To wonder how people who are A Nightmare at work don't realise they are

[CurdinHenry]

You know the ones - not just shit or mean but flamboyantly stressful and awful and if you end up on a project with them you might have to quit entirely. You try to grey rock them but they drag you back in with unforeseen madness and a true belief that they are the wronged geniuses in a sea of fools. In big organisations they go from team to team and everyone shudders when their name is mentioned (oh yes Sue is going to lead that project on NO not fucking Sue) but no one will ever say because you can't really can you.

But they get distressed and have narcissistic rages when people don't agree with them and add more and more and more chaos and never stop to think

Wait

Is it me?

But how do you know you are not thought of as a nightmare at work?

It's a good question but I'm pretty sure. I do manage to make things work (provided I dodge being allocated Sue).

I’m an academic but had a life before academia, I work with academics who just went to uni for 7-8 years then straight into this job. They’re usually lovely people to talk to but have absolutely no idea how to organise anything which drives me mental. I’ve been in meetings before where I’ve actually felt like I was losing my mind. They all just sit going round and round in circles over something super straightforward that could be resolved in seconds. Piss up and brewery.

I think people's tolerance and patience in general has gone down. Everyone expects others to react and behave exactly like them and see those who don't as 'nightmares'. It's all rather dramatic.

I’m a ‘practice’ academic. I came from a fairly senior position in a well known organisation and although I love working at a university I do get frustrated in meetings where, instead of coming away with actions, we’ve spent 45 minutes debating the exact meaning of ‘strategic’.

People are complicated, and the workplace is full of people.

Some people do know to some extent, but can't manage to behave differently.

Haha, this is just so fucking relatable! Thank you… Last year I tried to help them set up a degree show where students showcased their work. Should have been the most straight forward thing imaginable, simply a case of sorting a bit of catering, some boards/screens to display the work and each academic selected good students to be there. Instead it resulted in about 10 meetings where everyone debated the amount of boards and screens, which discipline should be positioned where, whole cakes or buns? Uni catering or outsourced? Who should we invite? How should we invite? I said I didn’t want to be involved this year, wasn’t worth the hassle!

All of this. I work in a university, in a teaching role, but not an academic. I spend many hours in meetings with academics & can feel like screaming when we get to the end & not a single concrete decision has been made, in fact, the exact same item will be on the agenda next time ….

You wouldnt say that if you had the pleasure of working in my NHS nursing team. I moved NHS trusts after 24 years as I relocated and it is like they have put something weird in the water here. I have never met so many bitchy women in one place.

I think a large proportion of people lack insight, they seem unable to reflect on how their behaviour towards others might be perceived. There’s comes a point when someone needs to be very direct with them and spell it out.

I recently went to a conference with one. She could not be pragmatic and just get shit done. She assumed the very large (20k attendees) congress would change the lights in our room to make the slides project better, that they would keep the slide upload room open late for her - spoiler, they refused on both counts.

Had I not taken over and done the heavy lift on the slides, there’d have been none. This event cost >100k, I get cold sweats thinking about it.

She's been in the organisation >10 years, delivering 4 of these a year. I don’t understand if it’s always like this or something happened this time but I am bubbling with resentment every time she is praised for how well it went.

I work in the public sector now after decades in private industry. My take on this as I see it all the time is that people don’t want to make a decision. They don’t want responsibility/accountability and don’t want to take whatever risk they perceive comes with doing that. As a result, discussions become about minor issues, work is directed towards minor issues and attempts to change that are met with those nightmare behaviours. Being seen to be doing something (anything) is more important than actually doing it.

It’s just so true and is the reason we get such a bad rap. I get asked to do all sorts of tasks not in my job description purely because I’m a) numerically literate so can handle data and b) I worked in jobs prior to academia so can communicate better with external people not related to our world. I don’t know how some of them get through life day to day in truth.

There's a huge amount in this.

Everyone in my department is lovely, most of my staff were actually rejects form other parts of the company. My translator was unpopular with the rest of her team, the person who ended up as senior chemist/deputy lab manager "failed" her internship after taking maternity so no dept wanted her, one of my process engineers was told his department didn't want him back after things slowed down during covid. Also get last pick of operators and graduates from the company training centre.

However I would not swap a single one of them for the arrogant, stupid, idle, feckless, unimaginative, ignorant turds who work in the rest of the company.
We are a happy little life boat of sane folk rejected by the hive.

I always tell these people that the workplace does not deserve them and they should be in a better job with more prospects.

