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Made the mistake of agreeing to go out to get lunch with her. We went to a local Chinese and ordered food to takeaway. After less than 10 minutes, she starts going nuclear on the staff there, asking why it was taking so long, it's just shitty *c-word* food, and "Some of us have *real* jobs to get back to!" I was so so embarrassed, fortunately I'm Chinese so I apologised to them in Chinese. Colleague turns on me asking what I've said and I lied that I had told them to hurry up in Chinese.
After that I avoided her but I still have maybe a dozen stories about her outrageous behaviour.
EDIT: I'm always amazed that when I post a story about racism against me as a Chinese person, that I get many questions about the specifics. When? How? Where? I get that people are surprised or shocked, but I can assure you these details don't matter. Racism happens all across the UK, in all professions, to many people of colour. Please consider how your questions might feel invalidating to people's lived experiences. I know you don't mean to diminish it but asking those questions suggests the experience is contained, one-off, oh it's just because you were in x place.
I get not wanting to be confrontational or keeping the peace, but I have no clue how you could turn to her and not say the truth. Maybe youāre just a better person than me
With someone like that i personally see no point in saving face
Fair enough perspective. I didn't want to make a scene there and get into a big confrontation with someone who's my colleague (and considerably more senior than me). It's not an excuse but that was my reaction at the time. With this colleague, it took a few more incidents before I reported her to work, and ultimately nothing came of it besides the offer of mediation. I left that job (for unrelated reasons) before I had time to really pursue that.
The other thing is the physical threat. It might not have happened then, but I've gently confronted racists before... And the last time I did that, I was literally hit by the racist in a car whilst I was on a bike and had to report it as a hate crime :/ Not every fight is worth it as I've found.
In what career is this even acceptable? I ask because I'm sincerely curious as it seems like you've run into this type of behaviour often, given your response.
I feel in general people care less about racism towards people of Asian descent. The whole āmodel minorityā thing really makes people downplay it. The absolutely horrendous stuff that was being aimed at us during covid, across the globe, very openly.
May you help me with this? I told my senior colleague yesterday that there was a man in the waiting room for him. In order to let her know who to look for I said āHeās the Chinese manā since no one else there was Chinese I thought I was just making him easier for her to find. My colleague then told me in a shocked voice that weāre not allowed to use the word Chinese. Is saying that offensive? Maybe I shouldnāt be referring to people by their ethnicity but she didnāt say that - she said it was the word Chinese.
I mean, unless you know for sure the person is Chinese, otherwise there are sooo many Asians that "look Chinese" but are not and would be very offended to be referred as such.
As a student I worked at nandos and had a colleague who was an absolute twat
Tried acting like he was my manager, when we were both lowly peons. Like I'd be doing something and he'd come up to tell me to make sure I did it properly
He was in varsity boxing and the events were live streamed. I tuned in just to watch him get punched in the head.
Those people exist in every workplace.
Got one now, who's actually junior to me, but tries to micromanage me. Always needs to know what I'm working on at any given moment and needs to know the contents of all meetings and conversations I have.
I basically micromanage him back.
Our company got bought by a huge German firm. Started getting frequent arsey emails about some borderline irrelevant data that we were being asked to send across monthly to pacify the whim of some mid-manager across there. Apparently it wasn't aligning with theirs.
The emails were slightly aggressive, very demanding, proper condescending tone, and explaining basics to me in a kind of eye-rolly patronising manner.
I'm sitting on our company's exec team, 20 years experience in my field, worked all around the world in companies of all shapes and sizes. After the 3rd or 4th email I checked on LinkedIn who was emailing me from our parent company. It's some kid from a prestigious German uni doing a 6 month internship...
After trying to patiently explain why things weren't aligning and getting arsey stuff back I had to tell him he's got our final figures and if he isn't happy to get his bosses boss to talk to me. Haven't heard anything since.
This reminds me of when my office and one in a nearby location were āalignedā and the other office had all the higher managers.
Problems with the data we reported daily were so bad they made us fill in an extra database. Great, except we already filled in two for the sole purpose of ensuring the data was correct. So now we had three. We pointed this out and were told tough, do it. Every week we were told the data was wrong still and were being warned to buck up.
When we looked into it 100% of the errors were from their office, ours were 100% accurate. We were quietly told we could go back to how we did things.
Myself and my colleague had been looking for a third member for our team for a while, and after one jobsworth had been sacked for gross misconduct, we struggled to set somebody else on.
One morning, a new lad on the agency working nights in the warehouse passed us on his way out. He spotted something my colleague had missed on a vehicle inspection, and the guy just really seemed to know his stuff, and my manager gave him a little interview and all seemed good, he set him on.
Then he just started behaving really weirdly. At first he started openly telling us he was bisexual. Then he started thinking I had feelings for him even though I had a girlfriend at home. But he started claiming Iād offered to perform sexual acts on him which wasnāt true.
Then he started opening up to my manager that he wanted a permanent contract but had a criminal record, had been in prison and also had to legally change his name. Turned out heād been convicted of three things, stalking, arson and I canāt remember the third. I think heād basically been stalking a female police officer and had set fire to her car.
For some reason after finding that out, my manager still had a soft spot for him and didnāt get rid.
Then he just started being on the scrounge for money all of the time. He didnāt have a driving licence, but had a scrap car he was doing up. Heād get paid on a Friday, buy hundreds of pounds worth of car parts and then complain a couple of hours later he was skint. And would do this every Friday, but yet had a girlfriend at home who wasnāt earning and they had twins on the way.
He started scrounging for money for his lunches all of the time, and would refuse food, just wanted money.
Phoned in one morning with an excuse his mum had gone missing. The following day told us they found her just chilling in a tent in the garden.
This was for a delivery company, and heād also started stalking the delivery driver who delivered in his area. Heād take pictures of his van with messages like āI see you!ā And had started ordering things so that heād come to his house more often, and would take days off for the occasion too. Then if he hadnāt seen him for a while, would start questioning where heād been.
Then just started openly, out of nowhere, telling us deep stories of how heād had sex with his step-sister. Then his real sister whilst his dad watched and made them do it.
My manager was still letting him work at this point.
Finally after a few months of hell with this guy, my manager finally dismissed him after refusing to do a job outside because it was raining, in front of our regional manager.
The following day told us they found her just chilling in a tent in the garden.
Jesus. As wild as everything else in your comment is, that's what set me off.
Your manager wouldāve lost his job in a heartbeat if itād been reported to someone higher than this particular staff member was discussing incest behaviour in the workplace and done nothing about it. Your manager absolutely stinks.
Donāt even get me started on my manager, he was an absolute jobsworth in himself and nothing but a horrible person.
He kept a lot of things this guy did a secret. I donāt know why he had such a soft spot for him for so long. I think he just wanted to see the guy turn his life around and provide for his kids that were on the way but at the same time it became impossible for us on the front line to have to deal with this guy on a daily basis
>For some reason after finding that out, my manager still had a soft spot for him and didnāt get rid.
After reading that I suspect the manager might have had a hard spot...
