Worst coworker you've ever had?

[I Don't Like]

I've had many coworkers in my professional career but holy shit. A colleague of mine recently left from a small team of IT operations and the new guy was a disaster. I was unavailable to interview him but resume looked ok and my boss favored him because he could start almost immediately. Seemed fine on paper but after almost 3 weeks he was so bad it was almost comical, so last night I gave my boss a rundown and we agreed he was done. Staffing company called him a few hours ago to let him know.

Some of the stuff he did was just baffling for someone starting a new job:

- Disappeared for 20, 30, 40 mins at a time several times a day, no idea where he went
- I delegated simple tasks which required input but he'd just sit on his computer doing fuck knows what and ignored them for days at a time. Zero motivation.
- Took like hour-and-a-half lunches (and we're not at all strict about exactly one hour or anything). Yesterday as soon as he got back, he hung up his coat and immediately left for another 25 mins.
-I left the office in the morning last Wednesday to get to the airport for Thanksgiving travel, sent him a task list via email and half-jokingly told him I better not return to one specific thing undone that should have been done a week prior. I return Monday and he completed that task but still managed to fuck it up while nothing else had been started.
-He seemed to have no concept of saving information given to him; acts like he's absorbing it all then asks for it to be repeated, repeatedly.

Lastly: not many people in the office but there are a few and he had commented twice about women coworkers. "Damn, she's nice." Really? It's never appropriate but at a new job no less??? And you don't even know me to say that shit to me which brings me to the funniest part: yesterday morning was the second time he made a comment and it was about a woman from accounting - who happens to be my gf. Lmao.

I was honestly relieved when he grabbed his jacket and left. No idea what kind of environment would put up with this bullshit but best of luck to him.

 

[Budi]

Bigots, multiple. I'm happy in my current place of work, I get along well with everyone. They're nice people. I have my complaints here and there of how few do their work sometimes, but overall it's been such a relief after my last job.

 

[Stop Motion Pornography]

To be fair, I really meant that she seemed nice.

 

[Bear]

- Showed up late to work by 30 mins to an hour 15 on a consistent basis.
- Took anywhere from 3-5 30-40 minute bathroom breaks every day.
- Constantly stole credit for my work and then berated me for not doing more.

Terrible manager. She was eventually laid off and hasn't held a job for more than 8 months at a time in the years since.

 

[The Real Napsta]

- Showed up late to work by 30 mins to an hour 15 on a consistent basis.
- Took anywhere from 3-5 30-40 minute bathroom breaks every day.
- Constantly stole credit for my work and then berated me for not doing more.

Terrible manager. She was eventually laid off and hasn't held a job for more than 8 months at a time in the years since.

Click to shrink...

You keep track of her?

 

[Lightus]

Worked with a new guy who would come in late, talk for literally hours, go to lunch, go to the restroom for 40ish min, get coffee, finally get back to his desk and talk more. About the last hour of work he'd actually start working. He'd also push back on things if it sounded hard "oh that's impossible", "no you don't understand, that's not how that works" on things that I knew were possible because I've done it myself. He did this daily on repeat. Finally told him he talks too much and wastes too much time and he got offended but started focusing after until he got a new job a few months later.

Edit- I actually didn't think about when I worked in construction at all. I had some extremely confrontational shitty racists/sexist right wing co workers.

Edit edit- actually the morning I think about it, the more I remember more awful coworkers. Had a person from another department try to bring my boss up on embezzlement charges because he asked her to do a lot on this project. Obviously the investigation showed there was no embezzlement. She's still working here though somehow but was reassigned.

 

[____]

One of my old bosses.

Ghetto as fuck in a corporate setting. I'm black, she was black, working in corporate america in a sea of white folks, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT she could not formulate a coherent sentence to save her life. She would say things to executives like "DA BIDNESS PLAN" (the business plan), and I felt bad because she was kinda old and I'm sure it's just how she was raised but the criiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge goddamn.

She'd been at the company 45 years, so it was hard for them to let her go (though she was completely ineffective as a resource) but she was probably the worst "manager" in the history of management.