Or I did until I retired because apart from my tiny team, the larger team we were merged with were all completely bloody useless people who thought they were above everyone.

I am sure some actually know, and enjoy it!! And are mollycoddled by management.

We have a guy at work. He is paid TWICE what I am...but he expects me to do his work for him as he is PC illiterate and paid well above his knowledge base and ability.

I also do not possess the technical or experienced based knowledge bank required, but I am expected to complete technical work for him.

I am pushing back now though and asking HR and QHSE lots of questions about responsibility and stating that I want to highlight my lack of knowledge in this are that I am being told to work in, and that I will complete it to the best of my limited ability and I cannot be help liable for any errors that are in it - when it is reviewed by the idiots.

More and more people we work with are getting fed up with them asking others to do their job.

They are often a nightmare wherever they go. We had a lady in a workplace I worked in. She was an absolute entitled nightmare. Very much promoted to point of incompetence. No-one wanted to deal with her or manage her because she was a nightmare. They dealt with her by moving her sideways every few years and selling it to her as " a new challenge". She was completely oblivious to the fact that she was constantly been moved around because no-one wanted to deal with her and instead thought it was wonderful that she was selected for a new challenge every 4 years.

I worked with one. Promoted 5 times as she was useless and insufferable to work with. She caused problems between colleagues she worked with in every team. She was managed out by a restructure and hasn't worked since.

I used to work with a woman whom I will call Linda. She would never stop talking. Linda was jovial and friendly. But she had no social filters. She would see that you were working and would pester and pester until you answered. Most of the conversations were about her private life. I would say something like "Look Linda, Ive got this report to do and I need to be quiet. Can we talk later when Ive finished?" Then a few minutes later she would start a conversation about her pets. It was like trying to work with a tannoy you could never turn off. Sometimes I used to go and sit in the loo for a bit of peace. One day she kept interrupting and interrupting when i was trying to type a report. I had no choice but to answer her. Eventually the line manager turned around and told BOTH of us to be quiet as she was trying to concentrate.

I was pretty angry at that response from the manager. It would have been obvious that I too was trying to work and that it was the colleague who was being disruptive. Instead of owning with the situation she took the easy way and blamed us both. At lunch time I walked out, came home and sent an email to the manager telling her why I had done so. I told the manager that unless she dealt with the situation and found me somewhere else to work I would raise a formal grievance.

Eventually I was moved to another office. Although it was a much larger office, busier and noisier I was still able to concentrate without Linda. One of my new colleagues asked me why I had requested a move and I told her. She responded that "Linda" had very poor social skills. It was clear that others shared my opinion of her.

No, it's not you @CurdinHenry . I am endlessly astonished by how colossally crap some people are at work. I shouldn't be, I've been working in the corporate world since I left Uni and I'm heading towards 60 - but I bloody am!!!!!!

I can deal with the shirkers, they just need watching like hawks and set the clearest and most unambiguous of deliverables that are tracked almost daily. I can also deal with the less than able, who can usually be found an area of adequacy in which to perform. But the loose cannons, the fruit loops who think they are on some upper tier of specialness because they are so good at their jobs, but who are actually hopeless, they are the ones that bend my mind.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason these heinous individuals remain, is because they are so unbearable that making complaints about them are too off-putting, so they get shuffled around from team to team and no one will tell anyone else how awful they are, otherwise they won't take them on their team. They have managed to surround themselves with a conspiracy of silence!

There was one of these where I worked. Dreaded by all. People actually left the company because they could no longer face working with him. He gamed the system to the nth degree, would drop anyone in the shit without compunction in DARVO fashion, and yet everybody else had to pick up the slack for him because it was an industry with non-negotiable deadlines.

Management were fully aware, many complaints were made over the course of years. He’s still there and facing precisely zero consequences for his ongoing unbelievably dreadful behaviour in the workplace.

As with my example, it's actually a problem of it being a shit organisation that won't deal with problem employees. In my case, loads of people left and no one cared until the person joined the highest level of management, when they realised she was vile and destructive and got rid.

To answer your question, OP, these people don't think it's them. They think it's everyone else. If they do eventually face consequences, they feel terribly victimised.

One person and their attitudes and moods can change the atmosphere in a whole office. Silences. Crying. Bullying. You can feel the dynamic shift as they come through the door. Used to set me on edge

I used to have a coworker who used to say ‘we all have shit, we should leave it at the door and come in to do the best job we can’, and she really really did. I only found out after quite how much shit she left at the door and I think about her all the time and wish others could be more like her