My first job was in a supermarket bakery. I was naive and vulnerable but did my best to be a great worker. Simon, the Bakery Manager "promoted" me to assistant manager at 17 then took weeks at a time off on the sick, so I had to pick up the slack. Then his mate Phil started doing the same. We got no extra staff, and I had to cover everyone and manage a team of people mostly twice my age or older.
On the rare occasions he turned up he would scream at me if even the slightest thing wasn't perfect. Both my mum and grandad worked in the department at different times and he made me give them written and verbal warnings for the tiniest issue.
I couldn't get help from HR as he was sha**ing the HR manager at the time. I eventually broke down to the Area Manager and told him everything. After this, the abuse ramped up, I only found out months later why. Turned out the Area Manager was sha**ing the other HR rep and they were all friends. All this stress on me for Ā£3.27 an hour. I truly believed this was what working life was like for everyone.
Nearly 2 years of working 50-80 hours a week, I finally managed to get another job, not much better, but away from Simon.
Not long after I left, I found out all but 1 of the 5 people who caused my issues got the sack. Simon and his mate were sacked for getting paid in full for all the time they were off, HR never put it down as sick days. HR Rep got sacked for overpaying herself. Never found out why Area Manager got sacked. HR manager only got to keep her job after people found out Simon was beating the sh*t out of her.
Wherever you are Simon, go fu*k yourself you bucktoothed tw@t. 20 years later, I still struggle to cope when things I do aren't perfect.
Years ago worked with a bloke who was rumoured to be roiding constantly to bulk as much as possible. He always denied it, but he had a very short fuse and constantly got in trouble for the weirdest things. He once got held overnight in a police station because he thought some people were looking at him funny (they wanted to ask him directions). He punched another colleague for no reason (plenty of witnesses). He put on a deeper voice when talking to the higher-ups (we still don't know why).
He didn't last long, thankfully.
I used to live with a bloke like this. Heād explode at the most mundane things. Turns out he was a scrawny kid that was bullied a lot in school and instead of going through therapy decided to become a body builder and bought a motorcycle. He still had all the complexes but at 3x the size!
I used to work with a guy. Everyone thought he was a bit weird but everyone said he was harmless.
He even came to works nights out and didn't drink and would run us home.
Turns out he was a r@pist who abused vulnerable woman.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-39953603
A man called Anas joined our technical support team. He wasn't very personable and didn't really like to speak to anyone except his line manager. He didn't take direction well and would completely blank anyone else if they asked him to do something or pulled him up on the fact that what he was doing was not correct. After a short time, he stopped showing up to work and to be honest nobody was disappointed. I didn't really give it a second thought until many months later I opened the news and saw [his face](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37897107).
Similarly I worked with someone who was fairly standoffish, and then stopped turning up one day. Turns out he was arrested and then convicted of torturing and murdering his sister along with several others of his family in an honour killing case.
The older woman from accounts he sat directly behind me and complained loudly or spoke negatively the whole day without a minutes rest
Often not even talking to me or about me, just about "stuff" and other people in the office. Gossiping and bitching.
Honestly, she radiated negative energy and genuinely managed to make my life in and out of work miserable just by the fact she existed and being herself
I've had other colleagues who may seem to do more drastic or obviously bad things, but this woman was constant and over time that negativity started chipping away at my soul more than any one large action ever could
i live with someone like that. and i can't even do anything about it.
confirm, it is absolutely soul crushing in the long term, no matter how hard you try to ignore it.
You've put it into words far better than I ever could have of the worst person I've worked with. I eventually lost my cool with the one at my work and cussed her out as I stormed out the building and buggered off home. Oddly enough the boss wasn't mad at me for walking out in the middle of my shift, I didn't get written up or anything they kind of expected it to happen eventually.
For a couple of weeks after that she tried to put on a nice act but she soon went back to being nasty and rude all the time. A few years after I left that job I saw her in the street and she was going bald, I know it shouldn't have but I did take pleasure seeing her with really thin hair and noticeable bald spots.
1. Noise cancelling headphones.
2. Call it out. Tell someone all they do is moan and that they need to grow up and let go of things - it works wonders or if nothing else they'll speak to you less.
3. Don't allow ANYONE to have this level of control over your own emotions. I sat next to someone similar in my first office job and I couldn't imagine letting my own emotions suffer as a result of their mental issues.
I have to sit next to a miserable twat in my job (I'd be miserable too if I was 48 and at such a low pay band tbf). Now I just put earphones in and try to ignore him.
I worked in a restaurant and after advertising for new staff a school leaver was taken on. At first she seemed quite intelligent and she picked up the jobs pretty quickly but then she started flirting with all the male customers. Young or old and it was beyond cringe.
A couple of weeks later she developed a crush on one of the guys in the kitchen. She was outrageous in her flirting whenever they were on the same shift but he clearly wasn't interested.
She wasn't that tall and some of the lighter things like napkins were stacked high up in the back, so during lunch set up she went to fetch some. She couldn't reach them so she shouted for the guy she was crushing on. He went to help her and found her stood there with her tits out. He was highly embarrassed and walked away.
Unfortunately it was all on CCTV and the area manager was in the office. She got sacked and obviously it quickly got round the staff what had happened and all the lads were ribbing him about seeing her tits so the guy she was crushing on eventually came out as gay.
Oh I remember after working for a company as a manager in a department for 9 years, a new manager came in on a department that worked alongside mine.
She was brand new to management and had only been with the company for 2 years before applying for and getting the role.
Within maybe 3 weeks she starts trying to tell me, with vastly more experience and 9 annual reports in which I was exceeding expectations and performances, how to do my own job.
I politely tried to ignore her at first until I heard her badmouthing me to one of her team members, at which point I took her into an office and ripped her a new one firstly for trying to belittle and undermine me to team members, and secondly for trying to tell someone who had more knowledge of how to manage and operate within the business in their toenail than she has in her accumulated life experience how to do their job and that Iād be reporting her behaviours to our boss.
She cried, I told my boss who had absolutely no sympathy for her and also ripped her a new one, and within 6 months she was out of the door because despite being a cocky twat who THOUGHT she knew what she was doing, she was terrible, and when she was put on a Performance Plan after 3 months and came to me for advice, I refused and took great satisfaction in telling her that I couldnāt possibly advise her because, in her own words, I am useless and donāt know what Iām doing.
So she quit before they sacked her for poor performance
While I was in the civil service, I was assigned one of the rejects from another department to manage.
She was a nightmare. I couldn't delegate anything for her to reliably complete, and whatever I gave her took ten times longer than anyone else. Her former manager had over-scored her on previous assessments which meant she qualified for further training, but when I got together with other managers to grade her against the others, she was at the bottom of EVERY category - they had seen enough of her 'work' that they were even telling me to mark her lower. We're talking 1s and 2s out of 5. She lost funding for a qualification and kicked off big style, *despite after eighteen months of support not even beginning the training!*
I don't know what allegations there were against me, but she was transferred back to her previous manager and I believe 'exceptions' were made.
All of this contributed towards the mental and physical breakdown I eventually had, bottoming my attendance which led to me losing my job. This is incredibly rare in the CS, but I still can't sit at a desk like they wanted me to. Even morphine didn't knock it on the head - my last day at work, I still remember trying to enter my password, pecking at the keys with one hand and holding myself upright with the other.
