Whirlpool

This girl I used to work with opened up some mails one day, and I forgot to tell her that if we received any tax invoices from a hotel in Melbourne we are supposed to simply "Return to Sender" as we have told the hotel on many occassions that invoices are supposed to be sent to our headoffice in Sydney for processing of payment. I told her as she has already opened the envelope(and ripped the envelope to pieces) we would just put it in a new envelope and return it to sender. At the end of the day when I picked up the mails I saw this envelope with no stamp, no return address and the only thing on it was "Return to Sender".

I asked her the next day why she would send it in such a manner and she said, "I thought the post office would open the letter and look at the letterhead and send it back to the sender" which then I had to ask, "what about stamp?" and she said nothing...... thank god she didn't pass probation.

Started working as a parts manager for a Melbourne roller door company and the manager of the place burst out of his office and bawled out the secretary for something trivial .
I lasted four more hours the secretary burst into tears and I thought if he does that to me I will snot him him so decided my reputation was not worth risking and left .

Had a boss a while back who insisted on rewriting everything that hit his desk, didn't matter how long or who wrote it he'd compleatly rework it before letting it out of his sight. The amount of work that got finished must have trippled when he was away.

Used to work with one of those people who talk way too much about a topic were your interest may be 10% and they are obsessed about said topic.

Anyway we used to work in this rather long office his desk being up one end and mine down the other end. I've gone up to that end of the office to ask a simple question and then been hit up with a question about a game or something.
I've been polite and listened and asked the usual questions for almost 5 minutes. I've then tried ending the convo by moving it back to work or other topics with no luck and so in the end I started stepping slowly backwards. Fortunately he was sitting down because he was still chatting at me when I'm half way down the other end.

*Lazy Guy I was supposed to train in my last week so he could transition into my job ... I took him on some deliveries around the CBD (easy part to learn), we're walking around and he says to me after one delivery, "Hey, I think I've got the hang of this, I can figure out what to do. I've arranged to meet up with a friend for lunch, so how about you finish off the work and I meet you back at the office after lunch ... Ta, thanks for showing me!" and buzzed off, leaving me with all the parcels, bags and envelopes in the middle of the city to walk to several different addresses to hand deliver!

*Control freak supervisor ... I had a supervisor who loveed the whole control freak thing. She'd change things and give orders and yell, obviouisly for a power surge. She had a terrible shrieky voice too. She also had a bad habit of having a conversation with her "office buddy" who sat on the opposite side of me, over my head.

She picked fights with everyone in the office, and did things without permission of the senior partners which caused even more fights. For instance a senior partner and her got into a big fight when she suddenly decided that she would change how his wages got paid.

Apparently she was paid quite a lot for her position, even though I know she spent half the day singing to the radio next to me (she wasn't that good at singing) and playing Solitaire.

The office really didn't like her, including the owner, and so people tried to socialise without her, including doing things like organising office parties behind her back, having a rule that no one was allowed to let her know there was a party on, the party had to be on after work so she wouldn't get suspicious, had to be at a venue she wouldn't think of coming to, etc etc. It sounds pretty stupid that everyone was so paranoid but they really didn't want her around, and to an extent were frightened of her.

I heard that before I had come to the firm there were plenty more employees but many of them had resigned, just because they refused to work with ther.

There were also rumours that she went through people's desk and even might try going through your personals – diary/handbag – if you left it around, so I took to carrying everything on me, all the time.

Timrex writes...

Had a boss a while back who insisted on rewriting everything that hit his desk,

Hehe somehow that reminded me of a boss I had, he was a lovely guy, but I asked him for a reference when I left and he said sure.

Instead of doing the usual and typing the reference or dictating it to his secretary and signing it, he gave me a tiny piece of paper (letterhead) – something that you expect to write little invites on or something – A5 paper – and he scrawled a reference on it in blue ink. He didn't think it out first so it got kind of squashed near the end.

It was sort of quaint and I realise he was in his seventies so perhaps he hasn't realised that most people write references on a computer and sign them and that's perfectly acceptable, and official!

But of course a reference is a favour and you can't insist he does it the way you want it, and he seemed so proud and pleased with it that I accepted it with good grace and have filed it away :)

*I know one lady who worked with a colleague she found so bad, she had a stress breakdown, had to be transferred. She still sees the colleague she can't stand at work, around the corridors, and whenever she does she gets nervous, hides behind people, asks people to fetch her things so she doesn't have to be near the stress-inducing colleague.

Now, this lady is a pretty smart and sensible and confident woman from what i know of her in general. It's just that – and I don't know what happened in that time that they worked together – that other person had such an effect on her – it completely transforms her. It's amazing and it's kind of scary.

CYWC writes...

I told her as she has already opened the envelope(and ripped the envelope to pieces) we would just put it in a new envelope and return it to sender. At the end of the day when I picked up the mails I saw this envelope with no stamp, no return address and the only thing on it was "Return to Sender".

That's just not right, someone rips up your valuable envelope just like that, fails to read your mind, and doesn't put a stamp on a letter. The youth of today, Just getting sacked is too good for em.

Monty Burns writes...

The youth of today, Just getting sacked is too good for em.

Generalise much?

Monty Burns writes...

That's just not right, someone rips up your valuable envelope just like that, fails to read your mind, and doesn't put a stamp on a letter. The youth of today, Just getting sacked is too good for em.

You missed something..... she didn't put an address on it too....

SebL writes...

Generalise much?

Just as often as you post zero value replies.

Best & Less:

I worked at a Best & Less store for about 3 weeks. It was full of absolute dropkick employees (as to be expected), but it was fun enough. The floor manager was a complete idiot though as well which was a problem. His philosophy was that "there must be the absolute maximum amount of stock on the floor at all times".

One particular day, my last day, I was doing my usual restocking to the max, when the floor manager brought out an entire pallet of shorts. I asked where they were going, and he pointed to a middle of the isle table and said "there". This table was already stacked about 50 shorts high of all colours and sizes. Anyway, I complied. The shorts were so high you couldn't reach the top without a ladder, about 8-9ft high. The floor manager was ok with that, until our first customer of the day walked in and took the whole thing down. He then yelled at me, I told him to "shove it" loudly, laughed in his face, threw my badge at him, and walked out. I then got a job at New Zealand Natural ice cream and stared at hot tourists all day. :-)

CYWC writes...

You missed something..... she didn't put an address on it too....

In Singapore they would give you the cane for that.

Mumbles: The guy that you can barely understand, he talks a mile a minute and getting any usable information out of him is an exhausting effort that seldom feels worth the time invested.

IWASA!: The guy that used to be a high ranked manager or wherever he came from (possible even owner) and chucks a fit every time something isn't done exactly the way he wants. God forbid that a customer e-mail ever arrives in his junk mail despite him enforcing the highest level of spam filtering on his outlook.

SPEAKERPHONE: Uses the speaker phone in an open office plan for every call (including personal), leaves mobile phone on annoying ring tone at highest possible volume (leaves it on desk while he goes away for hours at a time), refuses to consider anyone else by turning the phone down/off/taking it with him.

Meet MR X, MR X is all of above. MR X is the worst person I have ever had to work with.

Beuy writes...

SPEAKERPHONE: Uses the speaker phone in an open office plan for every call (including personal), leaves mobile phone on annoying ring tone at highest possible volume (leaves it on desk while he goes away for hours at a time), refuses to consider anyone else by turning the phone down/off/taking it with him.

Seen a variation of this, the phone fiddler. This person seems incapable of keeping their mits off their mobile phone for more than 5 minutes. I've actually seen them in the middle of a conversation and it's just "too hard" for them to pretend to be interested anymore so they pull out the mobile and fiddle.

An ex-boss of mine, during performance interview so many years ago said that I was a "man of integrity." Those were his exact words.

The thing is that I have absolutely no respect for this weakling. So, with me being a man of integrity having no respect for him, what does it make him?

I have a story you don't hear too often, a few years ago I briefly worked at a sorta storeman type job as an casual.

The boss wasn't a very nice person if you complained about anything within the job(hours, pay, tasks) he would remind you at people in china would kill for a job like this so think yourselves lucky and shutup.

I worked with 3 other guys(2 were younger gen y types) we were working at an average pace then one of the younger guys says "lets work harder fellers!" and we did, we finished our days work in 6hours instead of 8hours.

When we told the boss he threw a tantrum, saying crap like "now I have to waste my time finding you extra work", "don't think your sitting around on your ass for 2hours"

I'm guessing hard workers aren't what they want at that workplace, I left the next day.

Had 3 people within 6 months of eachother do this.

1. Was a guy who pretended he was a surfer, bodybuilder (that was pretty easy to spot), self defense instructor and oggled at all of our customers. If they didn't pay attention to him he would literally throw objects at them as a sort of 'flirt/ almost knocking them out' way of getting their attention.

2. Was a girl who hated EVERYONE. She would talk about every customer as if they had serious issues in their life and she would refuse to come to any social events. (Or say yes I can't wait and then an excuse would come up, usually she would sew the seed a few hours easlier by saying she had a tummy ache, but saying she still wants to come!) She ended up emotionally manipulating all the staff to believe her grandmother was sick and this is why she couldn't do certain things. When that fell through it was her mum that was sick. Then when all of that failed she admitted to lying, but made up another excuse as to why she lied.

3. Was a guy with some sort of personality disorder that would go from loving life to literally abusing customers at the snap of a finger. Telling them they are stupid and should learn how to use technology it's not the cpmputers fault its the user etc.
He was eventually sacked for bagging our own bunch of products whilst in company uniform, and proceeding to sell his own off of his own website that he had built, at our place of work. He also offered personal servicing per hour instead of relying on our warranties. Conflict of interest much?

Pretty bad. Sh*t I hope we get the next one right.

Monty Burns writes...

Just as often as you post zero value replies.

Wow. Just wow.

had a sudanese fellow threaten to bash/knife me because he thought I was victimising him. Wasnt a very pleasant experience, I dont recommend it.

For the record I had never spoken to the guy prior to this incident and didnt even know his name.

My old manager was a piece of work..

Every hour you worked you must be doing something 100% of the time, we'd be standing around chatting (no customers) and he'd literally run from his office to yell at us. He would berate staff in front of customers.

We had to check with him before we did any deals despite company policy stating that we can do deals provided it was within defined limits, if we tried to give stock away to staff members for cheap or free depending on item he'd freak out and threaten to fire the entire sales section for theft.

Glad we have a new manager now :)

My old boss was a local footy team manager and spent most of his time on the phone talking to players,coaches,other teams, etc and would then accuse the staff of not concentrating on the job or ripping him off his favourite line was "if it wasnt for you (innapropriate) I would be a millionaire .
But we all knew he was strange as he used to rip his hair out when he got agitated and would accuse his own people of stealing from him and threatening to sack all the staff or go through the works vans looking for evidence which he never found .
I lasted about eight months and was sacked due to of course stealing form him which I hadnt but argueing with him was a waste of time I was just glad to get out when I did .

ushi007 writes...

had a sudanese fellow threaten to bash/knife me because he thought I was victimising him. Wasnt a very pleasant experience, I dont recommend it.

For the record I had never spoken to the guy prior to this incident and didnt even know his name.

God damn I laughed so hard!! hahahahaha!!

Great thread!

I'm working with one now,

She complains to the boss that I don't "Communicate enough" So now after three counsellings, I have to tell her everything, absolutely EVERYTHING I'm gonna do for the day (go to the toilet, do my job, do her job as she's too busy on the phone to her girlfriend)

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

glad i'm leaving for europe soon.

Silly twit.

Chrizz writes...

She complains to the boss that I don't "Communicate enough" So now after three counsellings, I have to tell her everything, absolutely EVERYTHING I'm gonna do for the day (go to the toilet, do my job, do her job as she's too busy on the phone to her girlfriend)

don't communicate enough? counselling? doing everything for her?

she sounds like your wife :P

Mash Cafe writes...

My old manager was a piece of work..

Glad we have a new manager now :)

Sounds like he could have used more tact, what happened to him?

Enterprise architect that didn't know 10gbitE exists until a month ago.

Electrical engineer who did not know what a plug top looked like and could not use a digital multi meter where do they qualify:)

In my last work place there is an anti-social admin who turned programmer.

Dude walks around with a cup of coffee every morning giving crap to everybody he sees. Whenever there is a HD crash he would take out his solder kit and pretend to fix the PCB electronics on the HD. Of course after a few days he would announced that the HD is toast and nothing can be recover and took a couple of days off for time-in-lieu he claimed he spent fixing the drive.

Dude also virtualised core systems onto a test machine and then claimed than a test software was milking all the core resources.

Made numerous vocabularies and references to non-existant RFCs to sound technical. Wrote programs in a sequential form and then claimed he uses agile methodologies. Last program he wrote in java had a system requirement of XP or lower. And this program supposedly to be cross platforms.

Some people just seemed to get away with anything in Healthcare IT.

AI 强 writes...

In my last work place there is an anti-social admin who turned programmer.

I lol'd even if I didn't understand parts of the programming stuff... baha

Jacksbac1 writes...

"if it wasnt for you (innapropriate) I would be a millionaire .

Gosh, with such people it is so tempting to all group leave him one day, suddenly, and watch him become a millionaire then, isn't it?

I've had a few "colleagues from hell". One that I can recall recently:

The guy was a complete pot head. One of the other staff even caught him having a relaxing smoke right outside work one morning – this is 8.30 am on Bourke Street in Melbourne CBD.

I had a delivery of computer equipment. I was carrying boxes from the delivery area through to our store. Now, I had never spoken to this chap before & didn't have much to do with him as he worked in a completely different area of the building. When I get back to my desk, lo and behold there is an email in my inbox from Mr Pothead stating if I bump into him with my pile of boxes again he would "knock my block off" or words to similar effect.

Now, this chap wasn't too smart as he had not said this verbally but emailed right out of the blue. Heck I didn't even recall bumping into him. I gave him one chance to retract his statement but, no, he was persistent, challenging me to goto his manager if I had the guts to.

The company was that weak though that all he got was a verbal warning. He was walked off the premises about a month later through for some other random act of troublemaking.

And pot smokers challenge that smoking copious amounts of the stuff doesn't make them paranoid & delusional.... I'd refer any case study to this pothead matey for evidence to the contrary..!

Miss Purple writes...

Gosh, with such people it is so tempting to all group leave him one day, suddenly, and watch him become a millionaire then, isn't it?

He didnt and still works part time for his son who is almost as bad as his father but does not have the intelligence or the muscles to behave the way daddy did .

His staff were all ex footy players so loyalty runs deep even if it is misguided:)

I used to work with a guy who was your average, friendly office psychopath. Sorry, in advance, this a bit long.

Things he would do on a daily basis.

Follow the newest staff members, especially if they were younger, single woman, around the office, being all helpful and friendly. After a while, he’d build up their trust and then start to get details from them, who they liked in the office, who they didn’t – always coming across as their friend. He’d came across as an understanding friend.

He’d be in about 6am in the morning and stay til about 8pm at night. But what he’d do is sit in one of the meeting rooms with his personal laptop looking like he was busy working, but instead surfing the internet, playing games, playing around with Photoshop. Managers were really impressed with his work ethos. The fact he always wore a full suit where the rest of the team wore jeans, seemed to endear him to managers on other teams even more.

If a manager came around to our area with a problem, he’d drop everything and rush out to fix their problem – no issue was too small. It didn’t matter if he was working on something critical, he was always there to assist a manager.

But.. and this is where it all got freaky.

He’d use the personal details he got from people to his own benefit. If a staff member told him they had a problem with a manager, he’d quietly, on the side tell that manager. If a staff member had a problem or was going through a tough time, it wasn’t long til a large number of staff knew about it – from this individual. It took us about 6 months to finally figure out who it was – and he continued to deny it was him, though he got quite angry with certain members of the team.

If a new staff member or manager happened to have a hobby or interest, he’d start to research it. After a couple of weeks, feeling he had sufficient knowledge on the topic, would start talking about it all the time with that person. He never actually took up the hobby itself, he just learnt all about it.

He’d play off two members of staff, who didn’t like each other, against each other –with himself as the caring friend in the middle. Again, it took a while for people to figure out what was actually happening.

He was often very familiar with other staff’s facebook/myspace pages. He even figured out where some people lived, or would get the details out of their friends in the office, claiming he needed the details.

He spent time playing around on Photoshop, editing staff photographs into all manner of weird and strange scenarios with himself in the centre of the picture.

He kept changing his birthday details on the staff intranet and would get upset when he did not get a birthday cakes each time. If a person tripped him up on it, they’d go on his list of enemies. If it was a manager, he’d claim it was all a joke. But no one really knew when his real birthday was. Yes, he had a list of enemies he kept, we found it on his computer after he left.

He’d also go out of his way to make life uncomfortable for people he didn’t like. Standing behind them and commenting loudly on what they had on their screen at the time – so the manager could hear. Complaining to managers that he didn’t like the smell of a person’s lunch – and he was busy trying to do his work. It wasn’t uncommon for him to have regular meetings with our manager and then for one of the team to find themselves under threat of a written warning – 2 of mine were Eating lunch at my desk and Not completing an important task that this individual had been assigned by our manager, but he claimed he had passed it to me – but no one had told me I was supposed to do it.

If a manager happened to get onto his list of enemies – usually because they figured out what he was doing, strange things would start to happen. Their internet connection would occasionally drop out, their account would keep getting locked out and things would disappear from their calendar. On a couple of occasions equipment went missing from offices of those managers he really despised.

He’d listen to discussions on work issues, and before the group/individuals involved could present their ideas to their manager – he’d have already chatted with the manager and proposed the ideas as his own.

If a task wasn’t completed, he’d name someone else as being the person responsible for doing it. When caught out, he’d try and deny ever claiming person x had dropped the ball, it must have been person y.

If any of the girls he’d befriended discovered what he was doing, they were instantly on his enemy list. In one case he reduced a girl to tears. But this was the beginning of the end. This girl stood up for herself in such a way that management/HR were forced to consider that all the previous complaints about him, may have had some truth to them. After an investigation and a trial period, he was let go – much to the relief of many of my team.

The thing that annoyed me most about this guy wasn’t so much him. It was how gullible HR and management were. Staff were complaining about him, but because management themselves hadn’t realised what he was like, they loved him right up til the very end.

Boglet writes...

Used to work with one of those people who talk way too much about a topic were your interest may be 10% and they are obsessed about said topic.

Unfortunately I have a few of those, however when you start doing the creeping back technique they get up and start walking towards you :(

Manager at woolworths said my shirt was not appropriate for the work place despite the fact that
1. I wore the woolworths issued one (that you paid $25 for – the old days where it was just a white shirt with the logo)
2. The other girls my age's shirts were hardly ever buttoned up with some horribly coloured bra or singlet underneath and one of those belts that was just stretchy material usually in metallics or fluro colours. Not quite the standard black and white we used to have.

Workplace 2
I got told by my boss's daughter I had to do her work or she would get me fired

Workplace 3
You say one not even remotely bad thing and this person would report you to the HR person. They once reported me because I offered to fix their spreadsheet so it would formulate properly and be less work for them, apparently that was me saying they were crap at their job.

The place I work now is much better, you will always get annoying people though

Batmantha writes...

Workplace 2

I got told by my boss's daughter I had to do her work or she would get me fired

Hahaha... I thought this only happens in developing countries....

Beuy
Mumbles kow how you feel and its always everyone elses fault and responsability to deal with

I left a good job because of someone like him

I've had a few but my favourite was probably 'Mr Dirty'.

He was a programmer who didn't seem to ever wash his clothes, when they got really stained he threw them out and bought new ones.

So he really stunk whenever he sat. My favourite habit of his was wiping his runny nose all down his sleeve. He would often do that in important meetings too.