She had trouble explaining herself, would announce her bathroom runs to me (why do I need to hear 7 times a day that you're "going to the little girls room"?) unclear with requests, unclear with my role/responsibilities, unable to be concise, and would really just talk non-stop in circles never getting to the point. The list goes on and on, despite being a complete "workaholic". In office at 6am every day and was the last person to leave after 7 or 8pm each day, despite us having a 8-4 or 9-5 workday.

I remember once, she got a phone call, turned around, and told me: "hey, my sister just committed suicide. I have to leave for the day" which shook me to the core, and yet, here she was, 6am in the office the next morning like nothing happened.

What I learned later was her husband + adult daughter that she was responsible for both had debilitating physical disabilities, so I'm sure "work" was her escape from her real life. But holy fuck she was so so so so so so so terrible at her job. Couldn't keep an employee for longer than the 1yr mandated time before you can move to another position. Even my director (her boss) behind closed doors admitted she knew this lady was a mess and apologized that I had to endure working under her. I worked for her for exactly 365 days before moving on.

 

[SpillYerBeans]

Use to work a small pizza gig next to a bar back in high school. The assistant manager who I was often grouped with would often disappear at the bar and left me alone in the kitchen during a rush of orders. I told him I was quitting to his face and he was an asshole, so that felt good.

 

[loco]

- Always late to work and the first to leave.
- Often fell asleep at their desk and snored loudly.
- Would dissapear and not show up to meetings and working events during business trips
- Despite making a lot of money they wore the same tattered clothes every day
- Bathing / hygene issues
- extremely fragile ego and would flip out at the slightest of constructive criticism.

He was an executive's good friend and knew he was untouchable. Hiring manager told everyone to never rock that boat or it woud afffect your career. Extremely demoralzing.

 

[SpaceSong]

Had one do weird geek purity tests on me when he saw I had a Batman funko pop vinyl on my desk. Worst thing he did was try and mansplain Nightmare on Elm Street to a woman in the office who is a massive horror movie buff. She shut that shit down fast, too.

He also was just an employee but would try and act like management all the time. We had to get our sup or manager to pull him aside and try and put him in his place multiple times.

Guy was a fuckin clown.

 

[I am a Bird]

Had a co worker that kept a pee bottle in his truck, pee bottle broke and covered all the equipment he was returning. Warehouse lead went out to yell/ beat the hell out of the guy for turning in piss soaked equipment. Pee man pulled a knife.

I think he takes the cake for shittiest coworker. Or would that be the most pissy…

 

[Doran]

A lot of public service workers who literally didn't work. Very nice people just did no work. As a civilian contractor that meant doing all of the work for them while they got paid more to..........not work. Happier now.

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

I once worked with a guy that was caught on camera going around taking pictures of photos of kids that people kept on their desks.

 

[Pau]

Gonna go with the one who told me I look like the cam models he pays.

I try not to wear make-up to work anymore.

 

[Walter White Walker]

I had a coworker that was often high and also kept a bottle of liquor in her desk. When I was talking on the phone with a customer she would often start yelling across the room trying to tell me what to say despite I knew far more than her and could handle the situation well enough on my own. So on and so forth. I eventually told her to go fuck herself sideways with a rusty cactus and she went out the door screaming and crying. She complained to management about me and was fired on the spot. Just an awful coworker and person.

 

[meowdi gras]

The one that threatened and assaulted me for not giving his deadbeat son more hours. They both worked under me at a printing company. Unbeknownst to me, assaulting dude had spent the prior couple of months brown-nosing upper management and getting in good with them. When my boss only gave the guy a slap on the wrist instead of firing him as I demanded, I protested and got the axe myself instead. I heard later from a friend working there that my assaulter had been promoted to my former position.

 

[Sanjuro]

I had one where we needed to be roommates for a good chunk of time. Started off on the right foot...however, I was replacing the role of his ex-gf who he just had a massive breakup with.