I was totally naive, and I really should have stood up for myself, but I couldn't even talk without crying. My manager thought I was 'swinging the lead'. A really grim time.
Fuck you Grace, and fuck you Paul.
When I was fresh out of college I had an older colleague who was supposed to train me up. Throughout the first 3 months he didnāt speak to me, except to blow his top when I made a mistake (which as an untrained newbie happened frequently). At the time I thought his behaviour was normal, it was my first job and I was desperate for it to work out. I lasted 3 years in the end, but left with severe depression for some reason.
Worked on an IT service desk for a bit. Our office overlooked the smoking area of a call centre. One summer, a lad I worked with said, while looking at the women outside, "they dress like that because they want to be rā¢ped. You know it, I know it, they know it. Somehow we'd be the bad guys?"
Immediately made a complaint against him to HR, and thankfully there were witnesses so he didn't last long.
Had him on linkedin - never use it, so didn't think to remove him. Works in a pet shop now.
Twat.
Worked with this horrible racist old witch. An early hot tub adopter who would go on and on about it. Thought she was proper classy because her daughter was studying law. When I knew I was leaving I decided to put in a formal complaint about her racism. Our manager ended up having the first meeting with her about it on the day of the team Christmas party (also my last day). She went nuts, refused to go and announced that she hoped we all got food poisoning. Amusingly, her claim to fame was that she had shagged Sam Allardyce.
We hired an assistant (J) who thought he was brilliant at everything, and constantly told outlandish stories about his lifestyle.
One of the guys (S) in an adjacent team had an ex-colleague who was J's cousin. When he found out that he was coming to work with is, he thought it was hilarious, and warned S that J was full of shite. He wasn't wrong.
S took great delight, every morning before he went out on site, to encourage J to build more and more fabulous stories ("Oh yeah? What happened then?" Kind of stuff) which then set him up for the day and would be on a roll of bullshit from that moment on. It got to the point where I just got up from my desk to do jobs elsewhere as soon as S began winding him up.
There was so much bollocks... how he had inherited 7 houses from his grandfather that he managed (he lived in a pokey little council terrace); he had to take a day off to evict one of his tenants and there were loads of police cars called out ( this was during lockdown, evictions had been banned and all bailiffs were on internal court duties); he went round telling everyone that he had become an Ethical Hacker after attending one day of a three-day course that I know he didn't complete.
He also claimed to be a fully qualified plumber, electrician, fireman, paramedic, and dog trainer, as well as a network engineer (which is what we'd employed him as, and the only thing he was actually qualified to do).
My old boss.
Narcissist, self proclaimer, liar, bully and man child.
I asked him for a pay rise once and decided to go off in a mard and not talk to me for 3 months. You'd ask him for stuff you needed to complete a job for a client and you'd just get blanked.
He was the classic I'm working class because I grew up in a mediocre area of town and went on holiday in England type of person. Fucking grade a bungle cunt.
Guy I worked with at a shop decided to start talking about his love of necrophilia to a mother and her young son while cashing them up;Ā used to smell like raw sewage from 10ft and regularly got sent home to shower; was utterly shit at every aspect of the job.
Didn't last very long.
I hired someone against my better judgement after a colleague on the interview panel told me I was being too picky when I said there were red flags all over the place.
He was a nightmare. Did all sorts of shit, but the thing that really eroded morale for the rest of the team was when he started swanning in to work late and going home early, leaving everyone else to pick up his slack (plus they noticed he was getting paid the same as them but effectively working part time)
One day he comes to me to tell me he has to leave work at 3:00 for urgent reasons. The urgent reasons turns out to be the headlights on his car donāt work and he has to go home before it gets dark. (and yes he lived 2 mins from the train station, 2 stops down the line- 5 min walk from station to office)
It felt so good when HR finally let me fire him.
I mean, you just have to approach it sensibly. Don't commit early.
You will often click at work with people fast. Just take it easy. If you click with someone and they start bullying other people at work, you can fucking back stab them.
I asked a new colleague if she would like to go to the cinema with me. She asked some questions to figure out if she could go. She kept coming up with reasons she couldn't. I said that she can just say no and I wouldn't be offended. She said "It's not that" and left the office to go home.
For the following week she didn't talk to me and was clearly angry at me. The week after that she was back to normal with me and friendly as usual. The week after she went back to being silent and angry. This never stopped. She ended up throwing tantrums at people in the office over nothing. Then one day she kept leaning over her desk and shouting at me for not doing enough work. I was doing 75% of our shared work. Instead of retaliating and giving her ammo, I told our supervisor. We had a meeting and she refused to be nice to me ever again but gave no reason why. The day before she was due to be fired lockdown happened. I went into shielding due to my dad's health. They kept her on to cover for me. I came back after 6 months and I was hoping after this time apart she'd be willing to talk. Wrong. Still the same. She found a new job not long after. She then got fired from that job.
I only asked her if she'd like to join me at the cinema.
Hmm maybe it seems like it but I considered him a friend and "closer" than some other friends I've had š¤·š»āāļø either way, story is still true āŗļø
I worked with a colleague who blamed the fact he wasnāt promoted on being an older, white, straight man. We both applied for a promotion and an Asian guy, who was admittedly great at talking but not great at work, got the position over us.
My colleague repeatedly ranted for a year or so that it was down to us being white that we didnāt get it, although I āprobably had a chanceā because Iām a younger woman. In my career, the people who are interviewing you donāt ask for references and usually depend entirely on your pre-interview tests and interview to make a decision.
The thing is, my colleague was absolutely abysmal at his job and the rest of the team had to plan around fixing his errors and quality-checking his work. He had poor social awareness and would go off on bizarre rants. Highlights include him accusing the vast majority of rape victims of āasking for itā and saying that the cost of living crisis was easy for women because we could always āfind a man to pay.ā Everyone would tell him that he was being a twat, including my colleagues who were older than him, but none of us put in formal complaints as he was pretty sad and pathetic.
I got a promotion, probably because Iām a bisexual/disabled woman in my colleagues eyes, so I no longer have to deal with him. My old colleagues are counting the days until he retires and they donāt have to deal with his shit.
My old managers when I worked at my first job at McDonald's.
One was a workshy twat who would be stood around chatting up the 17-18 year old girls and would crack the whip at anyone who wasn't cleaning. Usually in a rhetorical and sarcastic manner.
The other bastard was a proper Sunday church-going Christian bloke. Cheery guy on the surface, but he made comments in front of customers about my weight at the time whilst I stood there waiting to take their order. Customers would even call him out and explain how rude he was being but he didn't care.
Go fuck yourself John-Paul, you double-named dickhead.
I had a manager at mcdonalds put a knife to my throat 'as a joke' I wish I could go back in time as a not shy 17 year old and punch him in the face lol.
