Places you've worked where there's been at least one person not working

[LaurieFairyCake]

After seeing this mentioned on another thread I thought it deserved its own - as it will be funny

I've worked lots of places:

1. A bloke in the office next to me napped every day between 11 and 1. Then he went out to his car for 'lunch' and slept from 1 til 3.

1. Another job where people got paid to visit clients. Worker didn't do this, instead went home every day after clocking in. Did this for 8 years with no one noticing. This only changed when the office shut down. And they got their pension made up for an extra ten years so they could retire.

1. Someone completely underemployed in an office. Literally had 3 phone calls come in a day. Was being paid £45k for this admin job as they 'represented the face of the company'

1. Boss at a company I worked for where head office was in another country. Worked 'from home' for about six months. Did absolutely nothing. Did not log on to the network for 6 months. Actually went on a 3 week cruise with no one noticing. They never noticed and he went off to head office with a 100k salary hike, where I assume he rested on his laurels of his department doing so well.

[rookiemere]

Thankfully ours has now gone back to his own area.

Meant to be managing the project I was on, continually off sick but not letting people know, then took loads of time off for family sickness of grown son, didn't turn up to meetings at the last minute but didn't decline them, seemed to suffer an inordinate amount of technical issues such as computer breaking down or stuck in traffic.

Then apparently it was my fault that I wasn't making my expectations clear to him, because that was clearly my role as two grades his junior. I said I'd be happy to do that if and when he turned up but it wasn't my role to monitor his attendance.

Glad he's gone - stopped me getting a good performance rating last year as my line manager was unable to get any feedback from him .

[Heatherbell1978]

I work in a big bank and had to leave a job after a year as I couldn't bear working for my boss who blatantly was clueless but took home a cool £150k a year. Shit at managing people, projects and anything. Would switch his phone off and not answer emails. He went on holiday for a fortnight once and put me on his ooo and I swear I had 3 emails. I figured he would go after last round of redundancies but no, still there.

[BobandKate0]

When i was working in a restaurant,there was one member of staff who was hated by everyone - every time the kitchen was ready to plate up the chap would disappear for a fag,ask him to do the starters and he would be chatting to someone at the bar,i don't know why the management kept employing him and at end of shift he would want the lions share of any tips.
Lucky for us he was only booked for special occasions / parties.

[chrome100]

I think that person must be me. I am 35 so have been working for around 12 years since graduating. I have had about 5 different jobs in that time. In every one (including the current one) I feel I have nothing do . I complete what I'm given in around 15 mins and then just sit there bored out of my skull.

I do not get it. Everyone else complains how stressed they are. I wonder why I bother turning up.

[Sleepingtom]

I have done roles where I have been painfully underutilised, including my current one. I offer to help other teams but my manager doesn't want to give the impression that we have time to spare in case she loses a position! It is a bit ridiculous, especially given we are public sector.

[Shakey15000]

Glad you started this thread, I think I saw the other one. Was it mostly folk saying "Who cares? It's none of your business" etc?

Agog at the 100k bloke

I worked with a right couple of lazy arses who were permanent whilst I was agency. I did the lions share of the work while one spent most of the day pissing about on the internet and the other spent most of her time up the other ones arse.

[MagicalHamSandwich]

Pretty much 80% of my client base on the operational (not management) level. There is a reason why they bring a bunch of extremely expensive consultants in - those would be the people doing the work of the slackers in addition to some mostly nominal role.

My favourite current client's schedule looks as follows:

8:30am - arrive at office
8:31am - go for coffee
9:15am - back from coffee, walk around office and chat to people who are trying to actually work
10:45am - write angry e-mail about everything not completed yet thereby showing himself to be an attentive and effective team lead
10:46am - more coffee
11:30am - lunch
12:30pm - after lunch coffee
1:15pm - second chat tour de bureau
1:50pm - short meeting over coffee
2pm - 'leaving early for some urgent errands - will be online later' - never signs back on

He does this every day. His work load is minimal, I would know because it takes me 30 minutes to deal with the stuff he doesn't do every morning (before I am included in his coffee circle).

OTOH I get a very decent salary out of doing the job of about ten of these slackers, so no complaints from me ...

[SurelyYoureJokingMrFeynman]

I have nothing to add, except to say for one glorious moment my glasses slipped and I read VimFuego's post as "My old job had a testicles team".

[Hedgehogparty]

Another one was someone who got stressed if she had one appt a day- even if it was for just 30 minutes.
She would openly express the hope that they wouldn't turn up.
Forever going off sick too, often for weeks on end, and often spotted out shopping or socialising.

[IWasHereBeforeTheHack]

Had a boss once who used to take a novel into the loo with him.

[ThomasRichard]

Me when I was pg with DC1. My lovely manager used to phone me before coming to my office because I could not stay awake and would fall asleep over my keyboard. I probably should have mentioned that to my MW but I just assumed it was normal!

[VimFuego101]

My old job had a telesales team who were responsible for making appointments for the sales team. They would call people on their list, do their spiel, make the appointment, and give the company details to the area salesperson so they knew where to go. Except for one sales guy, who used to google random company addresses, give them to the salesperson (who would turn up at the business to find the appointment didn't exist) and spend the rest of the day on the phone to friends. It took them a whole year to fire him though!