Makes you wonder what habits these peoples parents taught them.

you should try workig in bundaberg,
Its full of non experienced highly intelligent people (coughs experienced as a two year old)
and yes they are all in managment!
They dont abide by laws they dont care and yes they somehow get away with it.
Take my last boss, They wanted a forklift, but no one has a ticket except for this guy that got one back when he was 15 (hes now mid 40`s) and its not the new version, so its basically expired)
But hey who cares we need one and are too tight to get anyone trained so well just do it.
or our fire extinguishers are all on recharge,
Ohh dont worry all you have to do is shake them up! ( the boss said to me he knows cuz hes brother works in fire safety)
lol i could go on forever with stories like this, the funny ting is if you make a ripple and tell them its not safe and ask, even beg can we pleeeease have it fixed they get nasty and give you the its not workign out speech.

I remember a year or so ago, at my old workplace we had a staff member who always stunk so bad, we assumed that he never showered. Customers always complained about him and he was a complete tool too who'd always try and give you all his work to do. Thank god he got sacked.

Too many to ever make me want to relive any of them by telling the full stories. ;) Still, the summary:

- One guy who taught me that verbal agreements are worth the paper they are written on, and that working your ass off for someone sometimes makes things worse for you, if they get greedy and decide they want it *all*.

- One too many supervisors who said I was doing X to the higher-ups/clients/partners/customers, when I was doing Y. Y was covering for their past mistakes. I then looked incompetent because X was progressing very slowly. Of course, in each case, it wasn't clear it was happening.

- One guy who I helped get up to speed, and once he was fine, got competitive and started both stealing credit for my work and belittling the things I was doing (to boost everyone's perception of him over me).

- One guy who regularly stole my code, swapped variable names, make a tweak or two, changed the comments, then claimed credit. Couldn't do much about it as I was low-hours part-time at that point.

- One guy who just did whatever the hell he wanted and lied about it, even to the point of wasting hours of someone's time for the sake of saving himself a few minutes. Dumped work on new guys whenever he could (that wasn't their responsibility) and did his best to set people against each other when he wanted something from someone, or just needed to take heat off of himself for the things he was caught red-handed in.

- One guy who wanted to be in charge, had no real authority, and actively sabotaged things when he didn't get his way, all while complaining about the things he sabotaged not being done.

Randomised and trimmed down to prevent identification with specific people. I've also excluded a couple I'd love to include because they are far too easy to identify. Very frustrating, since I do tend to work hard and do a good job. Of course, do this and you end up threatening people. Seriously, you can't win, no matter what you do! ;)

Well, I have one that is rather difficult to believe. I used to cycle to and from work, one day, over a year ago now, on my way back home I got hit by a car, I was taken to RPA in an ambulance and while in the emergency ward, I successfully begged to one of the nurses to contact my boss to let him know I wouldn't be in the office next day. She did, and next morning, still high on morphine, my mobile phone (That I had next to my bed) rang. It was my boss, he asked one single question: “When are you coming back?”. If you think that is bad, a few days later, I was released from hospital, a friend took me home and next day(It was a Friday), I managed to get to the office to drop the medical certificate. There I was, my arm on a sling, thirteen screws and a metal plate, scratches and bruises all over my face and limping. I went to human resources, droop the certificate, had a short chat and decided to pay my boss a short visit and headed back home. Next Monday, he send me an e-mail to my personal e-mail address asking when will I be back. Didn't this insensitive, arrogant, retard read the certificate?

GarthD writes...

Seriously, you can't win, no matter what you do! ;)

I think this guy at work summed up to me how to win like this:

You take a supervisor who doesn't know what to do.

Interpret their instructions and do it a different way, one that actually works.

Hand in completed work.

Make it look like you followed their instructions, and agree that you followed their instructions

Let them take all the credit.

(Actually, he called this "How to work in the Public Service")

Miss Purple writes...

I think this guy at work summed up to me how to win like this:

:D

That's the most frustrating kind of advice- the advice you suspect is completely correct, but you honestly wish wasn't the case. :}

I'll have to take a note of it for future reference. Cheers. :)

I once had some senior bastard telling me to heat up his lunch and bring folk to him cuz he was so busy

1Tb/s writes...

I once had some senior bastard telling me to heatup his lunch and bring folk to him cuz he was so busy

You have to question the wisdom of someone who acts rudely and then gives you unsupervised access to his food. ;)

I have worked with some really stupid people.

But my favourite is this somewhat inexperienced chap at my last job, at first I never noticed but he was one of those people who would start a conversation with you and half way through your sentence he would quickly cut you off to 'one up you'.

Anyway, one day I told him some 'office gossip' (something that I witnessed that was quite funny), anyway – I kid you not – later that same day he came to me and retold it to me as if he was the one who witnessed the gossip and appeared to have no apparent memory of me telling him....

Bit of a douche :D

One of my ex-boss did not allow people to have internet at their desk (it was an IT company). There were only one tiny laptop next to the boss office that got internet connection for all of us.

Jacksbac1 writes...

Electrical engineer who did not know what a plug top looked like and could not use a digital multi meter where do they qualify:)

Sounds a bit like one of my sister's exs, was an engineer for the local water authority, yet had to hire a plumber to change a tap washer.

I worked at a retail chain for a couple of years, with my awesome boss. This boss had worked in this chain for about 10 years, LOVED the job, hated the head-office management, but was too good at his job to ever get fired.

Head office would do all sorts of rediculous stuff to our store. They made us redo stocktake almost every time, the area manager would come in and change our sale setup then change it back the next day, boost sales in other stores on particular items we were winning monthly figures on just so our store never got top spot. This went on for so long, and it was because my manager was such a thorn in their side, because he could take all this crap and still perform brilliantly, and with a smile. Awesome, awesome fellow.

Anyway, one day we had a new assistant manager. This guy was a "cousin" of some guy at head office. I knew we had a new guy in the store because I could smell him before I entered the store. He smelt like a combination of urine, puke, and baby poo. It was INSANELY pungent, one of the worst smells I've ever smelt. Took years to get the memory of it out of my head.

Our sales went downhill... reallllllly downhill. Nobody wanted to work with him, and at this stage nobody knew what his smell problem was. I got fed up one day, and I asked him (quite politely) what the cause of this smell was. The guy gets all aggro, and tells me it's a medical problem, some sort of rare kidney malfunction thing. I sympathise, but then get aggro back and tell him that we should be warned because you KNOW it's a problem, so why not clear the air (no pun intended) and we can DEAL with it? He told me to go and have intercourse with myself, and stormed out.

Next day I was fired. Some trumped up crap about a non-receipt refund for like $12 from 6 months ago. I didn't care, I didn't have to deal with smell guy anymore. In hindsight I shoulda kicked up a health & safety issue or something... smells that bad have to be legislated against somewhere...

For 2 years at my last job we tried to find out who "The Nester" was...

Some guy would fill up the toilet bowl with paper (like a birds nest) then proceed to let go of his bowls on top of it, he'd then cover up the deposit with more paper.

We found out it was a guy from the level above when we busted him walking out of a cubicle one day. Who the hell does that?

I worked at an electronics retail store where I had a boss who really had to have a hand in every single thing I did when completing simple tasks. One day, he told me to go around the store to see which products still didn't have price tags (cause it was a newly set up store and not everything was quite in place yet). So, I went to a shelf and started scanning them the way any normal person would. Because the shelves were a bit wide I had to move side to side a bit. Anyway, the dork comes up to me and says "alright, stop right there, I don't want you wandering side to side aimlessly, I want you to do this the systematic way. Now, I want you to start with the top shelf, SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN from left to right, go to the next shelf, and SCAAAAAAAAAAN from left to right..." I said "that's what I was already doing". I graduated from university with an elec eng degree and I was being taught how to scan shelves, lol.

Another time, actually at an earlier time. I was told by this same boss to go around the store and start putting price tags on shelves as we were setting up the store. His argument was that because it was a saturday and I was being paid double time and a half, he doesn't want me wasting time and he wants me to go about it efficiently. So, he started telling me how I should go about putting out the price tags and I was then left to attend to the task. The three of us who were assigned this task independently came up with the same strategy of putting out the price tags, which was more efficient than what our boss suggested to us. It was almost intuitive even. Anyway, the dillwit came up to me cause he saw I had made a list of price tags that I was to put out and asked me what it was for. I explained to him my strategy. He goes "you lost me there" I explained it AGAIN, and he said "no, don't do it that way, do it my way blablabla cause I want you to do it efficiently." He also went to the other two and forced them to do it his way. One of them even tried to argue with him and convince him that his strategy wasn't the best way but the boss wouldn't budge.

This boss would also accuse me of being too slow frequently and would bitch about me behind my back without intending on letting me know where I should "improve". Needless to say, I was made redundant by him, but I think it's one of the kindest things he could have ever done for me, cause since then I've moved to a much better job, one that is actually relevant to my degree.

riversandlakes writes...

An ex-boss of mine, during performance interview so many years ago said that I was a "man of integrity." Those were his exact words.

The thing is that I have absolutely no respect for this weakling. So, with me being a man of integrity having no respect for him, what does it make him?

The only way I can make this complaint – if that is what it is – make sense, is if you don't actually know what the word 'integrity' means.

"Oh man, I worked for this guy once, what a nightmare. Get this, in a performance review, he gave me a compliment! What an arsehole!"

we've had this american girl work with us at restaraunt, she would not STFU, being a typical american (yes over generalising, but it's true) she would always try to get the last word in, even though she was usually wrong. was very enjoyable to argue with her. she would even follow you around the shop while still talking to you even though u would be leaving her to do some work. broke down one night when a family came in and had cake and candles for their daughters birthday, she was going on about how lucky they are to have a loving family, etc..

another lady at same restaruant, said she had experience, she had NFI what she was doing. couldn't hear her as she spoke way too softly and mumbled, kept getting almost every order wrong, having to ring back people a few times to find out what they really wanted, plus couldnt keep all the orders written out the same, she lasted a month or so before she put a $25 efpos through as 25c and a $74 meal through as $47 within a couple days of each other. also managed to screw up the register almost every night, had to call me a couple times cause it was a new register and i was the only one who figured out how to use it.

had this kinda dirty lady working at boss's new business, she also had no idea, was throwing out stock before checking it properly, left product in the car and claimed it was melted like that when she got it the day before (bag of cheese).

its been an interesting year and a half there, lol.

xrtsteve writes...

you should try working in bundaberg

The place where Dr. Patel worked as Surgeon Rambo?

You guys have really worked with some freakishly outlandish exhibitions...otherwise you're making these up in which case they're quite novel! :D

Worst case I've met was tame in comparison...this person who eats other people's food and snaps at you for making the accusation.

Work with a junior member who constantly cracks it if not getting it their own way, swearing, storm out of meetings, plays games on the mobile during meetings, the whole lot. Rocks up to work late at least once a fornight, and most times does not even bother speaking to anyone when finally making it to work.
Rocked up late one day, storms in gets changed and heads off to site, did not say a word to anyone. An hour later and an interesting phone call, woops, went to the wrong site. I still laugh when i think about it. And yet still has not been fired! I have so many examples but too obvious who I am talking about!
Ha ha, still laughing!

burg998 writes...

have so many examples but too obvious who I am talking about!

You should punch him right in the face.

Nobody too bad luckily. Worked for a catering company where it was just part-time/casual for me as a student but the main job for most of the other people there who were all pretty old...they liked to gossip more than made me happy, kept criticising one other worker in particular who was a bit annoying, but it made me really uncomfortable. I hope they didn't say things about me. I'm lucky I never got involved in a confrontation though because one worker liked to yell.

HP..........

My aunt. Biggest nazi ever.

portaloo writes...

We found out it was a guy from the level above when we busted him walking out of a cubicle one day. Who the hell does that?

I dont know about people who cover it back up with toilet paper, but strangely people put paper in the bowl so they dont get any splash back – apparently its quite common :s

liteon writes...

apparently its quite common :s
Especially in the Navy, dry docks(turning water off and emptying the bowl no), blokes sitting on top of the cubicles trying to land it in the bowl, biggest bunch of bugs I have ever had the displeasure of working with.

I worked with a guy who was recently jailed for trying to kill his wife by driving her off a pier.

I was always very nice to him, now I'm glad i was :)

I worked with a guy who eventually went to jail over stuff he did for one of the big names you'd know from 'Underbelly'.

I also had a nutcase that nobody wanted to work with, get dumped in my department and despite protests by myself and other staff, he finally lost it one day and we had to go and testify in court against him over his threats to kill someone in the workplace.

Oh, but it gets better...
He gets convicted (community service and anger management course), but they keep him employed in the same store and we have to walk past him every day listening to insults like 'dogs' and 'scum' and management did sweet 'f' all when we expressed our concerns and said just to keep out of his way.
I eventually had our piss weak union look into it, but then...

One day he finally loses it over something that's nothing to do with me and had to be physically dragged away from my department by store management while screaming that he's going to kill me and break my neck.
After a week or so off with pay, they finally sacked him.

I now work 2 of 5 nights with another fruit loop, but that's another story.

Out of control CEO who though he worked in IT. Would go into the comms room on the weekend and pull cables out of the patch pannels. Banging on his desk and screaming at poeple when things didn't go his way. Abused me once for wanting update our desktop fleet with HP small form factors desktops. Started carrying on about how the local computer store gave us the best graphics cards and the best memory ROFL

Current Posstion: Complete and utter slacker who would come in late, go get a cup of coffee and just sit there looking at his screen and surfing the net until someone rang him up yelling and screeming about blown SLA's. He came in one moring, had a job interview in the afternoon, sat there reading notes then left abotu 11am. He didn't come back either. And he got paid for that day! I got him sacked hehehe ..

:P

An ex boss use to tell me off once a day for 2 years, not in a polite way either.

I once asked a larger tall lady a question and she screamed at me and threatened me she would get me fired. She was fired about a year later when she went too far and told her own boss off.

One guy used to tell me off all the time for driving to fast, driving the wrong way when on company grounds. I don't think he was correct once. He was fired about a year later.

My assistant was fired by upper management for smearing poo all over the walls, forcets, basins and ground. I sanitised everything he had touched in our office.

I heard a lot of complaints from girls that the asian girls would refuse to sit on the toilet and instead squat on the seat, they would leave nasty surprises for the next person.

These are the extreme cases of the 400 odd people that I have worked with.

my old bosses tried to rule with iron fist and command respect as opposed to actually earning it, highly amusing catching them with feet up watching dvds and generally bludging , were never resourceful and had the classic us and them mentality. No body backed them when they were senior managed out =)

Had a boss a few years ago, one of those do as I say and never question me type guys. He was basically a complete yobbo that sat at his desk and surfed motorbike forums all day and not much else.

It wasnt a great place to work with him as manager but what convinced me to leave was a combination of 2 things. First was a friend came into work one day and told me my best friend had just been killed in a car accident. I was devastated and I told the manager what had happened and I needed to go, he made me fill out a leave form and wait until he approved it with a threat of reporting me to HR if I didn't.

Second thing that sealed the deal was when I asked about a days leave for the funeral of said best friend. His exact words were "What? You want the whole day?"
Now that might not sound bad to some people but I was not in a good way at that point and it just tipped me over the edge.

I'd discussed these issues with HR and they did nothing but funnily enough during my exit interview the HR manager came in and personally apologized to me on behalf of the company. Too little too late.

We have a guy at work who does his utmost to not get along with any one.
On pretty much every job site he has been on in the last 12 months, the foremen have said to the higher ups, we don't want him back.

He stops about 10 times a day for a fag, or to get a drink or what ever, when challenged over this he usually writes written complaints to the director about who ever has asked him why he spends the better part of his day smoking or not doing work.

He whinges about everybody elses work, when his can be sub standard.
Is incredibly paranoid and thinks everybody is out to make him look bad.

Something has happened to this bloke in the last year or so, he seems to be doing his best to get every body offside and make the workplace uncomfortable.
This year alone he has taken about 3 weeks off in total as stress leave as he feels threatened by his co workers.

He was working by himself a week or so back, and one of our apprentices was sent over to help him as he was obviously having a hard time building tray by himself, as anyone does. He took it as a personal attack, was on the phone to the director of the company saying he would appreciate if people had a problem with him if they took it up with him first rather than make him look like an idiot in front of everyone, then went home.
No joke, I can't believe he is still with us, our bosses and foremen are fantastic blokes, and almost all the tradies are too, I just don't get what turns a bloke nuts like that...

I started my first job as Junior support. The 'senior' technical support guy obviously had no life, he installed VNC on my PC and would always connect into my PC, thinking I was unaware.. to watch what I was doing.

He'd walk past my PC, see I was composing an email message, then I'd see the screen flicker and my desktop wallpaper vanish as he spied on me. Everytime I was assigned a task, I'd start googling things I was unsure of to get a better understanding, and attempt to put things together, but he'd be watching and walk over, look over my shoulder and go 'No no no.. you're doing it wrong'

In the end every time the screen flickered I opened up notepad in the bottom right hand corner of my screen and started typing the most degrading, horrible, unimaginable insults directed squarely at this f****. You could see him turning red with rage and biting his tounge as he left the room, but what could he do about it?

The next 2 weeks I spend browsing careers.vic.gov.au and got a new higher paid PS position in I.T. Put in my letter of resignation and never looked back. I still ring his number to see if the loser's still working there.

I just quit my job 3 months ago. My team was very different. I was the youngest (29). In the team of 4 one of the team member was a 40 years stupid cow who can't stop her big mouth bitching about everything and every human she has met in her life. Any one can tell just by talking to her for 30 seconds that something was wrong with her. My boss liked her and was addressing her a little girl ???

I was so socked I did not feel working in an engineering team. My boss was doing my performance review not based on my performance but performance of that stupid cow's bitching about me. I felt I was working in 15th century leadership.

Moreover, my boss was working for 20 years but could not lead his team properly, no body wanted him in the company but he just did not want to leave.

Anyway, that was my worst work team.

Thanks.

when i used to live in brisbane, worked in this indian restaurant (can't remember which one, but i think they closed down a few years ago). There was this guy there who did practical jokes on everyone (and i mean everyone – he even put those bloody whoope cushions (i think that's what they're called) under the proper cushion on one of the chairs in front of the store, which ended up amusing him but severely embarrassing the innocent customer who sat on it).

One day, he took the paper out of the cash register (the paper that gets receipts printed on them). i was serving a customer, and i found the cash register was out of paper. As i bent over to get another roll of paper out of the cupboard, i placed my hand on a mousetrap which was set by him. After about a minute of dancing around, swearing in mandarin, i see the little prick standing there laughing his nuts off. Absolutely sick of him, i walk over there and punch him in the eye. In the end, both of us got fired (me because i punched him, and him because he is a dickhead).

dont you just love those chaps that would talk on and on and on in meetings? how a 15min meeting that could turn into a 2hr+ marathon duration?

I had a boss who hated everyone. She spent all day backstabbing everybody, beauty parlours and on facebook. She got promoted and was given a bonus.

giggio writes...

she got promoted and was given a bonus.

further proof that 'the office'
is a game
and you need to play it
good luck getting anywhere on merit if you work under one of these types

APersonOutThere writes...

good luck getting anywhere on merit if you work under one of these types
these types seem very prevalent now. And if one tries to change employer they give you the worst possible reference. And the also spend most of the day updating your "dossier" with HR

Previous manager used to comment on other staff's sexual preferences and who was doing what to who etc. He managed his son's cricket team and spent a lot of work time doing that. Straw that broke the camels back was his telling me I was using too many staples when I was doing my filing.
I got sick of him taking the credit for all my good work when it came to spreadsheets etc.

I left and gave him a piece of my mind on the way out. What a tosser, yet like others mentioned he's still there and everybody thinks he's wonderful.

jIGGABITE writes...

we've had this american girl work with us at restaraunt, she would not STFU, being a typical american (yes over generalising, but it's true)

Gotta be careful with Americans. America is not like here. Lots of bad stuff happens and its pretty cooky sort of alice in wonderland kind of setup. They have to be positive so they internalise a lot of the trauma and then one day they just explode.