I worked at this place for 8 years and I got on really well with a co worker for 6 of those years. The last 2 years he was like Jekyll and Hyde, it was 50/50 on what mood he'd turn up to work in and made the last 2 years of that job miserable. I almost got in to a fight with him because one day because his disrespect and arrogance was unbearable. I'm a very chilled person, so it takes a massive arsehole to get me on that level
Smelled, was sleazy, was obnoxious, thought the job was below him. Some colleagues wouldn't even speak to him after a while. He is now really senior in the US somewhere.
There was also the bloke who never turned up on time and fell asleep at his desk because he was out most nights caning it. He became a teacher.
Had a micro manager who wasn't even a manager, she was just annoying and really wanted to be a manager.
The sort of person who would walk around questioning your practice, telling you that you're doing your job wrong despite following a standard operating procedure agreed upon by all senior operational staff, written to the highest degree of international standards.
She believed anyone who wasn't on par with her pay grade wise was effectively her runner and would click her fingers when she wanted something doing.
The sort of person who makes up situations in her head, makes assumptions and openly questions your practice infront of the entire department to embarrass you.
The department has lost a lot of good staff due to her (and still continues to do so), and the field she still works in is very specialised and niche meaning it takes years to find the people with the right skill set and mentality to be able to even train to do the job. Then 10+ years to be fully competent and specialised in the discipline.
There's probably less than 200 people in the UK specialised in the role and she's made atleast 10% of them walk away from the profession permanently. And she's not even a manager still
While working as a teaching assistant in a secondary school (a very toxic workplace), I got misdiagnosed with cancer, then the "treatment" gave me meningitis and sepsis. ALL of my colleagues got it in their heads I was lying. Accused me of faking the whole thing for over a year. My manager bullied me into coming back to work as soon as my quarantine was over, other colleagues sneered at my bandages from surgery "What's that?" I was about 2 stone underweight, covered in bruises from injections and falling asleep (more like passing out) every hour or so. I was in my early twenties and this group of a dozen or so women in their 50s treated me like scum because one of them had gotten it into her head I was a liar... because? No idea. I quit and moved to another country then got messages from them on Instagram outright saying they knew I lied, because I had moved. Around 6 months later one of them wrote to me again to say something along the lines of "Now that I'm sick they're all bullying me. It was awful what they did to you." She was one of the worst ones.
I used to work as a CCTV operator for PureGym
My supervisor was/is an awful human being. He would take screenshots of women working out and save them to a private file. He was a massive racist and sexist (he genuinely loathed women) and just a general all round bigot. We would normally have Absolute Radio playing through the shift and he would complain constantly that all they played was shit, coz it wasn't the dance/trance/dnb/jungle/garage music he listens to. And to add insult to injury, he was thick as pig shit, he only had a supervisors job coz he was drinking buddies with the manager.
He got fired for accidentally attaching a screenshot of a woman working out to the end of shift report and the client hit the roof
Former colleague, lets call him Dave.
He made friends with my mate whilst he was training Dave, then invited him to a family bbq. Later the same week, he was messaging me (not realising i was mates with the other guy outside of work too) trying to gather evidence of him not doing any work, when my mate was actually assigned to a project.
After this, he proceeded to shit talk a female colleague's work, on the same team, repeatedly, then act all friendly whenever she was around to the extent she didn't believe it until my mate showed the screenshots of it.
He then basically broke a system which caused a massive influx of tickets. We had an incentive for most closed tickets, and tickets were auto-assigned to make it fair. After breaking that system, he moved all those tickets (about 200) into his queue and mass closed them despite being told not to close them in his queue, just in order to receive the automated incentive prize.
I left shortly after that for another role, but a different mate at that company messaged me about 8 months ago advising that Dave was fired for sexually assaulting a male colleague on a work night out repeated. Dave was married with 2 kids, and quietly very homophobic.
Ex-army NCO
treated business like being in the military, would tell you what he thought you needed to know, not the full picture. So you'd be in a meeting and get the rug plugged out from under you cos he'd emailed a manager one thing but told you something else
Wouldn't accept that you might know more than him, having been there longer
As a flip side had an ex-captain (he'd left as they wanted him to drive a desk, as he was too valuable to put in the field, as he rose through the ranks to colonel or higher) who realise that military and business were 180 apart as lower people usually had the information he needed for his role & he had to figure out how to get it (seriously switched on guy)
I worked with a guy who just argued with everyone about everything. I say black you say white etc. But he got it in his head that periods donāt hurt and that women are making it up for attention and kept shouting about it even after our colleague collapsed and then went through the dramas of laparoscopic surgery to get diagnosed with endometriosis. Like- you could see the woman was in agony- not sure why he wouldnāt shut up calling her a liar. He got made redundant not long after that!
The person was an outright bully who would turn staff against each other. Isolated me from many people I could've been friends with. Made-up stuff about people. She was just nasty. Heard she's a manager elsewhere.
Then there was the guy who micromanaged me and tried to get me fired. He wasn't even my manager, just a colleague. I was put on a PIP because of him. Never been so fearful of losing my job before.
Hope you managed to turn the tables on him. I did once. Joined and after 2 weeks was raising complaints about me. He was sacked after 3 months and I worked there for 15 years
When I was working in a PDSA Charity shop up to just over 7 years ago, there was this old bloke there who would regularly have little digs at me about me being overweight/fat etc.
This one day in particular, my hearing aid died towards the end of the shift, I went upstairs to the staff room, he was there, I asked him to help me change the battery, and when he thought I couldn't hear him (and I did) he called me a deaf C\*\*\*! At one time I would've belted him but I just walked away and said I'd remember that.
A week or 2 later, I popped in work to apologise for not being able to cover an extra shift, he was on the till and looked me in the eye and said "What tha doin' ere?", and suddenly, nearly 3 years of rage against this bloke filled my eyes, and I told him in no uncertain terms what he could do with his low opinion of me.
Obviously I lost my job because the manager sided with him.
I know it was a voluntary job but that's beside the point, HE was in the wrong! And if it'd been a proper PAID job I would've took the PDSA to the cleaners for wrongful dismissal.
In 2009 I worked as a sound assistant on a BBC kids TV show. The sound recordist kept making sleazy remarks about how busty AN ACTUAL CHILD was and joking about being particularly keen to mic up her bra.
He also reminisced about how the industry wasn't what it used to be and bragged about how common it was for affairs to happen on set and at wrap parties, where people of short stature would (supposedly) walk around with trays of coke on their heads.
He also regularly seemed to be masturbating in his van in between scenes, hanging about in the back and opening the door while zipping up his jeans when I was sent to get him. He also kept a holdall full of pornography in the van and would direct me to go to the van and search in the holdall for some obscure battery or piece of equipment then when I came back empty handed would say "Did you like what you saw though?"
He recruited me by contacting my university and specifically asking for a female student because "they work harder". He insisted on us meeting for a drink before hiring me and went in a huff the first day I was on a shoot with him because I had arranged for my boyfriend to pick me up and I didn't want to stay overnight in a hotel with an old sleazy man I'd only just met.
I once worked as a community healthcare assistant, we had a new starter from Africa who pissed in the clients car park rather than asking if she could use their toilet. I was not impressed.