• He wouldn't stop talking about his ex and would end up generally crying.
• Everytime I offered to go out to the pubs after shift, he just kept getting mad that I would ask.
• I rented a TV and Xbox for something to do and to take his mind off things a bit. He ended up taking them to his room and refused to place it anywhere else. He never paid a cent for it and I had to pay full price to the rental place for the console.
• We ended up going to his first baseball game, so he was in better spirits. I brought him back some beers and he refused to pay or drink the Budweiser (or whatever it was) that cost $20 because he wanted Blue Moon.
• He would constantly complain about my driving, yet he was too anxiety ridden to drive himself in cities. After complaining to our boss, I refused to speak with him again unless it was specifically work related.
• On our last assignment, we drove 3 hours to do something quick but we couldn't complete due to poor weather once we arrived. He started crying and berating me until I put him in his place.

A lot more stories as well, but yeah... guy was a psycho. I had a coworker try to stab me during a shift and I liked him more.

 

[Carn]

at my previous job we had a "project manager" that:
- spend most of her time on social media sites until we blocked those
- was always behind schedule / deliverables
- when things need to be delivered she would create a total stress situation towards the devteam and blame oths
- she did find time during working hours to buy a coffee bar with her husband
- when she was at home with a "burn out", my manager once visited that bar and sure, she was working there
- she did a whole reintergration course, only to immediatly go on maternaty leave
- when her leave was over she was kicked out.

she was a total nutjob and cost a small company a lot of money.

 

[Couleurs]

If we count shit they did outside of work, I had a coworker during college who was weird as hell and always made everyone uncomfortable from being so creepy, who eventually got fired for it. He wound up getting arrested months later for shooting at kids on a playground in California (luckily none died). We lived in Illinois, so I have no clue why the fuck he'd go all the way across the country to do something like that.

 

[Xyer]

This coworker I knew at this shitty hardware job I had in college seemed like a decent guy. We learned after he left that the manager let him sleep in the store for a few months at night. He lived in an empty backroom, even had a playstation/TV in there he would play to pass the time. He'd steal soda from up front to drink at night, drink six packs of beer every weekend and get drunk, etc.The manager also quit after he did. Everybody was blown away when they found out. Haha. It's weird to think that when you opened the store every morning, he was just chilling in some back room asleep.

 

[Fuzzy]

The dude who showed me a video of his wife giving him a bj in the hope of enticing me into a threesome with them.

 

[Sanjuro]

The dude who showed me a video of his wife giving him a bj in the hope of enticing me into a threesome with them.

Click to shrink...

The threesome was that bad?

 

[Slayven]

Gonna go with the one who told me I look like the cam models he pays.

I try not to wear make-up to work anymore.

Click to shrink...

wait what?

It always amazes me what people will say with no prompting.

 

[julia crawford]

I've had some extremely condescending co-workers. But that said that's about the worst of it. Glad to have gotten the fuck out my hometown and to finally have a career.

 

[Slayven]

Not a coworker but the sercuity guard at work would write people "tickets" for shit. They were just the paper in those little notepads you find in the stationary section of a drug store. You got a "super ticket", if you reversed into a parking space

 

[Sanjuro]

Not a coworker but the sercuity guard at work would write people "tickets" for shit. They were just the paper in those little notepads you find in the stationary section of a drug store. You got a "super ticket", if you reversed into a parking space

Click to shrink...

...that's almost how I always park

 

[ZeroDotFlow]

The worst I've had is just an asshole that had a vendetta against me. I don't know if it was because of my looks (I have very long hair for a guy and I worked in a very traditional space) or something else I did but he was generally a jerk to me and constantly complained to my manager about petty things to the point where even my manager was like 'yeah that's bullshit'.

 

[Pirateluigi]

I had one coworker who was promoted to manager by virtue of his incredibly high sales numbers. Unfortunately, he had no actual sales ability and only achieved his high sales by burning through hundreds of leads a week and working nearly 80 hours a week. His sales conversion rate was the lowest in the company. It got worse once he was promoted:

• Super racist
• Introduced another manager to a new hire class by saying "she's hot, but she's a lesbian"
• Eventually fired for sexual harassing the owner's 15 year old daughter

About 3 months after he was fired, we got a call asking to be transferred to him. When we said he was no longer with the company, we learned the caller was his wife. Turned out he never told her he lost his job. He would pack up his briefcase everyday and just sit at Jimmy John's for 8 hours.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

Dude who filled everyone's work station with fisting porn videos and his wallpaper was a screenshot of himself getting fisted.