We had a few American exchange students at highschool. We all thought they were crazy Americans for crying when they had to go home. They weren't crying because they were crazy Americans, they really were crying because they didn't want to go home to crappy America.

The worst person I've ever worked with was a typical retail manager. Need I say more.

CYWC writes...

I asked her the next day why she would send it in such a manner and she said, "I thought the post office would open the letter and look at the letterhead and send it back to the sender" which then I had to ask, "what about stamp?" and she said nothing...... thank god she didn't pass probation.

Got to ask, but was she hot???

^ re the 'nester' post earlier; I think we've got one at work. lol.

I moved to a small country town once and my boss was an Indian guy (newspaper)
Turned out I couldn't do anything right for him. Really frustrating, as I had never experienced this before from a boss. He fired me. Weird.
A year or so later he got sucked through a dam wall water pipe while fishing in his dinghy. Sad.
He did put on a great bbq once for staff though.

There was this Maori guy once at my current workplace.
He worked as a storeman. Really friendly guy and hard worker. Though I could tell that he might be a problem after a drink or two after work. Turned out to be true.
He pushed over this pregnant girl (half-joking), after a couple of beers. Cops called/rock up. Sacked.

When i was younger i worked for Coles. Worked hard while studying got recognized and promoted to the point i was managing a department while they bent over backwards to accommodate my HSC. I did my HSC at tafe so my hours were different from normal school hours.

Another store liked my work and offered me more money to transfer over to them.
This store manager was a piece of work. Firstly the payrise, after months and months of him saying next paycheck he then refused to acknowledge it because it wasn't written that he agreed to pay me more. He actually tried to intimidate me to quit my HSC, saying that if i couldn't decide on Coles being my future path I would have to go, since he knew i had to work to pay rent, bills etc unlike most students who worked there. Pretty much every opportunity this guy had to be a dick he would take up.

He also put this horrible worker in my department, this kid had a huge attitude and no one wanted him. He was kicked out of every department and i was told I have to put up with him and he couldn't be fired since he was cheap. This kid would have tantrums and was just useless.

There was a time when I was so fed up with him not completing anything I decided to assign him about 30 minutes work for his 8 hour shift. He went around the store that day telling everyone what a f*^%ig idiot i was and i only gave him this to do.

Funny I still remember the look of rage on his face when i approached him on my next shift saying "the other staff might think i am a idiot for not assigning you enough to do, but what do they think of you when you don't even get that done" He in turn had a tantrum and from then on I just assigned him to sit in the staffroom until the minimal shift time of 3 hours passed which he could then go home. After about a month of that the store manager changed his department again. Anyway after all that i quit.

The kid got transfered to another store then promptly fired.
The store manager got sacked after it was found out he used a raffle for charity to support his gambling habit.

On the bright side it got me out of retail and into I.T so i should be thankful for that. There were a few lessons there as well. :)

Had a boss that wanted me to copy other people designs/patterns whether it be from fashion, industrial, graphic or the arts and place them on rubber ducks. Then sells these ducks as 'designer luxury ducks' and 'the most collectible ducks in the world'. Of what? Copied patterns lol. Calls himself creative to his mates and the world. Makes people believe he is actually creative. Far from it. Has been sued several times for copying but still continues to do it. Was not there long!

kasp writes...

He actually tried to intimidate me to quit my HSC, saying that if i couldn't decide on Coles being my future path I would have to go

One thing I've picked up from experience, both mine and others, is that the sort of people who pressure you to give up your options are also the first to fire you when you no longer suit their purposes.

I have a friend who was working two jobs and was pressured by one of them to quit the other. He did. Guess which job then let him go a few weeks later?

A good boss wants you to improve yourself, since it helps both you *and* them (free training!). A bad boss just wants to limit your options so that you can be kept under-thumb.

Spent a year at a certain company in the wholesale industry.

Mostly software development, but also had to do warehouse work from time to time.

That didn't bother me in itself, but the people in the warehouse were absolutely the most abrasive, uncivilized, degenerate hooligans I've ever met.

They all smoked marijuana, which you'd think would calm them down, but instead they'd do nothing but taunt me, shout oscenities and give me crap.

This was only my 2nd real job in the industry, and I was shy kind of person at that time, so it really made me feel seriously down. You couldn't call it anything but bullying.

Unfortunately, most of the warehouse/sales staff were in on it, and since they were a core part of the business, I didn't want to raise issues.

I did complain once, when one of the older ones started shouting obscenities my way because I didn't answer a customer query correctly. The boss called him in and had him apologize for such unprofessional behavior.

I walked out of that job with my pride intact, and knowing that I'd be moving up the ladder, leaving those degenerates to languish with their warehouse boxes and drugs.

On my last day, one of them quietly said he respected me and wished me the best of luck.

Since then I've dealt with a much higher caliber of people, and the worst I've come across is negligence/apathy, which I'm more equipped to deal with.

Therapy writes...

No joke, I can't believe he is still with us

sounds like he's got the backing of a trade-union of sorts :) not easy to sack....

You guys all have terrible colleagues/bosses. I can only think of one time when, working at a warehouse office location, somebody was always eating other people's food in the fridge. Never found out whom it was but the guy must've got sick of blueberry jam sangers as my lunch stopped going MIA soon afterwards :)

its stories like this, and the "people", that makes me wish that a huge asteroid come down and finish us once and for all.

dblbaconcheeseburger writes...

its stories like this, and the "people", that makes me wish that a huge asteroid come down and finish us once and for all.

Nar just people that think like you :P

University assignments. One of them is my best friend, we enrolled into the same course and it turned out that he was the most lazy mofo EVER to work with. Copy and paste, not showing up for meetings, yadda yadda you name it.

We now both work for Telstra. Still best friends :)

I think the worst part is that the more psychotic the manager is, the further they seem to progress in the organisation.

They don't usually make CEO if there is a board because they're usually made up of experienced businesspeople who can spot a phoney a mile off.

So you will often find them in a position of Vice-President or Director of Sales and Marketing.

The best revenge is merely to remember that they invariably have miserable lives and gets what's coming to them.

Just remember – export your emails to a .pst or .nsf and keep a USB copy at home.

Get anything to do with pay or title or relocation or bonus in writing before agreeing to anything.

They "redesigned" the leave loading arrangements at a friends work recently. Gave everyone a one-page agreement to read and stood there while you signed it.

Some bosses "accidentally" told their teams it was compulsory to sign immediately, so all did, then informed them they were mistaken while keeping all the signed forms.

I once worked for a Newcastle-based personnel company specialising in disability services ... it was the craziest and worst place I've ever worked. I left within six months.

One of the many stories I have about the place is how the company only had a small number of mailboxes. Instead of (eg) JSmith, BBloggs, etc the mailboxes were (eg) admin, support, office, etc. Each team would all share the one and same mailbox for their group.

I regularly had people complain to me they wanted their own mailbox and all I could say the setup was the company policy. I made the guess that it was this way because as the company pretty much received its funding from the government they had tight controls on incoming/outgoing e-mail.

I was wrong. The answer was much different. I was with the General Manager one day and she showed me how she had all the mailboxes open in her Outlook folder (including her own personal address, mind you). She commented how lots of people want their own mailbox but she couldn't allow it because then she'd just have to many folders to monitor in Outlook!

ie the whole reason for the one-mailbox-per-team was because she read all the e-mail and if there were more mailboxes it'd be a burden on her!

The whole thing was counterproductive, to my mind. Regularly I'd see people using Hotmail even for legitimate work e-mail. So, by doing things in such a control-freak wierd manner the company actually lost control of its e-mail and much legitimate work-related e-mail was taking place entirely away from the company's systems.

For me the worst would have to be when i was at uni, was working in a call centre and had this old guy who had been there for something like 30 years, part of the furniture, he would often fall asleep at his desk, come in 2 out of 5 days and refused to go part-time even though they offered it to him, i did not mind cause i got along with him but when he feel asleep with the phone ringing it was pretty funny, later on they added a automatic pick up system so the customer would hear someone sleeping saying hello, hello, hello..

sosaria writes...

he was the most lazy mofo EVER to work with. Copy and paste, not showing up for meetings, yadda yadda you name it.

We now both work for Telstra.

I imagine he felt right at home there.

milieux writes...

I think the worst part is that the more psychotic the manager is, the further they seem to progress in the organisation.

They don't usually make CEO if there is a board because they're usually made up of experienced businesspeople who can spot a phoney a mile off.
...unless they are self-appoint themselves as the CEO. I know this from experience, and unfortunately, it is completely legal.

I worked for the most psychotic CEO I have ever come across. Some people on WP know the story, and it scarred me for life. Not only was it a small-business, most of the employees were family members. There was one who would repeatedly dial phone numbers with speakerphone on. I told him to stop on numerous occasions. The CEO, who is his brother-in-law, told me it is part of his job to do so.

Then there were the abusive emails, degoratory comments and humiliation from the hands of the CEO, which occurred on a daily basis. I left after a year.

After reading this thread, I never want to leave my current job solely out of fear of being placed in a workplace where I actually need to make a real post in this thread.

Therapy writes...

No joke, I can't believe he is still with us, our bosses and foremen are fantastic blokes, and almost all the tradies are too, I just don't get what turns a bloke nuts like that...

Obviously he's a hardman...as with anyone who knows a little bit about their right.

They should stop addressing him verbally and should address him formally by issuing memorandums and letters. Everything has to be written down...do it by the book for 3-6 months and this guy would leave.

Just need patience to address idiots like this.

I managed to sack 2 and the other one resigned because they think they're tough...when it comes to following procedures by the book – employees hates it especially the tough nuts.

I had my share of backstabbers as well in my previous roles. Basically, if something goes well when you're working together, he takes all the credit, but if something goes wrong, you take all the blame.

The post about the psycopath reflects similarly to an old friend. He would source info from everyone and make use of it to his own advantage. It was my downfall to trust him.

CYWC writes...

thank god she didn't pass probation.

With so many applicant apply for the job and you chose her? how professional is that!

Compulsive Liar writes...

After reading this thread, I never want to leave my current job solely out of fear of being placed in a workplace where I actually need to make a real post in this thread.

LOL

Really though, if you can get into a specialist field and only work with others who are skilled in that area, the quality of people you work with will go up.

Since that early warehouse job, I've never been sworn at or anything that bad, since I deal with a higher caliber of professionals.

Jonathan Conway writes...

leaving those degenerates to languish with their warehouse boxes and drugs.

Brilliant mental image there! I love it.

I must say, this is a classic thread.

One that springs to mind for me is a certain major ski resort in northern Vermont (really narrows it down), the instructor uniforms had been kept for several years after their use-by date. They were drack faded rags. We didn't even have lockers, just racks to hang them... and some disgruntled employee was overnight cutting the cuffs off them. By the end of the season, most of us had rubber bands around the bottom of our sleeve, and the resort had ordered new uniforms and actually went through with it this time.

Rather bizarre way to register one's disapproval though! We all wondered, did they cut their own cuffs off to avert suspicion?!

The worst job I ever had was working with stiffs (dead people). Well not exactly were they the worst I worked with. The top heavy management (stiffs) and other staff within the company were worse and some of them stunk more than the deceased people. Don't get me wrong I loved the job and the clients and their family's were all wonderful each in their own way. I got out of the job when I couldn't justify working for the company who put more emphasis on the $$$'s and not ahead of the deceased family's needs which is what the client family's had paid them to do. When staff moral in the whole company is down and people are leaving left right and centre you would think that any company would look at it seriously with their overworked staff and the impact on their customers as a reason for customers shopping elsewhere.

The all of 25yo self important manager whose opening line to most conversations was 'You're F&^%$ed in the head.'

The Seagull. (found in the public service) He'd fly in make a lot of noise, crap on you from a great height, steal your chips and fly off leaving a horrible mess to be cleaned up.

The staffer we called hydraulic cos he'd lift anything not bolted down.

A guy called Gravity because he never got off his bum to help out.

The radio jock who said "I am the the sole reason this place is top of the ratings, you contribute nothing, I will use the studio booth when ever I want, I am more important than you, get out of my way." Worked mid-dawn for years but He's still a radio legend.

There has just been a woman contractor start in the department next to mine. Her desk is quite close to me. Her voice, it grates – really loud gruff heavy smoker type voice.

All she seems to do all day is three things:

– Suck up to any managers who pass her desk, or anyone else she thinks may cement or improve her position

– Make/receive personal phone calls

– Tell people (this is the part that makes me feel physically sick) that she is on $600 per day

Jed Maxwell writes...

Tell people (this is the part that makes me feel physically sick) that she is on $600 per day

What makes me really sick is when they say they're ONLY on $600 a day!

- some ex-military type who thinks he is the drill sergant in Full Metal Jacket/Captain Sobel from Band of Brothers, yes, he even conducts surprise inspections on your desk

- some bean counter who spent 15 mins on an interstate call to grill me about rounding off 2 cents from a customer's account

- some CCNP who don't know what ping does

- some CCNP who can't subnet a /30

- some other CCNP who dunno how to do a simple port forward/static route

- idiots who can't even push paper properly

- centres of universe who thinks all of their issues should've been resolved yesterday

- bums who can't even pretend to be busy

EthanK writes...

Copied patterns lol. Calls himself creative to his mates and the world. Makes people believe he is actually creative. Far from it. Has been sued several times for copying but still continues to do it. Was not there long!

really? not there long? but his copies still sell? (I'm not gonna give your bizness anymore free plugs!)

ah well here goes!! http://www.budproduct.com/

I have worked at 2 separate places and in both jobs encountered people who come to work without showering or clean clothes and smell like cat piss.

i'm not talking slight odour, but take a breath and start dry heaving or vomit into your mouth a little.

both people had no idea of the stench they were producing, one of them came the next day smelling of lynx and cat piss.

another ethnic guy I worked with wrecked of garlic, it came out of skin and was heavy on his breath, I confronted him and he said "I will buy some chewy"

I'm thinking, extra or breath mints or something. He buys grape hubba-bubba.

so now i got the stink of garlic and grape, I kicked him out of the car and left him on the side of the road, and we never worked or spoke to each other agian until he was terminated for the first minor thing he did wrong.

PERSONAL HYGIENE IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!

net123 writes...

but his copies still sell? (

The copied products have now been removed from their site. = Paranoid!

My last boss... One of those types that was always right, and you had to do what they said, no matter what. (Tyre store, i was a Tyre fitter, he was manager)

He'd sit in the office surfing the internet, reading the newspaper etc. When there was no work to be done, i'd come sit in the office for a bit, and while he was doing nothing himself, he'd be like 'what am i paying you for? get out there and find something to do!' (too lazy to even find something for me to do, himself)

Spend hours, literally, a day on the phone to his friends. Walking around the store and nowhere near the office itself, so that I had to do his job serving customers and got absolutly no thanks or recognition for it.

When customers paid in cash for small services that didnt require any stock, he'd just pocket the money, even though he did none of the work (except serving the customer, asking what they wanted), and when confronted about it being unfair, he just replied 'well, its what my managers did to me when i was doing your job years ago, so deal with it'

when i started, he had a go at me for never really being in complete uniform, threatened to give me a written warning. While standing there in his billabong board shorts. Pointed this out and he just got more angry :/

glad i quit... so very glad.

One of my worst was on work experience!

I was in year 10, and got sent to a factory for work experience for the week.

My boss pretty much hid in his office, told me to find my own stuff to do and stop bothering him etc

It was a week but I didn't even bother going for the last two days.

kirova writes...

- some CCNP who don't know what ping does

- some CCNP who can't subnet a /30

- some other CCNP who dunno how to do a simple port forward/static route

All the signs are that it's _you_ who doesn't know what they're talking about!

Not only do I not believe your claims about your workmates with CCNP (Do you have any idea of what is involved in getting a CCNP? – someone who couldn't ping/set routes would be ineligible to even start CCNP).

The "some CCNP" who can't subnet a /30 is entirely correct.

You can't subnet a /30. The smallest block that can be subnetted is a /29 (8 IP's).

You have a lot of complaints about your work mates. Sounds like some self evaluation is in order.

I once worked with probably the worst person I have ever met. From the moment I stepped on to the floor, the first comment she made to me was along the lines of "oh god I hate these people (owners) don't you agree?" Of course being there 5 minutes I could only offer a confused "don't really know". Didn't like that, didn't like ME, and clearly resented me being offered position she was not qualified for so greatly she would follow me around all day at work, commenting on my progress and offering helpful advice or simply showing me how to do things the "right" way. such as: cleaning tables, organising equipment, wiping down surfaces etc.

This woman was such an absolute nightmare I literally wanted to kill her. Luckily I found another job before that happened but oh my. It still hurts just thinking about it.

Michael613 writes...

All the signs are that it's _you_ who doesn't know what they're talking about!

maybe I don't, I only work in a NOC of an ISP and has full write access to it's global network (and yes, I use those access on a daily basis), but what would I know? (I certainly don't claim to know everything, but at least I am ok with the basics)

Not only do I not believe your claims about your workmates with CCNP

time to get out more and see the real world, there are lots of cowboys out there, and there are just as many managers/HR who will filter resumes and make their hiring decision base on a few letters after your name.

someone who couldn't ping/set routes would be ineligible to even start CCNP

never heard of braindumps?

You can't subnet a /30. The smallest block that can be subnetted is a /29 (8 IP's).

shit, I guess all the ISPs out there who offers /30 and /32 subnets to their customers has been doing it wrong, but what would we know?

You have a lot of complaints about your work mates.

I guess the title of this thread has escaped your attention?

Sounds like some self evaluation is in order.

the feedback I get from my manager, colleagues, and external customers seems to be quite positive, but thanks for asking.

Michael613 writes...

Do you have any idea of what is involved in getting a CCNP?

The proper way or the cheating way?

I have worked with some horrible CCNP's who don't know their balls from their a-hole – there are a lot of them out there, so kirova could well be on the money, its definitely not uncommon to find a CCNP who knows almost nothing. We have coined them CCBR's at my work, Cisco Certified Book Readers.

My old manager was doing and exchange '07 migration on a friday. I had finished up my area's for the day and decided to head out and give him a hand (and also learn a bit too). He ended up falling asleep WHILE I was talking to him, waking up 30 minutes later, said he cant continue anymore, and I was stuck until 10pm figuring out exchange '07 and migrating from '03.

So rude, you should have seen how he treated customers, nevermind his employee's. Humble beginnings :)

Nik G writes...

I have worked with some horrible (insert certified expert qualification here)

Yes they usually either have been to one of those places where the only "training" is to pay for the exam pass, or have dubious "qualifications" from university of Bangalore or not worth the paper it's printed on.

I wonder why people take things to heart when they get treated like crap? I've had pushy, mean bosses and it would annoy the shit out of me but I've accepted it since then I laugh about it, in fact its hardened me up, I've definitely had my shot of cement after working with crappy people.

My last supervisor was a good guy, but it was easy to annoy him and he was a control freak. He would raise his voice and such but deep down I'm pissing myself laughing while he is taking it very serious.

I dated the bosses daughter in my first ever professional job. She ended up getting a job with the same company, as my support person.

You can guess what misery my life turned into when we broke up even though breaking up was the best decision I've ever made.

Lessons learned from this experience:

A) Never scr3w the crew
B) NEVER scr3w the crew!

great job done! you should be appreciated for this.

At Coles, I was on the checkout, and needed to go to the toilet. My immediate manager said I was not allowed to go until break time!

But I really needed to go, so I went, and she complained to her manager. So I told him, I had to go, and he said, "yeah, if you gotta go, you gotta go!"

Stupid psycho bitch.

Oh GOD! nothing is worst working for a boss 'Tosser' that is a perfectionist...the keyboard and monitor has to be straight at all times, my x boss even had this 'thing' with coffee mugs where the handle of his coffee mug had to point to the right side of him at all times and that is why he is my x boss.

Guld writes...