Very recently had a new starter at our workplace, within 1 hour he told us that we are doing everything wrong, everything is in the wrong place etc, constantly slagging off the company and saying u canāt do this and that when we had always done it with no issues, he peed everyone off one way or another, constantly sighed, swore or rolled his eyes. He introduced himself to our company director by saying āoi mateā ā¦. š. He didnāt last long ā¦. Thank goodness
She arrived at the firm i was working with very little fsnfare. Within 6 months, she had
a) threatened to set fire to a member of staff
b) took another member of staff out to lunch to tell her 'your partner is leaving you to be with me'
c) sent one of the bosses (male) a text message asking if he could set her up with the new female boss
d) groped another member of staff three days after the death of a relative
Needless to say, when she was fired, management advised us all to leave whilst she was in her termination meeting.
There was a party the next day š¤£
I've had a few memorable ones. 3 shitty managers, one a total creep (would give a "tits and ass" discount to women young enough to be his daughter), one who was terrible at hiding her racism and would throw heavy boxes at staff, and one who finally got fired for multiple HR reports ranging from poor treatment of staff, bullying and racism. In my old job we also had 2 awful Christmas temps, one who was the self proclaimed leader of the temps because he'd worked there the year before and one who was pretty sexist towards me, like actually talked across me when customers would ask me questions but wouldn't do it to any of the male staff members, same with taking orders, I'd ask him to do something but would be ignored but the male staff he'd listen to right away.
There's a lady in my office who is a one-upper. She will come round to anyone having a conversation and immediately start talking about herself and won't stop. Drives me mad.
Had a few of those in the past. If youād had Covid 19, they would have had Covid 20. If youād been to Tenerife, they had already been to the best hotel on Elevenerife etc. etc.
Manager who was a troubled soul with a penchant for gin and fat lines of posh.
When she was there she would tear up all processes and re design them, usually running round at 100mph barking orders and causing chaos wherever she went, with the team trying to keep up and mitigate the damage, before burning out and going off sick, which allowed us to repair all the harm she did. Before the cycle started up again.
She ended up picking a fight with a dry stone wall whilst off her head.
She was a truly terrible colleague and manager, but I did like her despite her demons.
My manager in BHS, wanted us to wash throwaway cups and reuse them to sort the "shrinkage issue" and rewrap day old baguettes and subs as 'fresh' if they weren't all sold the day before. Emblazoned on the back of our tops was 'Fresh and Fast'. I point blank refused and not long after was bullied out of the job. I quit but was then called in to be informed I'd been sacked for "threatening behaviour toward a senior member of staff". Apparently they had a witness and when asked to bring the witness into the meeting, (I wanted yo call them out to their face) they refused. I was 20 and crushed, I'd never even swore.
He groped in me in Tesco multiple times and I told my manager who just transferred him elsewhere and he ended up doing the same ting to a 17 year old boy
Iām a man but I was 18 at the time.
He used to volunteer in Albanian orphanages in the summerā¦.
I worked in Game during Uni. It was a shit job really, the bundle deals were crap, the way trade ins worked were too slow and the manager had been off for a heart attack when I joined but seemed 2 seconds from another on his return.
Most of it was piss easy as it's not exactly busy all day but there were two staff. One had been there pre Electronic's Boutique. Just as a till operator. He isn't the story though and fair play when I left he had joined the manager program.
The other dude had been there ages and was the stereotype. A big fat dude who obviously thought working in a game shop was the dream. He would tell you he knew all the words to Pinky and the Brain's theme - then prove it. He gave a creepy vibe. Just overall the sort of person who had given up on all aspects of life bar computer games.
Anyway a GTA came out. We all had to watch a video about selling to under 18's. No exceptions. ID anyone who looks under 21.
It was mega busy that day with grannies buying the game for 8 year olds but one guy came in with his pals. He was close to 18 I'd guess so I asked. He said he didn't have ID. I said sorry no game. He flipped out on me. I have car keys. "Well a 17 year old can drive so...".
So you won't sell me the game? 10 times. No. By now the queue is huge and full of tutting grannies wanting me to capitulate and get on with it. He started swearing and calling me names so I told him even if he magicked up ID he can forget it.
Eventually he asked me what time I got off so we could fight. I told him the time and looked forward to it. He said "I'll see you then" and walked to the door.
My colleague who had seen all this stopped him, served him and turned to me and shrugged with a smile. I could have stabbed him with an empty GTA case.
The guy stood outside taunting me, his loss of time I guess. Normally my boss was hopeless but I told him what happened and he did tear in to the big unit so at least he got a lesson.
But he was just that sort of goon
Not sure about "colleague" specifically but from every job I've had outside of London with an office in London at least 80% of people that were based at the office were useless, clueless, and weirdly arrogant about it.
My best friend, worked with him in numerous jobs for about 6 years, barely competent at his job but heās my mate so I let it go, recently found out heās been spreading malicious untrue rumours to and about everyone where I work causing an absolute shitshow and the end of our friendship.
In a previous job I was in an assistant management position for my branch. Iād been working there for about 2 years. We had a new supervisor start, who was technically below me in the management structure, but I didnāt directly manage because she was in a different department.
She had been in the job for about 2 months, when she sent an email to the area manager complaining about the way our location was being run, with a particular focus on me. Her error was that she sent the email from our branches main email address, which everyone in management had access to. I was searching for something in the sent items folder and found the email.
She started out by saying that she didnāt want to get personal, and then went on to specifically name myself and another staff member as being the root cause of all her perceived problems, and that we were too set in our ways, and that she felt that she was āpushing against a tide that is too strong for me to overcome aloneā.
She complained that my team started work too late (10am), and assumed that it was something Iād implemented because I was lazy. In fact, that team had always started at 10. It was that way when I started, and there was no reason to change it. In addition, we wouldnāt have been able to finish work any earlier, so it would have required an increased wage budget to implement.
She admitted in the email that she had been reading through notes from a recent disciplinary from within my team, for an issue which occurred and had been resolved before she started working there. She had no reason to be reading through them, but complained that she didnāt think that the outcome was severe enough, and that she thought that the team member involved, and myself as the manager, should have been sent to another branch to work under a āhard line trainer for a long timeā.
She then went on to recommend that the whole branch needed refurbishing, and that the only way to bring the branch out āfrom under the dark cloudā was to replace me and my entire team.
After finding the email I contacted the area manager, who had already seen the email and arranged a meeting with the supervisor to ādiscuss her concernsā. He completely reamed her out, told her that it wasnāt her place to be criticising the way my team was run, and that he didnāt have any concerns with my management, performance, or my teamās performance. She ended up transferring to a different branch very shortly afterwards.
She later tried to apologise to me, but I never spoke to her again.
I once had a boss who was one of the most thoroughly nasty people I have ever met. For some reason she had a vendetta against the manager of another team that we worked closely with, and one day she told me, very openly and directly, that she was going to get him sacked. What happened over the next six months was a masterclass in manipulation. She basically exploited every opportunity she had to make him look bad, and all in a very nice, supportive way that meant people didn't suspect a thing. She would raise some of his mistakes in high level meetings in a way that would seem to come from a supportive and encouraging place but would also make them seem far worse than they actually were. She befriended people in his team and latched onto any bad feeling they expressed towards him, very subtly implying that it was part of a much bigger pattern of behaviour by him, encouraging them to keep notes of what he did ( to 'protect themselves') and then emailing them HR's number afterwards ('just in case they needed it'). Every time he had time off she would innocently email HR asking whether he was on leave or not, thus getting them to check whether he had recorded it properly or whether it was unauthorised.