 

[LordValhalla]

Worked at Whole Foods.
Super libertarian guy worked making pizzas even though he had an Economics degree from LSU.
Always wanted to talk about why government was bad and Christianity.
Wanted to go see Black Panther when it came out so he could "talk about everything wrong with it".
He was hesitant about trump at first, but then really bought in once 4chan started meme-ing.

He is currently in prison for possessing CP. His 2nd time getting busted with it.

 

[The Climaxan]

A coworker who defrauded the company out of millions of dollars leading to massive layoffs and the company almost having to shut down. Said employee went to prison and the company survived, but whoo buddy, what a ride that was.

 

[GreenMamba]

Right now the worst I have is someone with bad BO but we work in a warehouse and she's not usually anywhere near me. But I feel sorry for the people who do work with her.

 

[The Albatross]

HAd such a bad coworker, who was actually a friend of mine and my manager, and a good though imperfect person, but he was fucking horrrrrrible at his job. I wrote up a post about all the shit he was bad at, but it's so gd specific if some reason he ever found this he'd know it's me writing about him and I just had to delete it.

Ya'll just have to take my word for it. Guy was a clown at this job. I realized he was in trouble in one of my first days at the new job, he said something in a large meeting 30-40 people, and like as soon as he started to talk a bunch of people looked at each other at the table, or looked into their notebooks or hands, or at the sky, one of those looks that *you* usually give other people when *that guy* starts to tlak in a meeting.... and I realized, like, oh shit, Rick is *that guy.* He was gone a year later, but probably should have been fired immediately.

 

[IggyChooChoo]

Not a coworker but the sercuity guard at work would write people "tickets" for shit. They were just the paper in those little notepads you find in the stationary section of a drug store. You got a "super ticket", if you reversed into a parking space

Click to shrink...

Wow! Why is reversing into a parking space even bad in the first place, though?

We had an intern who put up a page on our website that was just pictures of naked women. You wouldn't know how to get to it unless you knew the address, so I don't think anyone in our professional orbit ever saw it. I only discovered it months after he left.

Later I heard he got kicked out of his university for date rape. Now he's a realtor!

 

[Alucrid]

If we count shit they did outside of work, I had a coworker during college who was weird as hell and always made everyone uncomfortable, who wound up getting arrested for shooting at kids on a playground in California (luckily none died). We lived in Illinois, so I have no clue why the fuck he'd go all the way across the country to do something like that.

Click to shrink...

lol i know it's not what you mean but "why go to california to shoot up a playground when you have playgrounds right here" is pretty funny

 

[Modu5]

dude was living with bedbugs. another co-worker asked him about some marks on his hand and he just nonchalantly pulled up sleeve and showed his entire arm covered in bedbug bites. dude was international student and couldn;t afford it deal with them.

he also never showers so his white uniform was basically yellow and brown.

 

[TaySan]

Two come to mind. One from my previous job and another from my current. The first one would literally just sit at our managers desk all day leaving me to do all the work by myself. I would have to yell at her every time just to get her to do something or help a customer that is waiting to be served. And I would always get chewed out from higher ups because of her not appearing that she's busy. She eventually got fired for shoplifting and had weed on her.

The other one was a similar story. Didn't want to count beers, liquor, wines, or kegs. Didn't want to do anything, but screw around since he didn't have bills or rent to worry about. And he would get massive errors at every audit even the easiest ones costing our team our full pay. He eventually was fired and died shortly after from a prescription drug overdose partying.

 

[jacket]

i used to have a co-worker who would keep ketchup packets on his desk, and he would occasionally just open a few up and just slurp the ketchup out of them as a snack, i almost wanted to gag just typing this shit out

 

[Slayven]

Wow! Why is reversing into a parking space even bad in the first place, though?