Things he would do on a daily basis.

like the dude may have bi polar.

That sounds more like obsessive compulsive disorder, not bipolar.

You quit because of the way he puts his coffee mug down? Sounds like your OCD is worse than his!

Used to work with someone who was OCD like that. If you didn't leave the chairs in his office straight after having a meeting there you could see him get more and more frustrated before getting up to straighten them up.

When he was stressed he'd start doing it to the chairs in the offices either side of his as well.

Used to sit two desk away from someone who would spontaneously fart even now and then. Would be pretty funny when we got new temps in and they had no idea what was coming.

We never confronted her about it but the final straw came during a meeting which she came in late to and 5 minutes in decided to face down towards the floor and floss her teeth! Seriously.

Used to work for a multi-national and the manager would let the supervisor run things in the department. The psycho supervisor had his 5 favourite people who he would give easy work to and the other 25 people (including myself) would be given the crap work. Of course any new work given to the department would have to go through the supervisor for him to allocate.

The 25 of us used to call it 'the cartel' and after a few weeks it got back to the manager and when we had a meeting, he said, 'there is no cartel!!!'. Funnily enough a few weeks later, the office was raided by the Federal Police, his office was broken into by the Feds, Computer searched and he was arrested for drug smuggling. Another 3 people was in on it as well including one of the favourites of the 5 and two others from another department. Still serving time.

The Supervisor works for another company because he couldn't get along with the new manager.

I like to call my worst co-worker "The Drunken Hag" She is without a doubt the most putrid woman I have ever met. She stumbles into work half an hour late every single day, and instead of getting stuck into work, will then proceed to make her round of personal calls for the morning, lasting at least a couple of hours.

It really is excruciating to have to listen to this old bitch talk about her drunken exploits the previous night like a damn teenager.

But it doesn't stop there, she's one of these people that likes to run their lives from their desk, organising get-togethers and outings and gossiping, and she's not discreet about it either. She then complains that she has to much work to do! I have no idea why she hasn't even been given a warning yet.

I have one like that.

Has been ordered to get in by 9am, she rolls in at 8.59 and turns the computer on.

Walks to kitchen, makes toast with vegemite and/or cereal, puts on the dinosaur feet fluffy slippers and back to her desk.

She will make personal calls for the next hour, check her email etc and duck out for cigs every 30 mins.

I can't help thinking that there are only *two* good reasons the manager keeps her on.

kirova writes...

time to get out more and see the real world, there are lots of cowboys out there

Dealing with a "network expert" recently. Can I give him the cisco router login... sure (he had the OK of the owner, so its not my place to say no, had a backup of the config anyhow).

Had a call later on, why isnt the web interface working... well err you see... no web interface...

We had one guy come back from lunch so drunk he stood in the corner of the office just inside the front door & pissed on the artificial plant.

Don't know how most of these people get/ keep jobs its ridiculous.

Alchemisst writes...

Don't know how most of these people get/ keep jobs its ridiculous.

Either they can lie, kiss the right ass, have the right contacts, or own the company.

Merit and ability are way down the list. :/

Beuy writes...

SPEAKERPHONE: Uses the speaker phone in an open office plan for every call (including personal), leaves mobile phone on annoying ring tone at highest possible volume (leaves it on desk while he goes away for hours at a time), refuses to consider anyone else by turning the phone down/off/taking it with him.

I once worked with a bloke who had the Benny Hill theme song as his ring tone. He seemed to think it was the height of hilarity. It was set at maximum volume. He had a very bad habit of leaving his phone in my office, forgetting it was there and walking out for fifteen minutes before realising where it was.

One time, the phone was continually ringing while I was attempting to concentrate on some work. I picked the phone up, turned it off and put it in the back of a filing cabinet. Some time later, he popped his head in and asked me if I'd seen his mobile anywhere. I told him I hadn't. He wound up going out and getting another phone. I left the company not long afterwards. To this day, i imagine his Benny Hill mobile is still sitting in that filing cabinet...

My last boss was worse than useless. He ended up leaving for a higher paying position but I still was left with his ill thought out project that I had to finish under his management.

In the end higher ups all got involved, he sent them really a abusive email slandering me, it was far more words in that hateful email than I got from him over 3 years of correspondence. Higher ups took my side, I'm glad to be rid of the prick, funny enough he only has one person working for him now, everyone left and hates him.

Managers it seems either have no knowledge of the project or in my case, an ideas man with no project management skills whatsoever.

hihosilver writes...

The Seagull. (found in the public service) He'd fly in make a lot of noise, crap on you from a great height, steal your chips and fly off leaving a horrible mess to be cleaned up.
The staffer we called hydraulic cos he'd lift anything not bolted down.
A guy called Gravity because he never got off his bum to help out.
LMAO GOLD!

hihosilver writes...

The staffer we called hydraulic cos he'd lift anything not bolted down.

A guy called Gravity because he never got off his bum to help out.

Best name I heard for someone at the workplace was "Sexy Fingers" because she f*$ked everything she touched.

Hilarion writes...

But it doesn't stop there, she's one of these people that likes to run their lives from their desk

Disconnect her phone?

I don't suppose there's a way to convince local management to lock the office doors for the first hour of every day, so she has to bang on the door to be admitted. That'd be pretty funny.

milieux writes...

Has been ordered to get in by 9am, she rolls in at 8.59 and turns the computer on.

Walks to kitchen, makes toast with vegemite and/or cereal, puts on the dinosaur feet fluffy slippers and back to her desk.

She will make personal calls for the next hour, check her email etc and duck out for cigs every 30 mins.

Could be worse. Does she at least get through her work allocation every day? If so, I'd rather have her as a co-worker than someone who turned up on the dot in full business formals, bolted their arse to the chair for 8 hours, and accomplished sod all.

hihosilver writes...

The staffer we called hydraulic cos he'd lift anything not bolted down.

A guy called Gravity because he never got off his bum to help out.

I once had a work colleague we called "The Thrush". He'd walk into our office and with an attitude that his time was more precious than anyone else's, no matter how insignificent the purpose of his visit was.

Lets just say my company is full of incompetant misfits

i dont know how we stay afloat......

we have this guy who has been dubbed the "Aimless Walker".

he is somehow related to the owner, but what he does is sit at his desk for about 30 minutes at most throughout the day, mind you turns up late, can hardly speak english, stinks, when you see him in the elevator he is always eating almonds and somehow the almond skin always seems to be on his lip and he spends most of the day walking aimlessly around the office. i tell you he could do a marathon each day.

we have a theory that he is making sure there are no raises in the carpet. lol

We had a mature aged electrical apprentice who never did any work, accused everyone of conspiring against him, and was told by his supervisor that the reason was that he never did anything. Then he claimed worker's comp for RSI in his right hand and his doctor agreed. Then when it was deemed long enough by his doctor for him to come back, it miraculously migrated to his left arm.
I think we spent a good 18 months paying him to not come in before he was fired.

Things can apparently get tricky once workers comp is started.

I have worked and still do currently work in a supermarket for over 10 years, started when I was in year 10 at high school and am still there to this day as the weekend manager.

The kids that come through these days though, I don't know if i was that stupid and have got smarter over the last 10 years or if kids in general are just morons but 5 out of the last 6 new staff we've gotten haven't been able to work out someone's change if something different happens.

Say something costs $8.30, and they get given a $10 note, they press the $10 button and it tells they the customer is owed $1.70 change, if the customer then give's them another 30 cents to get $2 back, they have to call me up to work out how much change to give.

Easter is coming up which is bound to bring more headache's, Easter Sunday after lunch the eggs get discounted, but this is done at the register, not automatically, so you have to work out 10% off, all registers get given calculators and they are told to scan the egg, take the price, put it in the calculator and multiply the price by 0.9 that will give them the price at 10% off, nope, you guessed it, that's just too hard, call up me again because they are all morons.

psyclone writes...

don't know if i was that stupid and have got smarter over the last 10 years or if kids in general are just morons but 5 out of the last 6 new staff we've gotten haven't been able to work out someone's change if something different happens.

Only 5 out of 6? Luxury!
Yep. I grew up working in supermarkets. (family businesses)

Kids have always been stupid.

They just annoy you more as you get older.

i have noticed this i thought it was just me being a fuddy duddy lol

Being 21, the kind of people who piss me off the most in the office are the older ones who have the nerve to formally complain to the manager(s) because I do non work related things like jump on the internet and lookup cars or read some news for a couple of minutes here and there. Really drives me nuts when they complain about such things, then potter on back to their PC and type out documents, with one finger, swinging it around looking for each letter one by one. What sad, pathetic people.

I do my work much faster, I deliver projects and tasks on time or early 100% of the time. Why should I constantly take on more all the time when these snails actually take home a higher salary because their ass has been in a chair longer? Maybe I enjoy my earned downtime? Also, worst one was this guy who used to take a piece out of me. He'd constantly whinge about G 53eneration Y and direct it at me because I leave at 5:00:01 on the dot and roll in at 8:59. It's like, umm.. my work here is F*** done, why would I need to 'stay back' "Oooh, he's so spoilt, doesn't know the value of a dollar, blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah – says the miserable 55 year old who has not a hope in hell of retiring for another decade. YOU WERE SMART WITH YOUR MONEY ! Absoulte f'ing fool.

APersonOutThere writes...

the older ones who have the nerve to formally complain to the manager(s) because I do non work related things like jump on the internet and lookup cars or read some news for a couple of minutes here and there

Probably because a lot of places still have rules against employees doing this. Just are too lazy to actually restrict it.

LOL!!! what a great read!

I have had the worse luck with jobs. I used to work for a bakery back in 2008. My boss was so disorganised. Moral was at an all time low at the place due to her disorganisation. While I was working there 12 people left. Including a whole group of workers who were disabled. One of the most annoying things she would do was sit in her office and talk all day. You could hear her laugh in the kitchen with the ovens going and the water.

Anyways the hospitality industry in my town is full of snobs. My boss at the bakery calls me in oneday. Sits me down and simply tells me I have confidence issues. She also asks me if I had a girl friend. then she said that one of the reasons I had confidence issues was because I did not have a girlfriend. Is that a kind of sexual harrasment? She then called the recruitment place that I went through to get the job and talked to them about the problem. I then burst into tears because I had enough of her crap which kinda signed on the dotted line that I had confidence issues then I got called into the recruitment place and was told it would be a good idea if I went for counseling. So I did. Talked to the councilor about the whole situation and he sided with me and said I actually needed counseling from my boss.

To make a long story short. after a month my boss called everyone in for a meeting oneday and went off at everyone. by the end of the week just before christmas nearly the whole company quit. The place almost went bankrupt and now only has a skeleton staff working there. There are too many things to share about this woman. She is insane! Bottom line! Anal even!

I remember working for another local kitchen. The managers wife always acted as if she was in charge. They always seemed to be arguing too! The manager was actually a lovely person who I really admire but man he needs to do something about his wife. Onetime I had to miss work due to a death in the family. They told me if I was not sure I was going to make it home in time for my shift to ring which I did. The crazy wife told my Dad to speed and break the law to make it home in time! LOL!!!!! soon after I quit.

I just realised something about my town. Most of the people are complete snobs in the hospitality industry!!!

APersonOutThere writes...

Being 21, the kind of people who piss me off the most in the office are the older ones

In all truth, this was the most entertaining Gen Y rant I have heard in ages. Genuinely funny!

I worked in a retail store owned by a very religious Christian.

On a slow day when he had nothing better to do, he could come and interrupt the sales staff and start preaching to the customer we were serving.

They would tend to GTFO ASAP and we'd lose the sale.

Mr Rant writes...

The manager was actually a lovely person who I really admire but man he needs to do something about his wife.

You know that's not gonna happen. Great to have you as a backer though...just glad I'm not the ONLY one who reckons that hospitality industry is full of weirdos. :/

When I worked in retail there was this one guy who worked in the warehouse who I always got on okay with – but then I always tried to be nice to the warehouse people because (a) I'd often need their help and (b) I knew how little they got paid. I was always happy to be agreeable and over time he started to let more and more of his true personality out as he decided I must be his kind of person.

I'd heard about some complaints about him from female staff to management, although I'd never seen him do anything inappropriate myself. But then one day he'd brought his dog to work in his ute & I was saying what a nice dog she was. He then comes out with 'She's just a disloyal ****, like all women – human and dogs the bitches are all the same' in this really venomous tone that still gives me the shivers. I later heard more details about the complaints against him and he obviously had an absolute hatred of women. Pretty soon after that the company just had to sack him.

i worked at jackar australia

/thread

Rothguard writes...

i worked at jackar australia

never heard of em.

APersonOutThere writes...

Being 21, blah...

Probably this guy. Not him specifically but all the rest like him. Surfing the web and carrying on as if they're entitled to something.

ex army guy, he was a total nut! Our company was taken over by another, and this guy became my supervisor. He proceeded to act like he actually owned the company, including taking home some very valuable AV equipment, which he claimed was owed to him because he worked some overtime. This was equipment that was crucial to our operation, mind you. I didn't stay long after that.

liteon writes...

Anyway, one day I told him some 'office gossip' (something that I witnessed that was quite funny), anyway – I kid you not – later that same day he came to me and retold it to me as if he was the one who witnessed the gossip and appeared to have no apparent memory of me telling him....

Loads of people do this. I'm too polite to say something but always LOL inside my head.

APersonOutThere writes...

Being 21, the kind of people who piss me off the most in the office are the older ones who have the nerve to formally complain to the manager(s) because I do non work related things like jump on the internet and lookup cars or read some news for a couple of minutes here and there. Really drives me nuts when they complain about such things

Yup. As long as you're not maxing out the company's bandwidth or looking at anything the HR people would frown on, and the company PCs are locked down against viruses and downloads, it's not really an issue.

I'd personally prefer to hire someone who could get through their work (and do a quality job) and have time left over each day rather than someone who deliberately slowed down or fudged things to match the work rate.

But then, I don't have the stereotypical boss mindset, I don't work for a megacorp with internal politics, and a background in IT means that I prefer unvarnished truth to sugar-coated anything. I'd want employees to tell me if I sucked at being a boss, because at least then I'd be able to either correct what I was doing wrong, or tell them what external driver was making me do things in a certain way.

(And hey, there's always the chance that they'd be able to come up with some way of fixing that external pressure that I hadn't thought of. I'd hope, after all, that I'd be hiring reasonably smart people in the first place.)

MuntedBiffon writes...

Probably this guy. Not him specifically but all the rest like him. Surfing the web and carrying on as if they're entitled to something.

I just don't see why some people go out of their way to 'dibby-dob' so to speak, if you ask me to do something and i do it, that should be it, you can flap off, or assign me something else to do.

Seriously, it's like some of them are grown up but well, not.
School children with wrinkles and glasses. My team leader requested a name and shame board where employees names are written on the board if they make a mistake.. hmm.

Its good to see these fools in high paying positions though, that just shows I can have any job I want eventually, even if it's by waiting it out and playing the cards right.

Geminii writes...

Yup. As long as you're not maxing out the company's bandwidth or looking at anything the HR people would frown on, and the company PCs are locked down against viruses and downloads, it's not really an issue.

Exactly. I've always done it. Take a mini break to read the news or something, never very long. But then I don't smoke and don't take personal calls (Generally. It might happen twice a year.), or 'do the rounds' at the office talking to everybody for ages. Pfft, there are always cranky people that won't understand and think you only show loyalty by starting at 5am and leaving at 9pm. But they are the ones who have to 'warm up' for an hour in the morning before they even start their work. And smoke. Take coffee breaks. Have long lunches. Chat for ages. Silly to dob people in though.

KIRBYKIA writes...

Nar just people that think like you :P

I'm one of them. Bring on Armageddon

Jacksbac1 writes...

Electrical engineer who did not know what a plug top looked like and could not use a digital multi meter where do they qualify:)

That's more like the jobs of TECHNICIANS, not ENGINEERS.

astantine writes...

That's more like the jobs of TECHNICIANS, not ENGINEERS.

An engineer should still know how to use a multimeter... It's not that hard...

I don't know whether to post her or start a new thread ?

But here goes

I know of a "recruitment group" that have the DET p.c. rollout contract

This is what they have to offer

No travel allowance
$12.50 per unit that is installed

This includes transporting the computer and monitor boxes to the schools computer Lab or individual class rooms, unpacking and connecting the machines up to the School's Network.
Then removing all the empty boxes, cartons etc.

They also offer a very rewarding Laptop ( netbook ) repair venture, of $20.00 per Unit.
When questioned they said it was more likely $24.00 per Unit.

I would say this was exploitation at it's best, but that's just me ?

Pelican P00 writes...

I know of a "recruitment group" that have the DET p.c. rollout contract

Is that the 'TSO (Technical Support Officer?)' role at the schools? They don't seem to do much. Or is it the people that actually install them to working order?

The TSO at my school has done nothing since ~September last year. We were set to have the wireless points installed and netbooks handed out at the end of term 3 last year however the wireless points have not been installed. They don't think it will happen until term 3 this year. Man I want his job!

(yep that was completely on topic)

Haven't worked with anyone too bad, guys at my work are all pretty funny (guess it helps that I am the bosses son's friend[met before we started working]).

Pelican P00 writes...

I don't know whether to post her or start a new thread ?

I don't understand the relevance to this thread?

I once worked under a person who was suppose to mentor and teach me. He did noting of these instead took my work and dishonestly got credit for it.

blackcap writes...

took my work and dishonestly got credit for it

On the bright side, your work was good enough to steal :)

blackcap writes...

I once worked under a person who was suppose to mentor and teach me. He did noting of these instead took my work and dishonestly got credit for it.

If you only work in one place in your career where people attempt to steal your work and claim credit for it, you have had a truly blessed career. ;)

I cleaned aircraft cabins for a while in my late teens. Night shift, cleaning seats, vacuuming, getting gum off walls etc.

The planes get very, very hot at night after the a/c has been turned off. 40C plus was not uncommon to be working for most of the shift.

Anyway, there was this one older man who worked on the team and he never wore deodorant. So you're trapped for hours in a cramped metal tube, with no fresh air and it's hotter than the hobs of hell – with a workmate who smells to high heaven.

One a good night the smell was awful. On a bad night it was apocalyptic.

The most dangerous person I have worked with to date was an administrator who would be all smiles to your face, but without hesitation stick the knife in when your back was turned: typically left a trail of destruction wherever he was found. My current bugbear is a self appointed consumer advocate who goes around undermining (unintentionally?) any rapport or therapeutic relationship I have with patients by doing unhelpful things like advising them not to take their medications. Very frustrating.

Many years ago I had a sales person I worked with (I was a presales engineer) who was a psychopath. She was quite insane. The final straw was throwing a large stapler at me, luckily missing me and hitting the door frame as I exited the room. I let the MD know that either they got rid of her or I would leave. She was gone a few days later.

I've had a few bad sales people – one who blamed me for not selling, I left and, well, sales went down not up. He was just a crap sales guy. Didn't listen to what customers wanted.

My first "Customer Service Manager" (Coles checkout manager) yelled at me because I used to check prices with "Price Enquiry" mode. What's worse is that it was in front of customers. She defected across to Woolworths.

My duty manager at the time was also a $$$$-head. he was watching me on camera, and gave my register a phone call. He asked me, in a late night ad (those premium SMS porn ads) type of voice, "Hello, what are you doing?"

I thought he was underneath my register, as he was not at the service desk (it turned out that he was in the POS office), and I said, "Cleaning," and slammed the phone down and cleaned the conveyor belt. The second after I clocked off, he started yelling at me, "Why did you hang up! There were visitors with me who saw that and thought it was very rude!" I didn't say anything, but he still gave me hell for the remaining two months until I transferred to my current store in February 2008.

Apart from a grumpy old hag, who was in charge of the cash office (who was the exact opposite to the lovely Indian women who used to run the place, as well as the exact opposite of the young girl who now runs it), the managers at my current store have been pretty good.

