, it’s often who, or what, you know.
But, it may be that he has proven himself litigious in the past and they prefer to ignore him.

None of that is a good reason. IME, he could lose his untouchable status if mansgement changes, or someone grows some.

It can be cultural I think. I know that's vague and nebulous but so is the nature of these situations.

I've seen similar in my organisation. I love it but I've been genuinely shocked at some of the situations (across multiple grades) that have been allowed to continue.

It genuinely can be changed though; it just takes the right person coming along and basically being like, what the fuck, and escalating it. But that's not always a battle everyone is willing to have. I've had grounds in roles to think that somebody I report to is completely inadequate for the job and can't believe they're getting paid at their level, but philosophically I genuinely struggle with the idea of trying to expose somebody and causing them to lose their livelihood.

More fool me though, because the department is underperforming as a result, and it's now at risk of staff reductions, so either that person loses their job or other people do as a result, maybe both. It sucks.

Because actually you can (at work and in life) behave really badly and no one does anything, and if you establish that as your default really early on then many people will just say oh that's just John don't mind him. People just work round difficult people.

But behaving badly or slacking off is not in a lot of people's nature so they never get to experience it and the fact that for the most part you'd be allowed to get away with it.

In my experience it will be nepotism. A senior employee will have arranged a cushy number for their otherwise unemployable family member. Or the person will have a history of crying about 'bullying', 'mental health' or 'discrimination' if they were ever asked to produce any work, or be on time, and no-one wants to be on the receiving end of those claims. I'm in civil service.

Relationship, business or personal with a key customer? The strangest people can hold incredible influence over external customers. I've seen people who are seemingly absolutely hopeless at their day to day job be fired and suddenly a large account moves along with them to another organisation.

Where I've seen it before it's been one of two reasons. Either, they have been appointed by personal recommendation of a board member and nobody wants to question it or they have a key customer relationship which is more valuable than the cost of paying them to do very little.

If he moves around a lot it could just be a case of "I've only got to wait another 12 months and he'll be someone else's problem"

Key relationship either internal or external

Is selective about the work he does. We had an HR lady who everyone would tell you was shit, lied to your face and did fuck all but the senior team thought she was amazing because she always responded to their requests incredibly promptly (because she did nothing else!)

History of mental health issues or litigation or stress caused by the company and they don't want him to sue them

Noone is completely untouchable, even if it seems that way now.

It’s actually pretty difficult and time consuming to fire someone. I mean it can be done but have to go through the motions and do it properly lest you get accused of unfair dismissal. Perhaps management are either not competent enough or to lazy to do it.

I think this is 💯 correct

In my NHS experience, it is the ones who raise grievances in every role they have ever been in and have a hotline to their union. Our processes are rubbish at getting rid of poor staff. These staff members just end up being offered more and more ‘support’, shifting sideways between jobs, and everyone has to tread on eggshells around them in case they accuse people of bullying or discrimination.

We had one of these at work. Turns out she has HR on speed dial and complains about everything and everyone!

I even had a manager say, just apologise, we don't want to upset her. they seem scared she would put in a grievance about them. Glad i left!

Maybe hes part of a mob.

The untouchable person where I work has a lot of mental health issues. She's moved from department to department occasionally, rarely shows up to meetings, doesn't do much day to day... and when she is given a project or put in charge for a day or two she causes chaos.

She's in a senior, well paid position but has no direct reports anymore and has survived rounds of redundancies where good workers have been let go, much to people's amazement.

She's a lovely but very damaged person and I can only imagine the bosses worry about what would happen to her if she lost her job - or perhaps they think it would be a whole world of pain to try and let her go. I think shuffling people sideways is quite common!

And cronyism if they’re friends.

They’re the only reasons I’ve found someone to be untouchable at work.

Agree normally someone who is a pain to deal with and the culture is not there to remove them.
So no benefit to a manager to spend their time and focus on him without HR and senior management being willing to spend the time plus the unbudgeted visible legal fees needed to remove the employee.

No-one is untouchable in my organisation. We recently merged with another equally huge organisation and within a few days of the announcement, our Group CEO (who was highly regarded and very successful) was discarded. He will have had a handsome pay-off but it set the tone. No one is safe. No pressure then. 😉

Length of service in the organisation. Some people would just be too expensive to get rid of.

And it was exactly the same in social services! No one was ever rewarded for doing excellent work, but the work shy were paid the same, and had excuses made for their poor performance.