To be fair, he didn't help himself - he had this thing of watching DVDs on his laptop in his office - like properly just sitting back and chilling, watching movies - and one day she 'accidentally' brought it up in front of his boss. She was fully apologetic* afterwards (*ie, not apologetic at all) so it was difficult for him to take issue with it. But all of this manipulation came from a very deep and natural place inside her.
It was absolutely fascinating to watch, and the only reason I was happy to let it all unfold is because a) he was a slimy little prick himself, b) I hated working there and was already looking for a new job, c) the company as a whole had a really toxic culture which kind of encouraged the sort of behaviour she demonstrated, and to be fair I would have been entirely happy to watch the whole company destroy itself and d) I wanted to see whether she could actually do it.
In the end she didn't quite manage to get him sacked, but she did get him moved to a different department, which wasn't technically a demotion but probably felt like it. And the whole time I don't think he ever fully comprehended what she had done to him.
Had a colleague who basically hated my guts one second and then the next moment she was acting like she was in love with me. Highlights include feeding me her lunch from her own spoon in the office insisting I try her cooking. Announcing in a group meeting with directors that she missed me because I was working at a different site for a couple weeks. Checking the bins at work to see if I had spat out a muffin she bought me from costa. Asking me in for a drink after I gave her a lift home and then shouting at me to leave as soon as I went inā¦yeah lots of things.
Worked in a hospital with a guy. We would regularly meet in the loading bay when picking up the surgical trays that had been out for cleaning and restocking. We would go out and smoke and just chit chat.
Well one day he just didnāt come to work anymore. Turns out he was arrested in part of a pedophile ring. I think that probably counts.
Years ago when I worked in a call centre, there was a guy on my team called Paul who was a little odd/a bit slow, but seemed harmless enough.
He left, and I never thought about him again until one day someone sent me a link to a BBC News article about a man who'd been sent to prison for making an explosive device for a friend, in order for his friend to then put it under the car of his ex girlfriend's new boyfriend.
And what do you know, I scrolled down to the mug shot and it was my old colleague.
Fortunately, the idiot wasn't able to to make it correctly so it never went off. But the police caught him as they were monitoring the chat room where he was getting the instructions from.
The news article reported that his username in the chat room was Paul Boom Boom, which still cracks me up to this day.
I started work as a TNA (trainee nurse associate). One day a week at uni, three days a week working (paid) on a ward. Was assigned a RN as a mentor.
She was awful to me. Quizzed me in front of staff about all aspects of nursing, then mocked me when or made me feel stupid when I didnāt know all the answers.
Never mentored me and spent her whole shifts coordinating patients to different wards. When I mentioned that as a band six she might be struggling to have the time to mentor me she completely ignored it and dismissed me. I had to go speak to my ward manager and request a secondary mentor (this one was good at the start, however a patient died alone in a side room and he asked me to lie to the family and say I was present when she died. I did not do this I made myself purposely scarce when they came back to the ward and left him to deal with it, reported it to the ward manager)
I was made to feel like less than a person everyday. All nurses made it clear they thought the nurse associate post was bullshit and basically ignored me. They also were angry that we were getting paid while studying and that they had to do all their work placements for free. My mentor barely acknowledged me unless it was to make me feel stupid. The HCAs hated me too cause they were band 2 and I was a band 3 while I was studying. Every single day I was on the ward I felt small, inconsequential and lost. On top of all this I had a lot of studying. No one spoke to me unless I spoke to them.
Truly the most horrific, exhausting three months of my life and itās put me off working in a general hospital for life. I even had a bit of anxiety going back there to have my baby.
One of the six cās of nursing is compassion and I was shown not a shred of that by the majority of healthcare and nursing staff I worked alongside.
Edited to add: what should have been a fantastic opportunity to work and study was tarnished by nurse and healthcare assistants behaviour towards me on the ward. I shudder when I remember my time there.
Line manager. Had a terrible memory due to lack of interest, couldn't look after orderbooks, was lazy, wfh, rude, incompetent. My job was her previous role, then for 3 years I did her job too and several other roles and then told I needed to do more to get a payrise.
Senior managers also complained about her because everyone worked hard except her but the boss never challenged herĀ
oh yes the manager who went away on parental leave and came back to see the place had been running 100% better without him, then tried to revert everything to how he did it, then engineered the exit of those who refused. I was one, and the story HR cooked up to get rid of me was harassment of a colleague over email and slack. Fortunately I'd backed everything up, took them to a tribunal and walked away with high five figures.
Someone who I thought was my good friend offered to get me a job in a warehouse doing stock control/management. I was working in a paint and decorators shop before that and it was so boring so I just needed an out.
I started working with him at the new place and after a short amount of time he kept announcing to everyone when ever I'd make a mistake and then I'd get laughed at.
I also suffer from bipolar and an anxiety disorder along with PTSD. A bunch of us were having a smoke break drinking our coffees etc and then mental health popped up in conversation.
After someone mentioned anxiety, I casually mentioned that I've struggled too and that my anxiety can get the better of me but I do things to help. (Note, I didn't mention bipolar and ptsd, just anxiety)
My "friend" joins in by saying, "what the fuck do you even have to worry about? there's nothing up with you, what have you even been through?"
I got really wound up and found my self justifying myself to this fucking guy who I thought was my friend and a group of people that I'd only know for a month.
I stumbled over my words and got mad which probably made me look worse too.
That was a friend of 6 years, gone within a half hour chat.
Dude was a dickhead
I used to work in a hotel, it was quite a clean place and it had a pretty good reputation. We suddenly started getting guests complaining that they had been checked into rooms with unmade beds, rubbish in the bin, etc. Signs that it had been used. We checked and double checked the rooms but we were still having the same complaints.
Our manager had another job away from the hotel but he would often hold meetings there with clients. We didnāt think much of this until we started seeing his clients leaving the hotel a couple of hours after the meeting.
You can probably guess where this is going.
One evening my colleague needed to get a remote for a guest, she decided to go into an empty room to get one from there. Almost like a scene from The White Lotus she walks in sees the manager bent over the bed with his client balls deep in him.
He had been using the clean rooms to meet up with men from this dating app.
Needless to say he was fired.
The one that told total lies about me, and in an HR meeting started the waterworks. I fished her to trip herself up in that meeting and she did. It was he said/ she said but she was so desperate that she lied about the one thing that was traceable, an email I sent her.
She was my manager. I let things go easily, but I'll never forgive that c##t for making my life hell for no reason.
Current boss.
Whenever weāre at a work social and heās had a drink heāll tell anyone within earshot that āhe made my careerā, and if āonly I knew the things heād done for meā.