I had a job where both my bosses were bipolar... They tended to alternate, so when one was up, the other was down. Both were absolutely unbearable regardless of which side of the spectrum they were on (happy, arrogant, pushy and treating you like dirt or angry, dejected, depressed, shifty and treating you like dirt).

One of them once went for 3 days without speaking when he was on a downer. The big boss would buy ute loads of stock when he was high, even when we really, seriously did not need it. He'd rock in with stuff strapped 8ft high on the back and make us stack it everywhere. Then we'd never sell it and he was going broke.

It was a really weird experience. Job was horrible as a result.

Stuart Midgley writes...

the smell was awful.

Stinkiest person I ever worked with was this lad who was fresh out of college. Quite a big lad. Nice enough chap but, to put it mildly he stank to high heaven.

He was hired to keep an inventory of IT equipment in our storeroom/workshop. We would draw straws to see who would go down to the store room to pick up equipment the smell was that bad from this chap. He would wear the same shirt to work for one or two weeks at a time, day in day out. We guessed he never liked to shower much.

bigdude101 writes...

My first "Customer Service Manager" (Coles checkout manager) yelled at me because I used to check prices with "Price Enquiry" mode.

I got yelled at for the same thing. Why is that button there if we cant use it? and Why don't they want people to use it?

Jed Maxwell writes...

He was hired to keep an inventory of IT equipment in our storeroom/workshop. We would draw straws to see who would go down to the store room to pick up equipment the smell was that bad from this chap. He would wear the same shirt to work for one or two weeks at a time, day in day out. We guessed he never liked to shower much.

Did no one ever have a quiet word with him? I always wonder, should one say something or not?

If I were the boss, I would give everyone a can of deodorant so that if they are offended by a certain persons smell, they can just casually spray them while walking by.

Disclaimer: Not to be implemented during smoko.

seriphia writes...

I worked with 3 other guys(2 were younger gen y types) we were working at an average pace then one of the younger guys says "lets work harder fellers!"

lol what a looser.

XaDvAnT writes...

If I were the boss, I would give everyone a can of deodorant so that if they are offended by a certain persons smell, they can just casually spray them while walking by.

lol HA HA HA HA

If i were the boss, whenever we advertise for a job, I would put in the job ad a question, which must be answered in order to get to the next stage:

"Do you use deodorant daily? If not, why not?"

and if the answer is not good enough, the application will be rejected!

Sarcasm

tri400 writes...

Do you use deodorant daily?

No

If not, why not?

I use antiperspirant [why do half a job with deodorant?]

http://www.essortment.com/lifestyle/healthhygeined_sixt.htm

Next stage please =P

and if the answer is not good enough, the application will be rejected!

discrimination! =P

/Sarcasm

mmm I used to do the no shower smell thing to keep people away from me at work it worked for awhile LOL

You aren't married are you.

No man should work for a woman.

I find misogynists make very poor employees, personally.

Years ago when I worked in a fast food restaurant, we had a shift manager with whom we suspected had a bit of a drinking problem (what gave it way was the gradual decrease in personal appearance, staying in the office looking bleary eyed and hungover, not wanting to be disturbed a lot of the time and usually finding him with his head on the desk trying to sleep it off).
One day, one of the guys was using a serrated knife to cut something, and place it on the floor next to the wall out of the road whilst he put the rubbish that he had cut up in the bin (not really good OH&S, I know). The manager (in one of his 'moods') came out of the office and yelled 'Who left this knife on the floor?' and proceeded to kick it. The knife skidded across the floor to where I was picking up a flattened box and ended up missing my hand by about half a centimeter. Not happy about it (and a few other things he had done to others), a few of us approached the store manager about his 'antics'.
Suffice to say he wasn't there for much longer after that.

Amano Jyaku writes...

We had one guy come back from lunch so drunk he stood in the corner of the office just inside the front door & pissed on the artificial plant.

LOL. Gold!
Thanks for the laugh. : )

onethingonmymind writes...

Yes I agree.

So you agree that you're a poor employee? Interesting. The rest of your statement is just trolling.

Currently I work with an egoistic saddistic son of a bitch who takes pleasure in putting people down for no reason.

Garthy writes...

One guy who taught me that verbal agreements are worth the paper they are written on, and that working your ass off for someone sometimes makes things worse for you, if they get greedy and decide they want it *all*.

I partially agree with this i.e if i tell a client i am always available i WILL get them calling me repeatedly at 2 in the arvo on a sunday because their mouse isnt working, or some other menial task which can wait, and then they get angy because i cant help them then and there

however im sure the guy your talking about meant within business hours

I worked for a pbx company years ago with an arrogant boss who knew nothing about IT all his knowlege was in old analog systems ( all clients were isdn and voip at this stage )

to keep the company with the times he decided to hire an IT guru to assist in training staff and develop new business strategies and products.
however he personally took it upon himself to do the interviewing and hiring and leave the current company sysadmin i.e the only person with any knowlege outside of voice and basic IT in the company.

needless to say the boss hired a guy fresh out of uni 23 years old with 0 experience and on a massive salaryand everything went downhill from there, the guy was a real ass to quite a few times i'd be tasked to sit down and work out the config and bugs on new systems when i was finished the " expert " would steal the credit.

no matter how many botched projects or system failures the boss stuck by how awesome the it guru was and put him infront of everyone else in the company e.g lead engineer who was with the company 20 yrs and the sys admin

the company went downhill over the next 6 months and all juniors were laid off including me, unfortunately now i am very cautious when interviewing people fresh out of uni with little experience for anything higher then an entry level role

p.s was a great feeling when me and the guru sat the ccna together I passed he failed :)

Edit : the final two candidates for this role were this guy and a guy in his 40's who had a masters and 25 yrs industry experience, i always wondered what is would have been like if he werehired instead

I once worked with a Pom who had the most horendous BO i have ever smelled. Everyone used to whinge and complain but he never did anything about it. His own staff gave him a bottle of BO basher but he threw it in the bin. When ever he needed support, it would be a battle between the techs to see who would go and help him. I used to smoke and whenever i went to help him, he'd block his nose cos he was offended by my smell! Ahhh the irony!

A lady, let's give her the name Cheryl. Firstly, brilliant worker. Works hard, but she devoted all her attention to matters of minimal importance.

If she had an issue, straight away escalated to the manager, thus wasting the managers time on trivial matters. If I spelt a word wrong in a report, or an email, would let me know about it. You had to explain things to her a billion times to bring her into the view that the issue at hand wasn't important.

Her persona was incredibly annoying – very poor people skills. Despite her thorough work ethic, I'd manage her out simply because she wasn't amiable and didn't gel with the team. She wasted so much paper on wanting to analyse data, that could be better analysed on the computer. She tried to micro-manage me and constantly was breathing on my back. Was quite a horrid experience working with her.

There was also a manager, let's give him the name 'Dickhead'. Worst manager I have ever had and as a result, has had all managerial responsibilities taken away from him. He is the kind of clever dick that loves the sound of his own voice – couldn't get a word in, spoke fast and was quite patronising. Writing about him makes my blood boil. He knew I couldn't stand him and whenever we crossed paths, he'd give me a whack on the back and say "How's it going, mate?" – I wanted to punch him!

In a much better team now – makes a shit job so much better.

+1 for mohead

I currenty work with one of these wankers. poisons everyone around him and generally makes life hell, over trivial BS.

Just biding my time, getting further certs to solidify my industry expereince and then im outta here

I use to share a cubicle with a guy who did his gym workout during lunch. He would come back to work without taking a shower. The stench was unbearable!!!

Pearl Jam writes...

There was also a manager, let's give him the name 'Dickhead'

I worked for him....

schumigod writes...

I worked for him...

There, there. It'll be okay.

The guy who said he worked at Jackar Australia – I did as well. Couldn't wait to get out of there.

CYWC writes...

I asked her the next day why she would send it in such a manner and she said, "I thought the post office would open the letter and look at the letterhead and send it back to the sender" which then I had to ask, "what about stamp?" and she said nothing...... thank god she didn't pass probation.

Bit harsh isn't it, if you don't know something then you don't know something. I doubt that she was paid anything above what was owed to her, so big deal.

I used to work with a real workaholic prick. He would come in 1.5 hours before the official starting time and left 2 hours after closing, simply because he had no life. All unpaid overtime of course. His entire life focused on work, and any distractions were bad. In his eyes he was doing the right thing and all of us were in the wrong. EG

One of the girls bought doughnuts for morning tea, and everyone sat down & started eating, all except him – he kept on working. We told him to come & have some, his response "Iam paid to work not eat doughnuts"

Every Friday arvo we all would have beer, everyone except him that is. His response – "beer slows down my work".

Abused me for making a phone call to my wife using the company phone – "for work purposes only"

He worked his heart out, not even taking lunch breaks making everyone else seem unproductive to head office. All for $35k / year, and never got anywhere in the company. Blind love & dedication to a gigantic multinational corporation who didn't even know or cared about his efforts. Very sad & pathetic.

davedrastic writes...

Bit harsh isn't it

There's a difference between not knowing something and outright stupidity.

Guld writes...

I used to work with a guy who was your average, friendly office psychopath. Sorry, in advance, this a bit long.

Fascinating. Someone should write a book on him. Oh, you just did :p

rb25 writes...

There's a difference between not knowing something and outright stupidity.

People can be dumb, especially juniors. I don't see that she did any harm other. She just didn't think and as such declared herself a part of the human race.

xrtsteve writes...

he funny ting is if you make a ripple and tell them its not safe and ask, even beg can we pleeeease have it fixed they get nasty and give you the its not workign out speech.

Don't raise the issue with them then, unless you do so in writing. Best to contact the correct government authorities – let them sort it

Wozzzaaa writes...

"Iam paid to work not eat doughnuts"

beer slows down my work".

"for work purposes only"

Presumably he went to the toilet before and after work – never during.

schumigod writes...

Presumably he went to the toilet before and after work – never during.

could explain the extra hours of work....

whirlkewl writes...

I use to share a cubicle with a guy who did his gym workout during lunch. He would come back to work without taking a shower. The stench was unbearable!!!

In that situation I would just tell the guy straight up "Mate, do us a favour and take a shower" He would obviously know that he'd stink, after all if you work out and dont end up stinking of sweat, you're doing it wrong.

A couple of years ago my office brought in a guy to run the HR and do performance reviews on all the staff. One of the things he brought me up on was the fact that I came in on that particular day 10 minutes late and went on a massive spiel about personal responsibility and showing up to work on time. My response was "perhaps since you left at 4pm yesterday you wouldnt have seen me still at my desk until 8pm. Would you like me to download the security logs that show my access code securing the building at 8.07pm?". He didn't last long, got fed up with not being able to bully anyone.

I used to work in a call centre type environment and it was full of students, bums and that sort, and I was getting sick of people stealing my food and drink, so I started labelling my packed lunch box and even when I bought a bottle of coke i'd mark my name on it.

Anyhow, one shift I walk into the canteen and there's this one dickhead there drinking from my bottle of Solo. Glugging away as if his life depended on it. I know it was my bottle of Solo because it had my name on it.

Well I saw red, grabbed the bottle from his hand, said "oh you want some of my drink do you" and proceeded to pour the remainder of it over his head prior to throwing the empty bottle square at his head and leaving him rather sticky.

Turns out he was diabetic and needed a sugar boost.

Not really.

haha GOLD

Guld writes...

Yes, he had a list of enemies he kept, we found it on his computer after he left.

IMO if you need to write down a list of your enemies, they really arent an enemy and your just an asshole who holds a grudge (yes I realise this guy was a psycopath)

Staff were complaining about him, but because management themselves hadn’t realised what he was like, they loved him right up til the very end.

Its actually because he behaved in total opposites between management and everyone else. They didnt see what he was doing, and unless someone from 'below' got promoted to management, they would never have known.

davedrastic writes...

Turns out he was diabetic and needed a sugar boost.

LMAO!

You get a :) for that nugget.

I worked with a guy once who had zero clue about what he was supposed to do in his job – he was a senior consultant managing a big part of a project.

That wasn't the worst bit though. I'm pretty much resigned to there being at least one utter lemon on each project.

This guy would corner you as you were innocently walking around the office, and would somehow managed to block your path and start up an utterly inane conversation with you.

He caught me for 30 minutes a couple of times, and each time I had to flat out say "Sorry, gotta go, lots to do" and squeeze past him.

However I watched one poor girl (she was a quiet type) get cornered by this guy for literally TWO HOURS. I eventually got up and said "Sorry I need to steal <girl>, we have a meeting".

I sat her down for a minute until the guy had plodded off, and I swear she was nearly in tears when she thanked me.

Gods, why don't some people take the hint that you don't want to talk to them :)

I used to work with this guy who used to sit on the toot for a long, long time.

We used to go through 18 rolls of 3 ply each week....when there were only 8 of us in the entire office.

I even had to get a plumber in when the toilet started to flood.....only to be told that too much toot paper had been flushed, and that was why it was all blocked up.

Once he left we went down to using 2 rolls every 3 weeks or so.

if we are going to talk about bodily functions

then i beat all easily

lets say most people go to the toilet here must squat without sitting on the seat when doing number 2

i dont know how it happens, but there is always doo-doo on the underneath part of the seat.....dont know how it happens, we are always shocked when we used to see it

lets say, i never go to the toilet at work. i always go to a cafe near work when i require to do number 2.

not to mention we had a phantom stuffer.....we still dont know who it is, but there is always someone flooding the toilet...

i could tell more about most people who work here but people might take it as a sign of racism or such......and i am not like that.

It just happens to happen from this culture as most people are from the same culture at my company

honestly....just plain disgusting!!

I used to work with this one guy who would always have several "razz" magazines with him at any given time. In addition, he would spend long amounts of time in the toilet cubicles with said magazines, following which the next visitor to the gents would invariably discover ample amounts of white viscous liquid scattered atop the toilet seat.

Apparently it was liquid soap.

Perhaps we've discovered the reason as to why some choose to squat.

Since we are talking about toilet habits, its REALLY bad when they dont lock the door & you walk in on them mid wipe.

I worked with this person once, in a recruitment firm, and they'd always drink too much, much like the rest of us. Whenever it was the end of a good month the whole office would go out on the lash but this person always went too far and I remember once being so embarrased as they were pissing on a town statue and being heckled by passers by.

She was the worst manager I ever had.

Wozzzaaa writes...

Since we are talking about toilet habits, its REALLY bad when they dont lock the door & you walk in on them mid wipe.

Or when you see their heads well above the top of the stall because they were squatting over the toilet with their feet on the seat.

And yes, that person left dirty footprints behind. (Black rubber on white plastic... I could see the entire shoe-tread!)

Apparently it's more natural to squat than to sit down and is easier to pass. Although I think they should take their shoes off when they do it. If they have to use shoes, then put the toilet seat up and squat on the porcelain.

SmegHead_3k writes...

In that situation I would just tell the guy straight up "Mate, do us a favour and take a shower"

I felt like it but I was new there and didn't want to ruffle any feathers. The stinker was liked amongst the other workers.... they just didn't have to sit close to him like I did.

Maiyart writes...

Apparently it's more natural to squat than to sit down and is easier to pass. Although I think they should take their shoes off when they do it. If they have to use shoes, then put the toilet seat up and squat on the porcelain.

True, it is.

Slightly off topic, but squat toilets are apparently why there is almost no instance of hemorrhoids in countries that use them predominantly.

It was just walking in and seeing the black shoe-prints that amused me. It wasn't really a "worst people" situation, more one worth a lol.

davedrastic writes...

She

She ????????

audifred writes...

She ????????

ROFL

audifred writes...

She

She ????????

Sounds like a classy lady, wow what a catch ;->

Got a couple

My first job was as a kitchen hand at a Perth restaurant.
The manager there seemed to think it was OK to pay employees 2 weeks late, or not at all. Ended up having to threaten him with legal action to get my owed pay.
I would also get called into to work for 2 hours (minimum casual shift) when someone didn't show up . I wouldn't have minded but at this point i was parking at the train station catching the train into Perth at around 9 at night, and the round trip with the walk from the train station was 2 hours.

Second guy i worked with was at a naturopathic business, and the guy was a qualified naturopath working in the warehouse. This guy had a few annoying habits,
Like talking about how country people were better than city people (his brilliant reasoning for this was that country people are from the country and therefore better)
Talking about how country music is better than all other music.
He once argued that city people should just buy a 42 gallon barrel of petrol when petrol prices were low and store it in their shed, pumping it out as they needed it.

He also complained to HR that i wasn't saying hello/how are you to him in the morning
(i'm not a morning person, and i'm usually very quiet around people i dont know as well) I was reprimanded for this. Then he proceeded to say (in a sarcastic voice) hello or how are you to me every morning with a big smug grin on his face and would keep repeating it till i replied.
We ended up having a mediator in to resolve our problems (yay HR policy /sarcasm)
which i was suppose was a good thing, as i was pretty close to punching him.

DaZII writes...

discrimination! =P

there are 10-20 things u are not allowed to discriminate against....being smelly is not in the list...neither is height (i think)...and suburb of residence....mode of transport, etc.

mcdonalds and telstra. that is all

tri400 writes...

....being smelly is not in the list...

Missed the "=P" = sarcasm [You even quoted it!]

...neither is height (i think)...and suburb of residence....mode of transport, etc.

height can be I think [very short/vertically challenged people (meaning no offense to any who are that are reading this but I do not know the "Politically Correct" wording for that)].

Mode of transport can't be discriminated else jobs would not get away with Drivers license essential [especially a heavy vehicle licence for truck drivers].

Never thought of 'suburb of residence' as being discriminative though but would be cause I'm not typing this from anywhere near a capital city.

This one isn't so bad its just annoying, but anyways I'm an apprentice mechanic and I'm working with about 15 other mechanics from all different cultures, but sometimes when you walk into the toilet to do your business, someone hasn't flushed their pee in the trough and it stinks the whole room out badly like stale pee. We don't know who it is but one of the guys had some serious words with the whole group.

Edited

The One-Upper and The Complainer... between those 2 types they can really make the office hell. They also tend to hunt in packs when it suite there needs. BUT its really fun to watch when they turn on each other.

We have one disabled toilet in our building and one disabled person in a wheelchair that obviously uses it. The amount of times I have seen her waiting outside the toilet for someone else (non-disabled) to finish in there makes my blood boil. I have asked a number of people I have seen coming out of there if they are disabled and why they are using that toilet and they just shrug it off and tell me the other toilet is too far away, it's 10 meters across the foyer.

HR get informed and it stops for awhile but then starts happening again in a few months. There is one guy that travels down from another floor and goes in there to read a book for half an hour every afternoon! I am going to start asking these people if they would park in a disabled parking spot as well.

Well my rant is over for now but I'm sure I will come across some other "worst people" I have worked with, it's a big company!

My first job I worked for was a book store in the city (Sydney) going back in the early 90s and we used to have this Sales Rep from a publisher come in every few weeks and my manager didn't warn me but he had a flatulence problem.

Every now and then the Sales Rep would be talking about something and then *Fart* and at first I was stunned and my manager and the Sales rep kept talking away and then 5 minutes later, *Fart*. It took all my willpower to not say or do anything.

My manager later said did you hear him fart? I said Yes and was later told he has a problem and can't help himself. One of the nicest sales reps you would ever meet but God it was funny.

Wozzzaaa writes...

One of the girls bought doughnuts for morning tea, and everyone sat down & started eating, all except him – he kept on working. We told him to come & have some, his response "Iam paid to work not eat doughnuts"
Every Friday arvo we all would have beer, everyone except him that is. His response – "beer slows down my work".

I've been that guy – to an extent. I don't work hours I don't get paid for, and I don't give a crap if someone else is making personal calls unless it's causing actual problems in the office, but I'm more likely to want to get through my work than down tools every time someone else feels like bringing the office to a halt.