[Hedgehogparty]

Worked on a ward with someone who would come up to tell me she was going to the toilet- would then vanish for half an hour or longer.

Her Lunch hour could be 1 1/2 hours long.
One day when again no one could find her, and no one knew where she was, I saw her emerge from a cupboard on her mobile.

[TheWoodenSpoonOfMischief]

In one City job I worked, they switched from monthly reporting to quarterly reporting. I literally had no work to do for every two and half months out of three.
I was so bored as we weren't allowed to do anything else and had to 'look like we were working' (order of the management)

[WeAllHaveWings]

soul

[WeAllHaveWings]

Oh and me, in old company. 4 months doing nothing waiting for redundancy, sitting in open office just in case someone wanted to ask me a question (wasn't likely as my handover was good). They refused to give me garden leave so spent the time polishing CV, phoning recruitment agencies, MNing etc. Was sole destroying, don't know how anyone can choose to do it every day.

[WeAllHaveWings]

Colleague who came into work everyday but the only work they did (programming and project work) was for another company.

Shopped them in and they went to a meeting with our manager later that day and were never seen again. Very hush hush. Most people still don't know where he went and why. Those that do know don't know it was me.

[SparklesandBangs]

I'm on notice at present as I have a shiny new job to go to on 1st Feb. I work in customer service in limited company, we don't produce anything on site so it's just sales and us really.

I am being made to work the full notice and turn up at work everyday even though I have handed everything over, so I am the person making tea every hour, checking FaceBook etc, may even start on MN next week to keep me going. If the MD wasn't so stubborn I would have left quietly without notice pay, but then that would mean his son might actually have to do some work, not produce reports nobody reads or picking faults in industry specialists work just because he can, when he has only been in the business for a few years, every time he has to back down when it is proven that his 'new' way doesn't work.

Colleagues in the office are all hard working (I will miss them) but the external sales team are a joke, I may get flamed for this as it's MN but 3 are women with DC under 10, they are contracted to work 3 or 4 days a week. One comes into the office once a month and gets some large orders each year which just about keeps the MD happy, she is hated by the office as most of the time she has her phone off and just forwards on her emails. One has a more distant area and only comes in 3 times a year, she has actually told me that she is doing the bare minimum so she can spend time with her DC, yes the office have to pick up all the slack for her. MD has her in his sights this year. 3rd one is much more visible, in office at least once a week but her favorite trick is to dump a load of tender preparation work on the office at 16.45 saying that she has to go to a meeting and isn't in the next day. Everyone knows that she is going to pick her DC up added to this she can't be contacted before 10am every day. The 2 men are much better, although never around on a Friday, they do tend to be contactable each and everyday and are willing to sort their own client's out. One of them is a single dad.

[WipsGlitter]

Colleague who was studying for a PhD and worked on that while pretending he was doing actual work.

Another one who "works from home" one day a week and uses up lots of TIL another so is essentially doing a three day week. Not sure how all the TIL is being built up.

[ABetaDad1]

I have been the worker that never works in an office.

I got headhunted to a City bank. I did all their training courses for 3 months because nobody gave me anything to do even though I asked.

I passed the training courses flying colours.

Then I came to work for another 3 months and asked them to give me some work. They didn't. After a few weeks I decided I would come into work and hang my coat on a chair. I had 30 minutes work to do then went out to tour art galleries, museums and pub lunches then arrived back at 4.30 did another 30 minutes of filing and went home. Luckily it was summer.

After a while when they had still given me no work I asked to be made redundant which they did and paid me a large amount of money tax free.

It was utterly ridiculous. I asked to be given work and they just didn't.

[sunnydayinmay]

Senior colleague who spends at least half his day reading a book, goes for long walks and makes a cup of tea every hour to break up the monotony. I just pity him, because he hates work and finds it very stressful.

[JimmyGreavesMoustache]

my office runs on flexitime. so in theory you do a 7 and bit hour day (plus unpaid break). Anything you do over this you can claim back, by bunking off early another day, or building up to take a whole day off.

i have a colleague who swans in at 10, takes an hour (unpaid for lunch) and leaves at 4, and STILL once a month takes a flexi day, yet no-one can work out how he's accruing any.

my boss also took a week's paid "carer's leave" (additional to annual leave) to look after her son after he had a minor operation. The son in question was 24, didn't live with her, and had a partner living with him at the time.

[PuppyMonkey]

Knew one person in old office who took the piss a bit about lunch breaks, but tbf she did always get her work done.

I could be wrong but to come across quite so many pisstakers in one's life does sound ... unusual.

[Queenbean]

He works in risk.

I think that some people start off quite young in a job and do ok, then they become more senior and better paid just by virtue of having been there a long time. Then they pass out their work to other, junior people and end up not doing much but being paid massive bucks.

I worked much harder in my junior years than I do now!

[Petallic]

My very first job - head of department used to take out books of meetings minutes, photocopy them, take a ruler and carefully double underline sections. Then ask admin person to send them to various people who already had the minutes anyway and were at the bloody meeting he did this all day every day. I think it was to cover his inability to use a computer. pissed me off no end when I was on my measly £8k per year.