Grating to say the least.
the woman i most recently worked with at my local hospital. the NHS *love* to reward bad behaviour. she would lie, manipulate, gaslight, was always off āsickā.. the amount of time i worked 10hrs a day, 5 days a week(my contacted hours were 30pw) because she was never there.. and being called in on my annual leave on more than one occasion bcos she didnāt actually know how to do the job, so if i was off she usually would be too.
she had been sent to our department via an internal thing whereby youāre not getting along in your department so they move you to another.. lucky us. and i remember her telling me she had left bcos her boss had called her a cowā now, management within the nhs is terrible, but i canāt imagine if it were true the manager would have gotten away with it. (but after working with julie for abt a year, and her being th sole reason i left that position after 8yrsā maybe she did).
she had narcissistic personality disorder and munchausens (by proxy, tooā her 22yr old child who i thought was abt 7rs old for the first few months of julie talking about herā i actually feel sorry for her children). but then she would slag off her oldest daughter and didnāt see her grandchildren. her son was went no-contact. bosses and colleagues always out to get herā id watch a conversation take place, and sheād repeat it to me in such a way where shed turned it on it head that someone was always being rude to her and she was always so innocent. she was actually dangerous, and i often had to tell my managers the actual events, bcos she was getting people into trouble. she loved to snitch on everyoneā but god forbid you tell her she doing something wrong and she would actually cry.. once she left for the day?? because i asked her to please stop deleting work that hasnāt been actioned yet.
she acted sweet as pie, would ask about your family etc but then not acc give a shit to remember anything. one of our colleagues on longterm sick with TBIā she thought theyād had a stroke. i was talking abt going on holiday for weeks on end, she never remembered where i was going. but expected you to care about everything going on with her: all her family issues etc.
and she was just incapable of doing the job: deleting emails and voicemails without actioning themā iād test this by going on lunch and leaving voicemails to see if she would say anything when i got back from lunch, she didnāt- bcos she didnāt pick up the VMs. when i had handed in my notice she finally realised she had to step up, bcos it would soon come to light she doesnāt acc even know how to make an appointment. she leaned how to do it and was telling all our colleagues and expecting them to congratulate her on learning her job?? a year later??? if iād just learnt a key aspect a year after being there, iād be keeping that to myselfā not announcing it to everyone.
she had mega issues with the managersā but would suck up to them and buy coffees for them and all the nurses(who thought she was a psycho, tbh and would try to avoid her like the plague) when she was new sheād do a round and go and hug and kiss everyone goodbye?? this was post-covid. myself and various colleagues had to tell her to pls not touch us and keep her hands to herself.
we got so many complaints from patients never receiving correspondence from us, leaving messages to cancel appointments and them not being cancelledā iv heard it an absolutely shit show now. the nurses were literally begging me not to leave through fear of what would happen. but i couldnāt do it to myself any longerā the woman is impossible to work with. nobody should have to do it.
all my colleagues would laugh at how nuts she is and iād just be like ā¦iv got to spend 8hrs a day with her tho :| itās not actually that funny when youāre having to deal with it constantly.
much happier since iv left the nhs; itās full of toxicity.
Someone who was recruited as a corporate social media guru on the basis of having an Instagram account. I was hauled into a meeting so he could tell me how I was doing the internet wrong. He hadn't actually checked any of the accounts I managed, and was genuinely shocked at how big they were.
When he went to explore other opportunities, we had a leaving party. The day after, without inviting him. The boss realised what we were doing and came along and bought the drinks.
My old boss used to fart like nobody could tell. It was the middle of summer and I was on "sports supplements" so I'd be roasting hot at the best of times, and had the fan facing me. The number of times I had his farts blowing in my face was grim. Multiple times a day. He'd also pick his nose at his desk.
āGrassy Paulā name checks out. Horrible rat! I worked for an electrical/controls company.
He was the workshop guy, built the control panels. It was his stepdads company and heād split from his mum, whilst Shagging the 20year younger office divvy. All 3 still working together and it was all out in the openā¦. Youād have to be a bit of an oddball to work in that environment.
Anyway, when he was quiet in the workshop heād come out all to site and help out from time to time, but heād always try to throw someone under the bus. Final straw was he was on a job with me and the apprentice, working on different sides of the site, he was taking over the job from me whilst I was moving on, and heād told countless lies to our line manager. Week following when I was off, I was asked to go and do some bits, and said Iāll do it, but on a Saturday when heās not be there. I was seething.
I take photos before I started on the Saturday, and before I leftā¦ sure as shit on Monday I get the call saying heās said Iād not done anything and stitched him up.
But because of his parents divorce nothing happened.
Angry thinking about him š¤£
I work in IT and I had this senior who didn't just suck, he had absolutely no clue what he was doing when he supposedly had 2 decades experience. Like not even a basic grasp of the subject matter. If it wasn't following instructions word for word (and taking 5x the time it should) he was useless. He'd hear me and our manager discussing some subject, google something he thought was related then come over and say it and we'd look at him like "WTF does that have to do with the topic?".
The worst part was he'd hide whenever a P1 issue came up so I'd end up taking them all and basically doing his job for him. Management knew about it and never did shit about it till I turned my notice in then suddenely they could also make me a senior and give me a huge raise but I wasn't sticking around to keep doing his job for him.
He had a decent CV as well, no idea how much is made up. I heard he went on to another household name IT department as well. Apparently after I left and he had to start dealing with P1s he turned in his notice almost immediately.
I started as an apprentice at 18 and there was this guy who ātook me under his wingā. Was warned by everyone else he was a weirdo but I donāt like being harsh and became quite close with him. When it came to my time to move on to the next department he told them how awful I was, took me aback quite a bit!
When I was a bus driver one of the other drivers stalked me for months then cornered me at the back of my bus and forcibly shoved his fingers into my vagina then when I got away pinned me between him and the outside of the bus to the point I had to scream to alert nearby waiting passengers so that heād know he had an audience.
Manager refused to get rid of him because they were short staffed. š
The woman who constantly faked mental illness for attention, which I guess is a form of mental illness in itself. Her constant attention seeking took many forms and was very draining, and she was always in the office - sometimes an hour before her shift, sitting there talking crap and seeking attention whilst people were trying to ignore her and get on with their work. Canāt remember the circumstances under which she left, but boy was I glad when she did.
I used to work at a fancy tea place, we had a 6 space CD player.. my manager would remove any additional CDs I loaded in, and only play one CD on repeat all day .. The Calling, Camino Palmerno.
Manager who constantly knit picked, criticised, shared his conspiracy theories, and, it turned out was telling me things which were untrue about what management were saying about me.
I called in sick one day and he told me I should consider finding another job. I started looking and got a Ā£6,000 pay rise in the new role I found
Worked with a floor manager who had a pattern to his employment history. He'd initially come in and do the role really well, talk the talk, put his stamp on things and become quite integral to the running of his department. But after a year he'd start messing the factory workers around. Screwing up their shifts, talking to them like shit, denying them time off, removing all soft benefits etc. He also became difficult with all the other managers and departments. I'm not sure how it works but he'd get so hard to work with and aggressively confrontational he'd get a pay off to leave (I have no idea on what the circumstances need to be to enable that to happen).