I prefer to work through staff farewells, the Melbourne Cup, executive speeches, videos of anything, most meetings, anyone bringing babies to the office, or anything like that. The last time I left a long-term job, I would have preferred to work through my last afternoon instead of having it taken up by the local staff and manager warbling through farewell speeches, tacky gifts (which went straight into a skip), cards, and so forth.

I don't do after-work or Friday arvo social activities, either. I'd like to have something to show for my hours at the next review other than a hangover. Pubs in particular are a nightmare made flesh, as I don't drink, don't smoke, hate coming home reeking of pub smoke (the gf hates it too), and loud noise and the presence of a crowd of other people flapping their lips at top volume only serves to piss me off and give me a splitting headache.

Doughnuts and in-house team lunches I'll do, but only as long as the normal lunch or tea break. Offsite lunches with forced interaction are irritating; lunch is a precious moment of quiet time AWAY from other people.

As for the workaholic mentioned in the original post, perhaps he just liked the work. Why should he want to go elsewhere in the company when he'd found something he was good at and liked doing? How many people have achieved that level of job satisfaction in their lives?

Good for you Geminii

Geminii writes...

tacky gifts (which went straight into a skip)

we should start another thread: worst departing gifts

Well I had a bad TL in my last job, would say he was the main reason for my quiting the job. Would give an assignment and say apply ur own ideas. After completion would say ur ideas r bad. My promotion was stopped by him. I just waited for a proper opportunity ............to escape ! He was in the good books of the MD so I didn't could defend myself....Anyways now I am happy with my present job. Very friendly TL and colleagues...

Wozzzaaa writes...

He worked his heart out, not even taking lunch breaks making everyone else seem unproductive to head office. All for $35k / year,

Where can I hire this guy!?

Wozzzaaa writes...

Since we are talking about toilet habits, its REALLY bad when they dont lock the door & you walk in on them mid wipe.

Bad experience eh?

milieux writes...

I was in year 10, and got sent to a factory for work experience for the week.

My boss pretty much hid in his office, told me to find my own stuff to do and stop bothering him etc

That's bad?

Sounds like awesome work experience to me :)

here's one:

back in my old job, I used to run the social club where I would buy slaps of Coke, boxes of snack size potato chips etc, sell it in the office for a tiny profit, at the end of each fortnight all the profits will go towards buying a case of beer for Friday.

it worked on a honesty system, I just leave the drinks and snacks in the common room with the money tin in it, and people would pay as they eat, or leave a I owe you note.

all was going well, at one stage I had close to $500 cash + stock (when I took over there was only like $50 in the tin), we were drinking import beers every week and still had plenty of money left over.

then, one day I started to notice the money is not adding up anymore, it started off with small amounts, so I put it down to honest mistakes, but I started to keep a detailed ledger just be sure, but eventually, when you are selling 48 cans of Coke per week for $1 each, 80 packet of chips for 50c each, but there is only $30 in the tilt, you know someone is dodgy.

when the $500 cash reserve got wore down to $200, I said stuff it, I spent the money on an office BBQ and call it a day.

but that person(s) who has been stealing money/food wasn't quite done yet, he/she then moved onto those charity fund raiser snack box! eventually the charities also withdrawn their snack box from our office as well (IMO stealing from charity is really really low).

too bad we never caught that person(s), it all started when a few new comers started, we had our suspicion on who it might have been, but we never caught that person red handed :(

drewhiggins writes...

The guy who said he worked at Jackar Australia – I did as well. Couldn't wait to get out of there.

Good idea to get out and you don't come back.

Anyway, the worst people I've worked with was at the worst places ever.

If you got bad bosses, you either resign or to get the sack at workplaces like that.

I had a similar situation in a place I worked at. Pretty sure there was a group of workers who enjoyed a THC Break as opposed to a Tea Break who were getting the munchies and forgetting to pay back the tin.

I put up a sheet with everyone's name on it so they could tally what they took as they took it. This helped their short term memory problems and solved the mystery of the missing money.

Should have spend some of the money on a secret camera and caught the thief, I'm sure your boss would have approved :)

XaDvAnT writes...

I put up a sheet with everyone's name on it so they could tally what they took as they took it. This helped their short term memory problems and solved the mystery of the missing money.

I did that too towards the end, but if that person was not going to pay, he/she was not to going to pay, sheet or not :(

ΔNegative writes...

Should have spend some of the money on a secret camera and caught the thief, I'm sure your boss would have approved :)

yeah, webcam, pad lock, vending machines etc has been suggested, but in the end, I thought that if some people can't behave like responsible adults, then I just CBF'ed, I am not their parents.

we also had emails from the MD, HR, branch manager etc sent around the office, first it started off as a gentle reminder, eventually moving on to the threat of disciplinary actions, but it didn't deterr the theif(s) :(

kirova writes...

too bad we never caught that person(s),

Man, that pisses me off! >:(

We have a choc box (several actually) at our work and I frequently see people make contributions without taking anything.

ΔNegative writes...

Should have spend some of the money on a secret camera

Reminds me of another company I worked for... we ended up installing a webcam in the production are as work experience kids were taking small items like RAM.

At the end of the week we came back to check out the footage to discover one of them eyeing the webcam for a few hours... then once everyone was out to lunch he snuck back in and took the webcam!

jasonc writes...

we should start another thread: worst departing gifts

I remember a friend showing us a pretty useless gift he got from work, saying everyone got them at his work, and in minutes he saw a whole heap of them go up for auction on Ebay!

I guess they were really treasured :)

jasonc writes...

we should start another thread: worst departing gifts

Could be fun.

My gift wasn't objectively terrible, it was just... subjectively lacking. Severely.

At the time, I was a casual collector of a line of products made by a certain company – occasionally I saw one with particularly elegant engineering, and if it was cheap I'd pick it up and stick it on a shelf at home.

Someone decided that my departing gift should be of the same nature – only they got an absolutely awful, cheap, nasty, knock-off-looking design by some cheapass wannabe-competitor company. It was pretty much the absolute opposite of anything I would have bought. I was pretty much reduced to saying "Wow, that's... something, all right."

-

Miss Purple writes...

I remember a friend showing us a pretty useless gift he got from work, saying everyone got them at his work, and in minutes he saw a whole heap of them go up for auction on Ebay!
I guess they were really treasured :)

I guess the workers found out pretty quickly what they were actually worth, too. ;)

Geminii writes...

Someone decided that my departing gift should be of the same nature

That's still a lot more thought than most people put into gift selection these days!

Still sucks when you have to pretend you like something you don't though.

I worked with a marvelous bunch of blokes, everyone got on well with everyone else, we would all go to the pub together on payday, have a BBQ at one of the blokes place each weekend, that was till the company decided to downsize.

This marvelous bunch of blokes became a bunch of backstabbing, bad mouthing bastards overnight.

I'm not a back stabber nor will I bad mouth anyone else, so I ended up at the bottom of the pile, getting walked over by those I had previously called my friends. I got out as soon as the first redundancies came on offer, and the buggers had the audacity to take my application for redundancy to the union, with the complaint that they would now have to do my work and get no extra pay, and request the union to block the redundancy.

Geminii writes...

I've been that guy

You sound like a fun guy. I bet you work in IT.

kirova writes...

then, one day I started to notice the money is not adding up anymore, it started off with small amounts, so I put it down to honest mistakes, but I started to keep a detailed ledger just be sure, but eventually, when you are selling 48 cans of Coke per week for $1 each, 80 packet of chips for 50c each, but there is only $30 in the tilt, you know someone is dodgy.

Had the exact same thing happen once in an office I was in.

Eventually it was determined that it was someone who was always in the office overnight (we did a morning/evening count), so we ended up locking everything up at 4pm (which made for some funny moments as the chocolate fiends came running – and panting).

Never found out exactly who it was, but locking it up made the difference... so it was guessed that it might be a cleaner, but it could have just been a routine late-worker as well. Sigh, some people ruin it for everyone.

Vandrius writes...

Sigh, some people ruin it for everyone.

Or they might assume the company bought snacks for the employees... that's what happened to me in the first week until I put a big sign up explaining the concept!

Just make sure you're cleaner can read English...

XaDvAnT writes...

Or they might assume the company bought snacks for the employees... that's what happened to me in the first week until I put a big sign up explaining the concept!

Just make sure you're cleaner can read English...

Hehe, yeah. Well, we had a sign up, and a money box, and an IOU sheet, and a little fact-sheet about what the snack profits bought.

It was however only in one language, so that might be it! :)

Vandrius writes...

It was however only in one language, so that might be it! :)

Some cleaners only know two English word; Lemon Pledge!

Its always never the cleaner but someone in the office you see regularly.

My first job was in a fish n chips shop.

The owner was determined not to change the fryer oil but only filtering it. When after 2 months it started to come I live I decided to change it.

Then all hell broke loose, I got castigated for changing the oil and harassed every shift. I was made to filter the oil 2x at the end of the shift which meant I was the last to leave.... got sick of it after a month and never went in again.

Rendog writes...

The owner was determined not to change the fryer oil but only filtering it.

is this your boss? :)

(warning, don't click on this if you have a weak stomach)

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/chinese-consumed-millions-gallons-toxic-sewage-oil-study/

turion writes...

My assistant was fired by upper management for smearing poo all over the walls, forcets, basins and ground. I sanitised everything he had touched in our office.

At a place I used to work someone did this on the desk of a department leader. Someone had come in over the weekend to do it. Pretty sick really.

My dad used to work for a small engineering company which had a few juicy government contracts both in Australia and in Asia. The company's founder's son took over the business and unfortunately it went downhill from there.

One day, my dad turned up to work to find police cars, fire trucks and crime scene tape all over the place. Somebody had dragged a few huge gas canisters into the office in the early hours of the morning and opened the taps. It would have gone off, apparently, when the first employee to arrive at the office came to switch off the alarm. But the culprit was spotted doing it and someone called the police. It turned out to be the founder's son trying to orchestrate an insurance claim as the company was on the brink of folding.

He got 8 years. The funny thing is that he would keep calling my dad every six months or so saying what a great help my dad had been and how he would make my dad rich in the future by opening up another business and making him a partner.

My dad lost all his super out of this (this was back in the old days before separate superannuation funds with funding rules) which was not funny at all.

XaDvAnT writes...

Or they might assume the company bought snacks for the employees... that's what happened to me in the first week until I put a big sign up explaining the concept!

I used to work nights in a flour mill that had a test kitchen. So most days there'd be 30-100 loaves of bread baked and people could buy them for 50c on an honesty system. Thing was that after 6pm they were free as a perk for late workers – expected to be management on salaries (and so they didn't have to throw them out). Which was great for me, I worked 6-9pm. And one of my tasks was making sure the honesty box cash went into the boss's desk drawer because he'd forget 90% of the time.

Which was easy enough, until some of the cash started going missing. But trying to prove that it wasn't me was just about fscking impossible. Luckily they caught the person after a couple of weeks. Turns out it was a "smart" night-shift worker in the mill who watched me leave, counted the loaves I took, and removed exactly that amount. His plan was I'd get accused of not paying for the bread. But someone noticed him going into the office every night just before the cleaners left and investigated.

He got fired but as far as I know not convicted. And I got a very annoying two weeks under suspicion.

kirova writes...

is this your boss? :)

(warning, don't click on this if you have a weak stomach)

I'm glad I have not yet eaten tonight, things never go that bad...

we have an open floor plan and it's the worst thing when you sit with 2 mothers and all they talk about are their kids. great for people who have them but for me without them, it drives me crazy!!! They're really nice people but sometimes i do not want to hear about baby poo!

Moz writes...

a "smart" night-shift worker in the mill who watched me leave, counted the loaves I took, and removed exactly that amount

Pedantic asshole. Seems like an awfully incommensurate amount of effort dedicated towards miniscule amount of petty cash...prolly has a bone to pick with you?

newbie88 writes...

They're really nice people but sometimes i do not want to hear about baby poo!

Thats almost as bad as the bunch who sit around doing as little as possible and analysing the footy and how much they had to drink the night before or who they went to bed with and appears to be their only topic of conversation .

meh.. editing

newbie88 writes...

open floor plan

I hate these types of offices. The company will say it's all about "interacting with your fellow employees, without physical barriers" etc. etc. but really it's all about saving money by cramming as many people as possible into one office.

It's really bad when you get to sit near person(s) who have the following traits (yes I do have first hand experience!)

- The chain smoker: will take constant breaks throughout the day, always making their area stink of stale smoke.

– The "hands free" caller. Refuses to use the handset or headset on a telephone, all calls are made on speakerphone.

– The personal conversationists: 90% of the day is spent making loud, personal phone calls. Why is it these people are always the ones with the gruff, piercing voices??

- The "lets not bother to book a room for our meeting" This person in under the illusion of grandeur, thinking they are imporant enough to have their own office, without actually being important enough therefore organising meetings with people gathered around their desk distracting other workers.

I'm sure there are many other types that I can't think of right now..!

Geminii writes...

I prefer to work through staff farewells,

Seems like you've forgotten that being a valued employee (or manager for that matter) involves not just working hard and having a good work ethic, but also being personable. When you spend 40 hours per week in a vocation for 40 years, it doesn't hurt to have coworkers who are generally pleasant to be around with, and flexible enough to socialise on occasion, without unduly shirking your work duties. Taking a strict no-nonsense approach is, I guarantee, going to redound poorly when it comes time for promotion. Moreover, you'll miss out on making some rewarding friendships and personal connections.

It's just the way most people are wired – to be extroverts. While I think that extroverts should make some concessions to introverts and not try to be too in their face, the converse applies too. To think that being a robotic-minded employee is the paragon of being a good 'worker' is a tunnel-visioned approach.

newbie88 writes...

we have an open floor plan and it's the worst thing when you sit with 2 mothers and all they talk about are their kids. great for people who have them but for me without them, it drives me crazy!!!

This.

I sit in front of someone who everyday, without fail, will call her son (6 or 7 years old) at 3.30ish when he finishes school to ask him about his day. Im like wtf? you're going to see him in a couple of hours, is it really necessary to find out who he played without during lunch or what you learned in math at that time?

jean-paul sartre writes...

It's just the way most people are wired – to be extroverts.

Where did that stat come from?

While I think that extroverts should make some concessions to introverts and not try to be too in their face, the converse applies too.

No it doesn't. Introverts aren't required to satiate your needy attention demands simply to quell your over anxios ego for a moment or two.

ellismedia writes...

is it really necessary to find out who he played without during lunch or what you learned in maths

It's called communication, and caring, something many parents fall down on, this woman is obviously a good mother.

AI 强 writes...

Some people just seemed to get away with anything in Healthcare IT.

Oh man the stories I could tell you about IT in the Australian Health Care industry.

You'd be able to work out pretty quickly where I work, and who the users/customers were pretty bloody fast though so I'll just continue to read this thread without commenting I think :p

you tease...

Spag writes...

Oh man the stories I could tell you about IT in the Australian Health Care industry.

You'd be able to work out pretty quickly where I work

QHealth.

fidelia writes...

QHealth.

he lives in Vic

PooshWaltzer writes...

Seems like an awfully incommensurate amount of effort dedicated towards miniscule amount of petty cash

I think it was more a "smart, but not smart enough" moment. I'm pretty sure he had a view of me going in and out from where he worked, so it wasn't a lot of effort, and it probably seemed like sheer genius to him. Once the boss found out he was apparently laughing and shaking his head... then got very serious about firing the guy. The union was co-operative, I think because trying to frame a coworker doesn't get you much support from your coworkers. But yeah, we're talking about 15-30 minutes pay worth of petty cash, three times a week. Woo!

davedrastic writes...

Where did that stat come from?

basic psychology – 70% of the population is extroverted.

No it doesn't. Introverts aren't required to satiate your needy attention demands simply to quell your over anxios ego for a moment or two.

I don't think you understand. It's not an ego thing; extroverts don't demand attention because they will feel like they are 'inadequate' otherwise (nice defensive reaction buddy). Extroverts like socialising simply because that, at occasional intervals, tends to provide them a little dopamine hit.

I don't think you understand, either, that the key to doing well in any undertaking requiring multiple people is to learn to compromise. Regardless of the relative proportions of introverts and extroverts, I think if both groups compromised to understand and appreciate each other, both groups would be happier.

You can take the high and mighty road of saying 'if people were rational they would be fine with each other's differences and no such compromise would be needed', but people aren't robots, and furthermore, your own inability to understand extroverts shows your vast limitations.

FYI i am an introvert.

Worked in supermarket relay. Got it through my aunt who was team leader. She was one evil boss. Sacked people for turning up late, always whinged about other work people calling them dumb and useless and anyone that tried to step up got put down easy. She only had favourites although I was one for a while (I was her nephew) did not like the way other workers were treated. I never took sides. She only went mental from there on and kept accusing me to come out of the closet and announce that I'm gay infront of people which I add im 100% straight. now our whole family including her brothers and sisters don't talk to her. Didnt even get invited to my own cousin's (her sons) engagement.

Another was in local government. The senior "Officer" was a turd. Tried to be everyone's best friend but basically shit on you and backstabs you. Term "Seagull" fits the description. Accused me of rigging timesheets eg: since I didnt have a car I used to get a lift with another workmate, sometimes the workmate finished around 4:58pm and I would leave with him so I put down 5pm. A whole 2 minutes. I got reported I always rounded to the 5mins. Left after 3 months was depressed from that bullshit so put my notice in. Then the picking got worse. He just gave me a file around 200pages of data entry to do. I was due to leave in 4 weeks. I left after 2 after I couldn't hack 8hrs day 5x week putting figures in the computer.

Further that year since I left to go back to study. I got a 6 week contract with the same place but a different department over the summer holidays. Had to go to get a project file that was in a box. The officer helped me out there. Got back to my desk (only needed it for 20mins and going to return it) then the "Seagull" flew over and started abusing the crap outta me. I got called a "insenstive prick" as the officer who was helping me was on recovery from cancer and said I should've not hassled him. I felt really really bad. After two more weeks there left 2 weeks earlier than I was meant to. Never worked back there again.

A building equiptment hire company over at Lane Cove.

Every person there was the worst ever.

They would scream at each other every day.

They would almost get into fist fights every day.

Huge amounts of equiptment would go out for free because they would screw things up every day. So they would send it for free to the customer.

God knows how they stay in business.

Never worked for someone like that before, never will again.

ablecross writes...

Every person there was the worst ever.

"like anyone can even know that"
- Kip Dynamite

ADstv writes...

used to get a lift with another workmate, sometimes the workmate finished around 4:58pm and I would leave with him so I put down 5pm. A whole 2 minutes. I got reported I always rounded to the 5mins.

falsifying your timesheet is a sackable offence.

put down the hours you work, not the hours you were suppsed to work

e.g. if you finished at 4:58, you put down the nearest 15 minutes that you completed 4:45

worked with a young man that loved to coff up the greenest fur ball from his mouth and spit it on you, after threaths and usuall who ha ,he continued untill i parked the forklift on his foot , the forklift was removed from on top of his foot only after a lot of screaming. funny thing is he only stopped spitting for a while after his foot healed.
in the end he got the sack .

You really think that?

Then try starting at 9:14 and putting down 9am then and see if it flies both ways...

Generally people who whinge over 2 minutes are fairly useless or poor managers from what I've found.

Hellman109 writes...

Generally people who whinge over 2 minutes are fairly useless or poor managers from what I've found.

agreed, but if you don't want to piss your manager off, follow the rules

The woman who sits in front of me

Talks to herself ALL day and then laughs at her own jokes, that she makes to herself. Same one coughs every 10 minutes, and when told about it – refuses to acknowledge that she does. Also types out SMS's on her phone with the keypad tones on at about a billion dB, has a mobile she leaves at her desk and lets ring at an even louder noise (I mean a mobile is that, mobile CARRY IT WITH YOU).