Click to shrink...

He said it was "illegal" but no one paid him attention. But for some reason reversing into a spot sets some people off, i seen people blow up here about it. I think it should be standard so you get out faster

 

[B.K.]

I worked with a guy once who was burnt out from meth. He wouldn't do anything you told him to. He would leave tools and supplies on the job, because it was easier than him putting them up. And he constantly saw demons everywhere he went.

 

[Sanjuro]

He said it was "illegal" but no one paid him attention. But for some reason reversing into a spot sets some people off, i seen people blow up here about it. I think it should be standard so you get out faster

Click to shrink...

My guess it comes from the crowd who feels inconvenienced to brake without plowing into your car from an inch away. Same applies when you are trying to parallel park on a street.

 

[IggyChooChoo]

He said it was "illegal" but no one paid him attention. But for some reason reversing into a spot sets some people off, i seen people blow up here about it. I think it should be standard so you get out faster

Click to shrink...

It seems safer in terms of visibility, too. I had no idea anyone was against it.

 

[Isilia]

There was that guy who swore at our customers when he couldn't find their business. Or did things he didn't like. Like use an antivirus that wasn't his choice calling them stupid for using it.

Luckily , I only had to deal with him for a week (he was my replacement technically). My old boss filled me in on that hell.

 

[KomandaHeck]

Nothing remotely as bad as some of the nutters you lot seem to have been lumped with, but this girl I currently work with gets on my fucking nerves. Constantly talking shit about other colleagues (so no doubt me too), total jobsworth who's overly precious about her position and tries talking down to me even though we have the same entry level retail job, and just generally seems up her own arse. She's always looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm doing things correctly etc. and at this point it's taking everything not to just tell her to fuck off and mind her own stuff. I can see myself leaving following Christmas.

 

[Pau]

wait what?

It always amazes me what people will say with no prompting.

Click to shrink...

Same. Apparently it's really hard to just... not say anything.

And that was just the opening. It didn't stop there. Guy went into a whole thing about how he's not like other guys who talk to cam models, why cam models find him attractive, etc. Just... why do men feel the need to say these things to women.

 

[Slayven]

Same. Apparently it's really hard to just... not say anything.

And that was just the opening. It didn't stop there. Guy went into a whole thing about how he's not like other guys who talk to cam models, why cam models find him attractive, etc. Just... why do men feel the need to say these things to women.

Click to shrink...

I am sorry you went through that

*E-Bat Hug*

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

We had an IT lady in my office who was only employed here for around two months and managed to:

-Tell one of our younger guy interns she has a 'dress shoe fetish' and to 'please keep wearing those, yum'
-Post everyone's daily non-work internet usage on their office doors for all to see...with our owner being the biggest offender. NOT something the company requested to be done mind you
-Send out a bulk email linking to her website for her acting, complete with creepy YouTube clips
-Have an affair with some dude in our warehouse while married with three kids
-Proceeded to TELL EVERYONE IN ANOTHER BULK EMAIL that she indeed had an affair and she is so sorry to her husband, CC-ing her husband
-After being fired was found have kept individual folders on all of us with Facebook pics she found of people she was thirsting after
-Smelling of booze regularly

I've worked at my company for over 10 years and we've had some fucking characters but this took the cake.

 

[Ada]

One developer I worked with would show up in the morning whenever. He rarely spoke, had constant smoke breaks and couldn't do the work at all. I watched him get fired after he came in to work around 11ish and couldn't explain why he was late.

 

[sacrament]

This one guy who in the cube over would constantly smack his gum all day long. I get angry thinking about it...

 

[Baji Boxer]

Had a co worker that kept a pee bottle in his truck, pee bottle broke and covered all the equipment he was returning. Warehouse lead went out to yell/ beat the hell out of the guy for turning in piss soaked equipment. Pee man pulled a knife.

I think he takes the cake for shittiest coworker. Or would that be the most pissy…

Click to shrink...

A lot more stories as well, but yeah... guy was a psycho. I had a coworker try to stab me during a shift and I liked him more.

Click to shrink...

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