Grrr not as bad as some of you have had to put up with, but its like working in a loony bin.

jasonc writes...

agreed, but if you don't want to piss your manager off, follow the rules

Yeah just look up the company policy or ask your manager and follow it. Most places should care about 2 minutes though (although I did work at an IGA where if you were more than 3 minutes late signing on they would dock you half an hour's pay)

merls writes...

has a mobile she leaves at her desk and lets ring at an even louder noise

If people do this in our office, the phone gets switched off the first time. Locked in their desk the next time. Dismantled the third time. "lost" on subsequest occasions.

It's just damned inconsiderate.

Jed Maxwell writes...

If people do this in our office, the phone gets switched off the first time

Silent just doesnt work when the phone is on a hard desk, so yeah I turn them off too and tell them when they get back.

kirova writes...

but that person(s) who has been stealing money/food

What a low act.

I spent decades working in offices of one sort or another, in large government departments. It never ceased to amaze me that in an office of highly paid public servants there were obviously one or two who did not mind stealing other people's food or milk or whatever from the fridge. And yes, even on some occasions charity stuff like choccy bars or even the money collected for them went missing.

It's very hard to catch such scumbags – by their very nature they tend to be sneaky bastards.

And don't get me started on the phantom toilet freaks – people who would pee all over the place, not flush the toilet, or even worse, build little platforms out of toilet paper in the bowl and leave a nasty, smelly surprise for the next visitor. I tell you, a psychiatrist would have a lot to say about these sorts of people.

Always curious writes...

government departments.

Happens quite frequently in private companies too.

stealing other people's food or milk or whatever from the fridge.

Same shit happens at my work, peoples food – someone at half my lunch and put the rest back in the fridge – drinks, cutlery, glasses, crockery, goods from the charity bins (now kept under lock & key) & fund raising chocolates/books/dvds (now banned). It's not like these people are poorly paid either, but there's always some low life(s) willing to steal it.

What I hate most is people not cleaning up after themselves, whether it be in meeting rooms, toilets or the KITCHEN! With the intention of getting people to take some responsibility and less lazy I tried to implement a policy whereby if you leave your dirty crap all over the kitchen & in the sink (there are even 2 DISHWASHERS available!) it gets disposed of by COB that day. Management had no balls and instead they made a kitchen duty roster for each team to do weekly. Thats right penalise everyone for the few slobs in the office. To this day I refuse to partake in cleaning up after these slobs.

--

And just quickly, an ISP I worked for about a decade ago – well lets just say the night shift team were seriously wacked. Every night for about a month someone would do something with their feces on the walls, floors & mirrors of the mens bathrooms; one such occasion they wrote on the wall <insert ISP name here> sucks. Those poor cleaners!

sdoik writes...

Management had no balls and instead they made a kitchen duty roster for each team to do weekly.

I remember the last time management tried to get me to do this. Except – no balls is no balls. I never ate in the relevant break room or used the kitchenette, so I told them politely where to shove it. My method of 'cleaning' would have been to open a third-floor window and throw out everything dirty – crockery, furniture, microwave, fridge...

Would have sure 'solved' the problem for a bit longer than just wiping things down, and hell, it wouldn't have affected my lunch breaks.

sdoik writes...

To this day I refuse to partake in cleaning up after these slobs.

I took the opposite approach – said "do you really think that's a good use of my time" then entered it in my timesheet. Management just sucked it up, which was a good call on their part, because I was quite willing to discuss doing it as volunteer work outside work hours... in the "you have got to be kidding" sense of discuss.

sdoik writes...

someone at half my lunch and put the rest back in the fridge – drinks, cutlery, glasses, crockery, goods from the charity bins (now kept under lock & key) & fund raising chocolates/books/dvds (now banned). It's not like these people are poorly paid either, but there's always some low life(s) willing to steal it.

Bloody kleptomania all the way. I actually caught the last clown who drank my Yakult. This was several years back at a previous place of employment (PT). He attempted denial without much success as I really pushed him hard. Made it clear that I did not mind the fact that he took my yoghurt drink but need to know WHY otherwise wouldn't let him leave. He went and complained to HR. I got reprimanded. I quit.

How about someone that was given a project plan, with tasks assigned to them.

in the next project update, they were asked why they had started / completed tasks further down the project plan and not the ones that need to be completed now.

They replied, they were not sure what order the tasks should be done in so they did the ones they wanted to.

The also wanted us to put an asterisks next to the tasks that were important so they could focus on them and ignore the rest of the tasks.

they left the company and now work for another company that we wish them all the best for having employed said person.

Diveboy writes...

They replied, they were not sure what order the tasks should be done in so they did the ones they wanted to.

You can lead a horse to water, but it just might still turn around and drink the pool of camel piss instead.

If you don't take idiots too seriously, and they don't manage to directly impact you too much, they can be damned entertaining :-)

jasonc writes...

falsifying your timesheet is a sackable offence.

put down the hours you work, not the hours you were suppsed to work

e.g. if you finished at 4:58, you put down the nearest 15 minutes that you completed 4:45

Time I walk out the office door it's 5pm. The "seagull" just wanted to be a ass and he wasnt even a manager a senior work collegue that whinged to my direct senior officer. My senior officer just said be more careful in the future because there are people that notice.

It always seems to be the drop kicks and no-hopers that get promoted.

I'm an ex RAAF technician, who spent some time working in an Avionics Workshop. We had three supervisors, one of which was tasked to provide a bit of extra training to an LAC.

The LAC needed some soldering practice, to complete his journal to further his career. The supervisor was a numpty, as was the LAC, hence why they were paired up. The CPL set him on his way, organised everything for him and left him to it.

About half an hour later, the LAC sticks his head out the door and asks for some help. The conversation went something along these lines:

LAC: "Can I have some help? I can't get the solder to melt?"
Us: "Is the soldering iron turned on?"
LAC: "Of course!"
Us: "Have your set the right temperature on the iron?"
LAC: "Yes..."

So one of the instructors walks into the solder room, and about 30 seconds later you can hear him laughing his head off, and I mean he was in stitches. Tears were streaming down his face.

After he calmed down and could speak properly, he told us the numpty CPL had given the LAC lockwire, thinking it was solder.

And here was this poor LAC (who didn't have much of a clue anyway), was trying to melt lockwire and wondering why it was getting hot in his hands.

This numpty CPL was promoted to SGT four years later. Meanwhile, the two other supervisors, who have a reasonable idea, are still CPL's.

I left....

jasonc writes...

falsifying your timesheet is a sackable offence.

put down the hours you work, not the hours you were suppsed to work

e.g. if you finished at 4:58, you put down the nearest 15 minutes that you completed 4:45

lol, I always round to the nearest 15minutes. means sometimes I lose, sometimes I gain. It all comes out in the wash.

ellismedia writes...

I sit in front of someone who everyday, without fail, will call her son (6 or 7 years old) at 3.30ish when he finishes school to ask him about his day. Im like wtf? you're going to see him in a couple of hours, is it really necessary to find out who he played without during lunch or what you learned in math at that time?

nothing wrong with that, they want to make sure their kid gets home safely. Unlike some ladies at my work who spend the entire day organise kids parties, activities, speaking to other mums etc and get no work done.

Reveler writes...

Unlike some ladies at my work who spend the entire day organise kids parties, activities, speaking to other mums etc and get no work done.<-- This.

Then they have the nerve to complain that everyone else must be taking shortcuts to get such high work stats compared to theirs.

Great thread.

I would post some of mine in here but there is a very high likelihood that the people I'm talking about will be reading this website...

I will however post about the worst boss I've had. A borderline psychopath, a finance manager managing the IT department (which consisted of me), who thought she had a clue, was anally retentive about everything, a complete penny pincher ($80k of projects on a $30k budget – does not compute!). On top of all that, she would claim to have not received emails all the time (and regularly got unstuck by the read receipts) – the most important of which was the time I requested a week off to go on a holiday that had been booked since before I started, which was approved during the interview process for the job. Because she thought I hadn't warned them she required that I be on call, whilst on holiday... IN FIJI. And yes, I got calls.

That job was completely not worth it, and when they fired me for "performance issues" I was quite glad to have the opportunity to take them to the industrial relations commission for unlawful dismissal. During the hearing, they came out and admitted that the performance reasons they officially dismissed me for were bs. :)

jasonc writes...

if you finished at 4:58, you put down the nearest 15 minutes that you completed 4:45

So presumably if you arrive at 9:13 you put down that you started at 9am? Your "round to the preceding 15 minute mark" is a very odd one, but I'd be willing to accept it if it's neutral wrt to time logged vs time spent. But too many employers I've seen round only in their favour – 9:01am counts as 9:15, 4:59pm counts as 4:45pm, and 8:46am also counts as 9am, and 5:14pm counts as 5pm. I don't even bother playing those games any more, I just log the times I start and stop and let the boss worry about it.

The better employers play those games to win loyalty and goodwill. They worry much more about you getting the job done and feeling fairly treated.

Moz writes...

I just log the times I start and stop and let the boss worry about it.
sadly electronic clock-on machines don't work like that... If only.

Moz writes...

Your "round to the preceding 15 minute mark" is a very odd one, but I'd be willing to accept it if it's neutral wrt to time logged vs time spent. But too many employers I've seen round only in their favour

Not tnat uncommon.

Our rules were:

9am to 9:05 = 9am, 9:06 to 9:14=9:15 (for arrival at work)

4:46 to 4:59 = 4:45, 5pm = 5pm (for leaving)

Idea was that you could have a bit of slack getting there on time (traffic etc) but there was no reason to clock off early.

Moz writes...

So presumably if you arrive at 9:13 you put down that you started at 9am?

9:15

But too many employers I've seen round only in their favour

Understand that, but working for the public service, it's about making sure tax payers are getting "value for money"

9:01am counts as 9:15, 4:59pm counts as 4:45pm, and 8:46am also counts as 9am, and 5:14pm counts as 5pm

no – it just means i get in at 7:45, i start a 7:45. in the afternoon i leave at 4:15, which means i write down 4:15

Whats worse

Someone who rocks up 15 minutes late

Or someone who rocks up on time, but during the day waltzes around the office and engages in 45 minutes of solid non-work related conversation, (plus lunch) Exactly. Get over it. Everyone wastes time. Some people don't need 8 hours to finish their workload.

Moz writes...

So presumably if you arrive at 9:13

....

Come on folks, this is a thread about annoying work colleagues, not time keeping.

I thought half of them were nominating themselves though?

when I contracted I always put down 9-5:30 and my boss was happy with that. Now it's just my time that's billable, in blocks, so that's easier

Guld writes...

If a manager came around to our area with a problem, he’d drop everything and rush out to fix their problem – no issue was too small. It didn’t matter if he was working on something critical, he was always there to assist a manager.

Yeah had an a*rsehole "colleague" like this. Had little to do so would suck up to the boss – even babysitting the boss's kids.

He’d use the personal details he got from people to his own benefit. If a staff member told him they had a problem with a manager, he’d quietly, on the side tell that manager. If a staff member had a problem or was going through a tough time, it wasn’t long til a large number of staff knew about it – from this individual.

Yep did this as well. Wasn't adverse to embelishing the details until apparently I had a drinking problem – which was news to me.

He’d listen to discussions on work issues, and before the group/individuals involved could present their ideas to their manager – he’d have already chatted with the manager and proposed the ideas as his own.

He'd pump your brain & then scuttle off to the boss in private to claim the credit.

The thing that annoyed me most about this guy wasn’t so much him. It was how gullible HR and management were.

Management thought he was the duck's nuts but a few of us realised what he was like & shunned him. Unfortunately for me I didn't pick up on the worst of it until getting a phone call when on leave & being told that Mr a*sehole had taken my job & that I'd been put on a "dead-end' project. The prick had been white-anting me for months while learning my job so he could take over. Ended up ok with me as i ended up resigning & got a better job. Annoys me though that this b*astard thrived in the brown nosing environment and prospered.

jasonc writes...

9:15

Understand that, but working for the public service, it's about making sure tax payers are getting "value for money"

no – it just means i get in at 7:45, i start a 7:45. in the afternoon i leave at 4:15, which means i write down 4:15

That was the many reasons why I decided to leave. If you like a job then there should be no problems finishing on the dot or staying back abit. When you bored you just want to get out of the office. Many reasons why I won't work for Public Service again, abuse from ratepayers, petty bickering from staff that think they are GOD and haven't used their brain for 15 years (they know they wont survive anywhere else) and also the feeling of living off ratepayers dollars so really at the end they are your employer. Glad now i'm about to be offered a traineeship for equipment servicing.

oh hey I just remembered another one

i once worked with a guy who would take the piss out of everyone, was lazy, and drive behind you with his spotlights on. i went home one night and said to my gf 'i wish he would run himself over with the pallet lifter'.

guess what happened next shift. he ran the automatic pallet lifter onto his foot, the steel cap bent downwards almost cutting his toes clean off. go karma

This is why I hate the corporate world.

I've finished my work, I'm going home. Bye.

If you are paid by the hour, then you should be paid for the time you've worked. If you're late, you get docked the appropriate amount. Rounding schmounding.

Jed Maxwell writes...

Come on folks, this is a thread about annoying work colleagues, not time keeping

clock watchers and reverse clock watchers can be quite annoying too :)

jasonc writes...

["falsifying your timesheet is a sackable offence.

put down the hours you work, not the hours you were suppsed to work

e.g. if you finished at 4:58, you put down the nearest 15 minutes that you completed 4:45"]

That's just dumb mate, logic would be if you finish at 4:58 you put 5:00. Rounding off to the nearest 15 minutes is how pretty much every employer does it. The nearest 15 minutes you completed is completely stupid. Seems like they employ that rule so they can rip you off a few bucks at the end of the week.

cyberpunkone writes...

Seems like they employ that rule so they can rip you off a few bucks at the end of the week.

but you just have to work within the rules. as stated before, i start at 7:30 or 7:45 and finish at 4:00 or 4:15. no more, no less.

I worked at one call centre that would dock your pay if you left 1 min early, eg 4:59 when finishing at 5 (and your pay went on your phone login/logout times). But if you got stuck on a call you wouldn't get paid any overtime until you'd done 20 minutes extra work – and then it required management approval (which never happened).

APersonOutThere writes...

Whats worse
Someone who rocks up 15 minutes late
Or someone who rocks up on time, but during the day waltzes around the office

It can depend on the job.

If it's not time-dependent or needing to be responsive, I don't care when someone does a job or how long they take, as long as it's done.

On the other hand, if it's me and one other co-worker who have to be manning a public-facing counter or phone line at 7:00 am when it opens, and they keep turning up at 8:15, I'm going to have words with them about dumping me in it every morning.

Possibly relevantly, I'm doing some work at the moment with a guy who usually rocks in around 9:30. While I do need quite a lot of information from him on a regular basis, it's not often time-critical, so I can save up my questions until he's turned up, logged on, and had his coffee. As long as he's around at some point during the day, it works out.

i used to work with a store manager who used to steal people's sales by refunding items under their names and putting it under his own name to make it look like he'd done huge sales figures. Ok, admittedly, this story was before my time and he did get caught out after doing it for a couple of weeks but from what i heard he didn't get punished for it. however, he's the type of manager where if he doesn't like you he'll get really passive aggressive and do things that'll just drive you up the wall, or, in one of my ex co-worker's cases, drive your fist into a wall (out of frustration). He reduced a female employee to tears because she wanted to have her shifts from 8:30 til 4:30 each day so that she could come home in time to cook for her family. Knowing this, he deliberately made her shifts go from 10 til 6 each day instead and, when she protested, he said he didn't care and that it was her problem. Also, there was another employee whose loyalty to the company was questioned by the manager. why? because there was one saturday when he couldn't work due to the fact that he had a wedding to go to, and because of that he wasn't given a shift the following saturday because the manager didn't think he was loyal enough. This same employee had been working in that company for a good 2 years where he was working every shift he was given and only ever took 1 or 2 days off in total throughout that time, and that's cause he was sick, and the one time he had a wedding to go to, he's suddenly not loyal. This manager also has no problems taking 2 weeks off when HE gets sick, but when others take more than one day off, that's not ok.

3 x people at my office...

1 = A known workers comp case, Claims workers comp all the time for things doctors and insurance companies can't prove or dis-prove. example "My job has made me depressed" Take months off at a time and we can't get rid of him (45 year old man) it just also happens to have holidays booked in those times before the claims go in... what a coincidence!

2 = A 21 year old "Man", calls in sick all the time, happen to have a company mobile phone... has been caught "Sick" in another state with friends partying (Phone records show). We have all had sickies, but this guy has more days off then at his job. When at the office, about 7 hours doing personal emails and web surfing instead of working. $400 on a company phone bill is his personal calls every month.

3 = The GM, micro manage you until you quit. Ask you to do something and when you do it "Why didn't you talk to me before doing that". No leadership skills, talks behind stuff backs (Whom are not his mates). Holds information back so you "Don't Become To Good At Your Job"

Aust1mh writes...

A 21 year old "Man", calls in sick all the time, happen to have a company mobile phone... has been caught "Sick" in another state with friends partying (Phone records show).

Sounds like someone who was fired at my Fiance's work a while ago...

Took Friday off and went away, called in on Monday saying 'the roads been blocked by SES, cant get home'... Boss called SES, zero roads blocked in the area.

Also had an endless stream of dramas that required time off work, etc. etc.

Fired eventually for taking stuff home (not stealing though) that shouldnt have left the office for privacy reasons.

Yes actually people(like myself) do put toilet paper on the toilet seat all around before they sit on it. da toilet paper in the bowl I do do it every now and then but more importantly, placing toilet paper on da seat is far more important ! ;-)

loggerhead112 writes...

Yes actually people(like myself) do put toilet paper on the toilet seat all around before they sit on it. da toilet paper in the bowl I do do it every now and then but more importantly, placing toilet paper on da seat is far more important ! ;-)

I think what they're talking about it people laying paper in the bowl, dropping a bomb and leaving it there for the next lucky guest :/

TP on the seat is not unusual for me in public/shared toilets depending on cleanliness.

Hellman109 writes...

endless stream of dramas that required time off work

I have someone here who's burned through all her accrued LSL, AL, sick leave, carer's leave, recreational leave, personal leave, cultural leave, miscellaneous leave and maternity leave AND has negative flex. Our Dept has since imposed a policy of no flex deficits and disabled the timesheet option as such. I think her conduct may have been the probable motivator behind the policy shift.

PooshWaltzer writes...

I have someone here who's burned through all her accrued LSL, AL, sick leave, carer's leave, recreational leave, personal leave, cultural leave, miscellaneous leave and maternity leave AND has negative flex. Our Dept has since imposed a policy of no flex deficits and disabled the timesheet option as such. I think her conduct may have been the probable motivator behind the policy shift.

Thats the behaviour pattern of someone preparing to leave. Making sure they get everything paid out, while getting some time off to look for a different job.

thegraduate writes...

Thats the behaviour pattern of someone preparing to leave.

Admittedly, they'd have to be pretty hardcore to include maternity leave in that list.

Maybe they'd just be better off on part-time hours?

I have so many stories I don't know where to begin. However I used work in a small company which only had one toilet. I had a colleague who used to wee all over the seat, I don't think it was intentional but it was almost like he was trying to cover the entire seat. ... *blech***

portaloo writes...

The Nester
Some guy would fill up the toilet bowl with paper (like a birds nest) then proceed to let go of his bowls on top of it, he'd then cover up the deposit with more paper.

Omg, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. I must have laughed for at least a minute. :[o]

What does make someone do that?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~lol~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

sdoik writes...

What I hate most is people not cleaning up after themselves, whether it be in meeting rooms, toilets or the KITCHEN!

Yeah, they made me do the dishes for 2 months at work, no one cleans up after themselves, I remember after I had some minor surgery which required two weeks off work, I came back and found all the dirty dishes and glasses in the sink waiting for me to get back.

I kicked up a stink about it, dealer principle took my side, then we made up that we do our own dishes, except they still didn't get done, so now we're on a roster, one week, someone does all the dishes and cleeans up the lunch room, next week its someone else.

basilb writes...

Management thought he was the duck's nuts but a few of us realised what he was like & shunned him. Unfortunately for me I didn't pick up on the worst of it until getting a phone call when on leave & being told that Mr a*sehole had taken my job & that I'd been put on a "dead-end' project. The prick had been white-anting me for months while learning my job so he could take over. Ended up ok with me as i ended up resigning & got a better job. Annoys me though that this b*astard thrived in the brown nosing environment and prospered.

Two similar situations, but karma worked.

First, had to drop uni as not enough money and ended up as IT in car dealership. Lined uni mate(same course) up with xmas stocktake job and they decided to dump me and keep him. Might have been because I rode bicycle to work and fluked the tech question (where is butterfly valve) in interview. (Read article on carburettor in waiting area for interview {;-) They even sent him to a weeks training in Sydney (which I didn't get) On the Monday, he drops the "when you're gone line" and major "WTF, you haven't been told like I was promised" realisation on his face and rabbits up stairs.

So the inevitable "come up to the office please" and blah blah a couple of weeks, blah, blah from owner/manager in massive big leather swivel chair.
"Nah, i'll finish now". O/M just about fell on the floor protesting and spluttering. "Well, he has done the same course and he has a weeks training that I never got" but I'll stay till Wednesday night(2 nights) if you like.

The joke was another mate had said the week before that he was going to the NT via Adelaide for three months on the Friday coming and it sounded so great. So it was out of work ASAP that evening, on the way to house I checked seats in vehicle still going, then tell house mates(three useless grass smokers) I'm off ASAP.

Arrange with Bro to see if he had day off on Thursday to take all my stuff to parents and it was home on Thursday to stash stuff at parents, then off to Adelaide and NT on Friday. Had a great trip away for three months.

Second was a contract for Y2K project support. After few months there is a reshuffle as permanent guys extricate themselves to other areas and new foreign "team leader" is gung ho contractor and asks me how long certain task will take to which I say 6 weeks and get told "must be done in 2 weeks" and I will still have to do all my other stuff. (support 75 contractor desktops and the lab, plus..)

So I said "Sorry I am not able to do that, you'll have to get someone else" and you guessed, the useless brown noser barged straight in with "I can do that".

I took great pleasure afterwards answering his questions on how to do it with "Yu said you can do it, I've got my own job" Plus I just gave a nod to the original team leader that I didn't want to renew contract at months end. Took a weeks break and walked into next job straight away. It was just co-incidence that company went belly up just after Y2K.

Also had a few incidents of my work being claimed by someone else. funny how when pressed on details, these people always shove it back to you. {;-).

A couple of years back I was doing programming for a library that needed a issues tracking system developed. Why they didn't use something off the shelf like JIRA or mantisbt, I don't know.

When I started I asked my manager (who I'm guessing was maybe in his 40s?) whether there was any versioning software already installed so I could save my code somewhere, he said there wasn't and I asked whether I could install SVN on one of the servers.

To my flat out surprise his response was no, and he said renaming the file with the date appended to the end should suffice.

Turned out in our "discussion" he'd never even heard of SVN (this was in 2006/7 or so) and couldn't imagine how it could possibly be better than CVS.

sunnyl writes...

he said renaming the file with the date appended to the end should suffice.

Haha, that's what we do where I work.

my boss!

A few people immediately come to mind.

One lady I worked with was a young Unix/TCP-IP programmer working on a new project on an OS she was not familar with.

She asked me about certain OS system calls and I helped her out, giving her example programs and showing her the system doco. etc

She then started complaining that the system was not more unix like and started sending me emails and coming up to see me at my desk complaining. I informed her that that's how it was and there is nothing more I could do to change it.

She then started complaining to her project manager that I was not helping her enough! (I worked in a totally different area – I was just helping her out).

In the end, she started taking her files off our main system and storing them locally on her PC. I was asked by management why the rest of the project people couldn't find files etc and when I looked into it, I discovered what she was doing.

The complaints from her continued to the point in the end she was fired. Management had already sat her down and explained that I didn't write the OS nor was I responcible for it and that I was just helping her out because I had some free time at that moment – for some reason she had fixated herself on me as the source of all her woes! Management concluded that she was a nut-case and that she was causing too much disruption to the project. I still remember her name but will not post it in case she's moved on from that sort of behaviour now – it was quite a while ago.

Another guy I worked with used to move desks all the time because the window light was affecting him – fair enough, but it was really because he would wear dark sunglasses and would sleep at his desk! He even managed to perfect sleeping at his desk with his fingers on the keyboard so that passers by would think he was typing – if they didn't stop and look at him for too long that is.

He also clearly didn't know the system as he did stupid things like just copying a database storage file to another disk when/if disk space got low and thought the database would just 'figure out where the file had gone' (quoted from him).

He went away on two weeks holiday and took the on-call phone with him. He clocked up about $600 worth of calls (this was more than 10+ years ago!). For months afterwards we kept getting calls on the on-call phone asking for this guy – all girls who he had met on his holiday and had gone out with – lol.

Eventually, he totally stuffed up when on on-call support. He claimed he had problems maintaining a dialup connection (in the days of dialup) and management asked me to look into whether or not he had actually done anything to fix a major problem he was supossed to cover and that had blown up.

I found no evidence of him connecting in (despite him verifying that he had done so) and I presented the facts – after which, they fired him (I felt bad for supplying the data). He had other issues, he was living in his car and would turn up to work in the same clothes for weeks – all crushed etc. He claimed his dog had caused his parents to divorce and he constantly wanted to hang around with our team leader at the time – after work, weekends etc – it was almost like he was stalking him in the end. The team leader was getting called from this guy all the time after work asking if he wanted to meet up. Sad really, he clearly had mental instability issues.

Another girl I worked within close proximity to (totally different company though) but on the same floor was a total flurt. She was blond, deep blue eyes, cute as and technically minded but she couldn't keep her pants on. She was Danish and loud and we used to hear her phone conversations all the time – mostly explaining to her boyfriend why she wouldn't open the door when he came to visit. She used to yell into the phone things like 'it's the wrong time of the month' etc etc etc to her boyfriend down the phone line – the whole office could hear – and this was a large office.
When she got off the phone she would then say to her work collegues that she was 'entertaining other men and women' etc. She then started taking a liking to one of my work mates and kept asking him around to her place – despite the fact that he had recently got engaged and was not interested.

She then started asking me out but I told her I had just got married which only made her worse! She started coming over to my desk and asking if I would like to go out to the movies/dinner with her. Thankfully, she ended up changing jobs to who knows where.

I've met some very interesting people – people with clear isues in life but I hold the view that often, these people are going through a stage/patch where they are off-centre for a bit and that most people eventually come right in time – well, that's at least my hope :-)

I had a job a few years ago where the boss had his son working in a managers role and daughter working on the reception.
Both were quite useless.
But the main issue was the boss going off his rails all the time and yelling and carrying on – most of the time for very small things or for some things that he was meant to have done him self.
Worked there for 5 years and thought about leaving many times but every time I decided to leave or went for interviews I was given a raise which made it hard.
Now I had my own office and was in charge of IT and global shipments coming into us. On the day the straw broke the camels back I was yelled at and copped a huge load of abuse because the boss and his offsider in the warehouse had not loaded a box onto a truck with some other things that were going out.
I cam down the back and saw the box sitting there and mentioned that it should have gone – the reason for the abuse was because I should have come down and made sure they loaded everything correctly while the truck was still here......
Few points:
I have a office that I work from so I can not see when trucks are being loaded
No one told me a truck was being loaded
I don't work in the warehouse
It is not even remotely close to any of my job roles

So I resigned – then spent the next four months trying to get money owed.
Ended up with the ombudsman doing this for me and they were awesome

The next role I went into was a Level 3 IT support role (20K less a year but was worth it) and one day I had a new guy on doing level 1. We had just had a stuff member leave so I have the new guy logging into our customers servers and changing the admin password. I had given him a document showing the servers – current password and the new passwords, and the passwords consisted of upper & lower case, numbers and symbols.... and atleast 10 digits in length.
Quite a simple job really but he managed to set different passwords for some of the servers than was given to him in the document

I was working as a full time trainee for a small business designing ties and cufflinks.

Day 1, No computer available, happened to have my laptop on me and was demanded to use that, for the day. hours passed as I got the required software installed. I soon realised I was the only person doing the design work, as the boss just outsources all work except the phone calls to make the deals.

I was using my laptop for 2 weeks... ended up intentionally putting a virus on it.. got sick of the smell of bs "your computer should be here soon"

For one my laptop couldn't handle the software, and it's my frikken laptop what if I didn't have one?

skipping to last day...

Day 30, I finally have a desktop machine with some grunt (almost maxed out the cpu within minutes), still have received zero training and I have 4 people continually making calls all day and sending me all the design work. I am doing at least 15 jobs a day with at least 3 revisions each as clients are very picky on the details. So after doing the math it ends up being 45 high res designs that had to show thread/metal/emboss detail; oh I also forgot to mention the finalised manufacturing detail which is once the client had made their final decision I had to detail up the chosen design showing all dimensions the outsourced sweat shop workers had to follow. Nominating exactly what pantone color thread/metal/emboss they needed to use.

and thats just one part of my job...

second part is to photograph EVERYTHING and they had to pass the boss' ridiculously high expectations, by lending me a crappy 6 year old camera and a very poor quality and very small lighting tent. The quality was expected to be perfect with every shot being centred, full of color, and very crisp on the edges, also had to be completely white background and no reflections on the items.
The cameras flash completely whited out all color, the tent was very creased and showed alot of shadows, regardless of the lighting. (I was doing a better job outside with a piece of paper as a backdrop) I was also expected to have 500 shots traced, cropped, centred, and web ready.
What didn't help was that most items were covered in odd bits of lint, and/or were just filthy in general. BTW, this was all expected to be done in 4hrs.

He ended up bringing in his relative to take over the photography and they still looked crap with a better camera.

Third part of my job, I never ever got around to this because i was in overdrive with all the other work. But I was expected to create a flash application where people could do the designs themselves; basically I was asked to make myself redundant. EVEN THOUGH IM A TRAINEE!

Last time I checked a trainee doesn't do a quarter of the amount of work I did, and spends most of their time running coffee and learning from a pro dedicated to teach you the ways of the workplace and eases you into a workload.

Edit: the boss had cameras everywhere, constantly monitors everyones facebook and always was looking over your shoulder to see what your upto.

Maveri writes...

He claimed his dog had caused his parents to divorce and he constantly wanted to hang around with our team leader at the time – after work, weekends etc – it was almost like he was stalking him in the end. The team leader was getting called from this guy all the time after work asking if he wanted to meet up. Sad really, he clearly had mental instability issues.

Naah, probably just very, very lonely and desperate to get away from the wreck of his parents marriage/divorce.

She was Danish and loud and we used to hear her phone conversations all the time – mostly explaining to her boyfriend why she wouldn't open the door when he came to visit. She used to yell into the phone things like 'it's the wrong time of the month' etc etc etc to her boyfriend down the phone line – the whole office could hear – and this was a large office.

Reminds me of my first IT job. 3months as the trainee and the operator loudly tells mate over the telephone the full details of his "fun" last night, being a bloke he know who rents out his wife. Really choice.

He would start at 8am and was supposed to print off and separate all the overnight reports, including many multi-copy reports . He had a total inability to operate the dec-collating machine and when I started at noon, I often had to refold the entire contents of a box of a fan fold that he had just loaded on the machine and set it to maximum speed(never worked), walked away and let it fill the entire room with a mountain of paper.

He went on holidays for six weeks and I'm doing 12 hour shifts to cover for his absence. On day three IT Boss arrives at 9am and starts balling me out. Well, I did have my feet up reading the newspaper {:-). One of the regular "complainers" from further down the office comes up into the IT area, quietly taps Boss on shoulder and points out that "Since John went on holidays, all the reports from overnight printing were available by 9am". Boss shut up.

When he returned, went back to his old ways.

No words from boss, no discipline on any occasion, so I decided it was time to find my second IT job. Lol, went from operator to senior operator and a 50% pay increase {:-). [Well, it was from manufacturing to a merchant bank in the heady days].

The worst ones I've encountered are:

The technical supervisor (and supposed "subject matter expert") that micro-manages absolutely everything and takes full credit (yet gives no praise or recognition) for the things you do that are innovative, save the company time and money...even though he does not have a clue how to do it, or be bothered to learn anything about it.

The employees who continually and habitually use the "facilities".... spray-paint the back of the bowl and some of the seat....then use the half flush (or not at all) yet ignore the toilet brush sitting right beside each toilet. What makes it worse is that even though the company installed an automatic scent spray in each toilet, the smell when opening the main toilets door of sickly-sweet deoderant and the porcelain attrocities is enough to make anyone lose their lunch.

The OH&S people who go way beyond their scope and take it all too personally......if they have a grudge against someone, they make that persons job all but impossible to do.

A supervisor I had at one job was the reason I left it. He would note down the times I arrived and left....even though I would leave after him most days. Then at the end of the week would question what I put down on my timesheet. So if I arrived at 8.03, he would question it when I said 8. Same with afternoons if I had a meeting that went to 5.30, he would have left at 4.30 so assumed thats when I finished too and questioned it. Many times I had to go say to him go ask X or Y what time I was there to.

All the timesheets were on a network drive, I checked out his one day. There was an 8am meeting one morning, he shows up about 8.25. Guess what time his timesheet said he started at? 8!

Another day I went bought a dvd at lunch, another guy was interested in it too so was having a look, he said something about doing that stuff on your own time. Now skip ahead a few weeks...he buys a tv from a retail place over the road from work, brings the tv in....to be a show off I guess....was some big LCD screen yrs ago. Later in the day he grabs me and says follow me. I followed him outside to a work car, helped him put the tv in the car and drove it home to his place, unloaded it and took it in his lounge. All during work hours!

The guy was also a sleaze, we had a temp girl start one Monday. By lunchtime that day, he already knew her living arrangements, if she was single or not. He would always talk about s3x stuff, people would think it was funny and he was joking. Another day he was asking girls about their haircuts downstairs, trying to be subtle about it and not directly ask them, but I could tell what he was doing.

I went to a friends house one night and she was on one of them adult dating sites. We go looking for guys close to home to see if I recognised anyone. And guess what, he was on it. In all his naked glory. To top that off, he is married with a kid and said he 'likes' guys. I got her to send him a message, he was making up some story about his wife having cancer or some crap which was a total lie to try and get sympathy from other people I guess. Oh and his username...it was the actual name of some guy who used to work there! So from that day on, I was a bit worried about being in a closed room with him lol

Maveri writes...

She then started asking me out but I told her I had just got married which only made her worse! She started coming over to my desk and asking if I would like to go out to the movies/dinner with her. Thankfully, she ended up changing jobs to who knows where.
Dang if only a lady would do that to me =)

Had a power tool break down on me yesterday and couldn't finish the job as intended. Tradesman btw...:) Organised with customer to return next week and finish it as orgaised and agreed to.

Get a call from the boss's son about 30 mins later (I do contract work regulary for him under a seperate business entity) He goes off his nana at me for not finishing the job on the day because the client I had already organised a new "Agreed" timeslot, rings him and now wants compensation...wtf?? I ended up doing it today because this douchbag customer is the type who just doesn't want to pay or make ridiculous claims which I know is going to get him nowhere if I was in charge and calling the shots.

I was ropeable at the time and told the boss's son if he "EVER" raises his voice like that with me again, to find someone else to do his dirty work. I'm not an indipensible worker but in my field, we are a dime a dozen and have very little to no issues with my standard of workmanship unlike a few others that work there who give nothing but headaches and constant warranty/service callbacks which makes me a damn good alternative and why I'm always busy. He only accounts for about 5 – 10 % of my work load and no skin off my nose if he fobs me off, which I doubt very much if he knows what's good for him.

The boss's son is now a calm little cookie but I'm weary of his outbursts now and slightly on the back foot with him, although I've generally had a high regard for him in the past. I'm just apprehensive now.

I was so pissed off last night but I'm over it now...:)

Vandrius writes...

Never found out exactly who it was, but locking it up made the difference... so it was guessed that it might be a cleaner, but it could have just been a routine late-worker as well.

We had a cleaner who set up torrents on our support department's PCs (using device testing PCs, not the guys' own desktops) and steal bits out of computers there. Torrents could only be the cleaner, since no-one else was ever in the building at 2am. The stealing PC bits was not provably him, but stopped when he was given the arse for torrents – staff turnover at that company was low and before he came along there wasn't any issue with theft, and likewise after he left. This same cleaner would bring his dog with him, despite being told not to – one manager had to tell the cleaner to do something about the dog shit in the hallway outside his office.

Maveri writes...

he would wear dark sunglasses and would sleep at his desk! He even managed to perfect sleeping at his desk with his fingers on the keyboard so that passers by would think he was typing

That's gold! A+ for creativity & innovation.

I spent 17 fantastic years in the Navy, on submarines and surface ships.

The worst that I ever met was on a guided missile frigate (FFG) in the officers mess – used to go to the gym at lunch time; he would shower afterwards (thankfully) but then take his sweaty, manky gym clothes and put them straight in the dryer ... which was outside the mess. Nice when you are at sea, away from home for 6 months...

Godawful smell every lunch time, just about makes me gag thinking about it.

Some people suck.

The company i just left

Every install and project had a Cheap and rushed feel to it.
Nothing ever worked and only one project in the three months I worked there went to plan.

some of the clients backups had not worked in months or never been configured in the first place.

Extremely unsecure networks and poor design.
i.e Selling the client a firewall only to open a port for RDP, TELNET and FTP to each users individual PC ( all on a windows domain with password security set at a minimum)

Crappy free Antivirus installed on servers (not avg think chinese spyware ... )

ontop of that I was working a 12 hour day and weekends, after being told i wasn't doing enough work i quit immediatly

basically this was a small IT company which was obsessed with using as much free junk as possible hated almost every day working there.

Company I was just made redundant in...

They made all Shift Managers redundant, and replaced them with "shift leaders" with pretty much the same job spec but no pay rise (the shift managers were making a good 20 to 40 k more)

We had a guy that was hated by pretty much everyone he worked with, had the least technical skills and no leadership experience.... yep he got one of the roles, thankfully in another shift team

The leader I did end up with spent around 80% of his day away from his desk, his day shift consisted of the corner coffee shop (or meetings he liked to call them) and the rest talking to his mates on the phone, actully he ringtone was the most common noise in the room. Night shift consisted of him talking on the phone, sleeping on the sofa upstairs or watching the tv. Had to pretty much wake him up to deal with Sev1 issues on a number of occations

We then had another round of redundancy with the option for people to volunteer, ofcourse we thought our leader would be one of these being close to retirement anyway and his total slackness in the last few months before it...... nope he didnt put his hand up

Ended up interviewing for my job, and strangely despite being the most experienced and highest paid got picked, at this point atleast three people reported the Shift leader for his slackness and sleeping on the job... to late it seems

Last I heard he's still there and hasn't changed one bit.

I am now working for one of their customers earning about 40 K more and waiting for the next sev 1 caused by them :)

We work in a highly skilled (Mathematics and such) area and our boss hired his unskilled daughter cause she lived at home and couldn't get a job.

He argued with HR to get her on a salary that was as high as possible (more than 50% of co-workers with relevant qualifications). She hasn't got a degree yet and even that degree she's doing has nothing to do with what we do.

She works mostly at home and then we get questioned when we work from home. When we went to coffee the two of them dominated the conversation with mindless daddy-daughter dribble.

17 yr old who has been working for over a year and still takes an hour to do a simple 20 min task, as a manager its ridiculous how much of my time i have to spend keeping an eye on him to ensure he gets all the jobs done in the prescribed time, i usually have to delegate others to fix his jobs/do them.

Owner refuses to fire.

facepalm.jpeg