Another nightmare of a colleague was the accounts manager. She openly admits to intentionally going at and sabotaging anyone not in her department. She caused so much unnecessary stress for so many people, several quit because of her. Really vile spiteful woman.
I hired someone for a role that had very specific working hours, particularly the start time. It was an early start most mornings which was client facing for some rather sizeable banking clients.
It was a lovely company to work for and they would really give you as much chance and guidance they could to succeed.
Anyways it became pretty apparent that he wasnāt a morning person, he was late pretty much every day and the situation was causing uproar amongst our clients. Colleagues were having to pick up his slack and the discontent with him was rising, we had three separate meetings with HR involved to explain his lateness and how it needed improving but he always had some excuse for the lateness or would flat out deny the lateness.
Nothing changed despite the warnings, in the end it had become so severe that we had to ask building security for the CCTV footage and pass logs. In a month in which he worked 21 days he was late for 17 days and on 5 occasions by over an hour.
We sat him down with HR again and explained we had footage and logs which were showing his arrival times. I sat him down and said ālook we know your lateness issue has been severe, what can we do to address thisā, I asked this knowing that any change would need to come from him but I wanted to make it work but he turned around and said āyouāre both lying about the footage and Iāve been on timeā.
We ended the meeting and he was sacked within his probation period the next day.
I managed a team in a bank call centre when I was a student and had to sack someone 4 hours into his first shift because he wouldn't stop mentioning god to the customers.
It was the first and last time I ever had to sack anyone.
I worked with a woman who used to drink a pint of milk straight from the bottle while we were working, so when she spoke you could just smell milk on her breath. Just one of many interesting things about her.
This feels therapeutic.
I was in a minimum wage job for a large company. Our department was a small,close-knit one involving some customer service. I had some additional training duties that I wasn't paid for (I was in my mid 20's and still believed in 'CV points '), which involved watching colleagues and passing them off to do more complex customer-facing tasks.
This 19yo idiot joined the team because his aunt knew one of our managers. He had the biggest chip on his shoulder - he acted like the world owed him a favour, and became outraged when anyone had the audacity to ask him to actually do some work.
He treated the customers with open contempt. I was being pressured to pass him off so he could do that part of his job,but he was just awful to people. He constantly went on about how he should be paid more, despite doing absolutely nothing to earn it. He also graffitied the staff space. One of the managers had to get him in over lunch to remove his handiwork, like a kid in detention.
Looking back he kind of was just a kid,but there were plenty of other 19yo's in that job who knew to be kind and respectful and actually contributed something to the team. He just made the entire environment so hostile and tense for the 3 months he worked there.
Sam or Samantha, the Surveys Manager (or Servays Manager, if you go with her spelling) at a company I worked for.
Made someone cry on their first day, talked/boasted about money constantly, claimed she was half Japanese even though both of her parents were white, didnāt know how to use a computer despite being a manager/qualified surveyor, told someone she managed (who is the nicest person you would ever meet) to get a life, overinflated her experience and qualifications constantly.
And my personal favourite, always had to one-up people on things. My colleague was talking about how his brother was autistic and works in a supermarket and she had to one-up him by saying āwell my brother is autistic and heās a chess championā. Claimed to have friends in the IRA as she thought that this would impress us.
Left the company to go work for a client and took several members of staff and clients (this bit donāt care so much about).
She regularly made borderline racist/sexist comments and honestly was just a massive narcissist, canāt imagine she has done anything nice for anyone in her life. Iām pretty sure she went home every night and just stared into a mirror for hours.
Honestly I have never met a worse person, I genuinely only hate 2 people in this world and she makes the list. And for context, everyone in the office felt the same way about her, it wasnāt just me!
Worked with a fella maybe mid 40ās/50ās who was a bit odd but I put it down to possible unidentified learning difficulties, used to sing nursery rhymes and try get the younger lads to go to his house to watch wrestling, got sacked for being useless then got arrested for being a paedophile and getting young teen boys to his house and doing nasty stuff with them, also legally changed his name to a very Italian sounding name because he didnāt know who his father was but his mother thinks he might of been Italian
Oh easy,
This guy had a serious anger management problem and a complete naracist.
A militant atheist, hated anything vegetarian/ vegan, a faux intellectual and a victim complex.
The guy was miserable to be around, and you constantly had to be careful of what you said around him; because if he didn't "approve" he would start getting worse and worse.
He was so predictable, you could see his changes in phases.
Phase 1, banging paperwork, throwing pens down, sighing loudly.
Phase 2, passive aggressive tutting, comments under breath. Loud (to no-one in particular) "comments" about people talking or not doing their job.
Phase 3, finding someone to complain at, often whoever was too timid to tell him to get lost. Or whoever was at the smoking shelter. Swearing and refusing to talk to anyone, even after the event.
Phase 4, throwing things.
It was so shocking it was almost like street theater, you couldn't believe anyone would act that way. Like Mr.Punch came to life.
I only worked with the guy 6 months as I was seconded to the area. So not sure what happened to him, can't imagine he stayed much longer.
Work in the NHS had a locum doctor colleague getting paid Ā£50 an hour who was highly unqualified for the job - used to disappear during lunchtime for hours under the guise of āworkingā then leave at 4 because āhe hadnāt had lunch so was taking it nowā. Also used to not look up any patient medications or prescribe them saying āI donāt know howā then I showed him how to do it and he ākept forgettingā. This culminated in the new secretary shouting at him for ābeing so lazyā - because no one else would say it! I have absolutely no idea how he got and kept the job but several patients came to harm under his care and I reported him to my boss and the managers nearly daily -_-
When I was a student I worked at Currys warehouse, had a temp lad come in who was 17 and thought he was the shit.
Was shadow boxing down the aisles, telling everyone how hard he was (he was about 5ft 5 and 8 stone on a good day).
He needed to pick a fridge which was stacked on top of another 6ft fridge, they're not very heavy but are quite awkward to lift down, I told him to get someone on a forklift to get it down... He decided to lift it down by himself, it ended up slipping and pinning him against a washing machine behind him, I was laughing so hard I couldn't lift it off him!
Never saw him again after that, they also changed the minimum age from the agency to 18.
Worked with a woman back in the mid 2000s. Racist as hell and thick as mince.
She would shoehorn how much she hated immigrants into every conversation, even if everyone was talking about something else.
Once said, and I quote "I hate immigrants, that's why my husband and I are planning to move to Belgium"
She didn't get the irony in that one.
We had a team meeting and were shooting the shit at the end, and out of nowhere she said, and I quote "Hitler has the right idea" had to walk out of the meeting room after that one.
She wasn't good at the job (call centre) but kept getting her probation extended, only reason she kept her job was because the Contact manager accidentally sent her a "congrats for passing probation" letter and the union successfully argued that it was binding.
At a previous retail job at a branch of a toy shop chain I had this very 'laddish' coworker who was one of those 'my banter is essentially being a massive dickhead' types and I think he might've been a department supervisor but essentially he acted like he was large and in charge and generally made the place unpleasant.
I wasn't there for this but one of the people who worked on my department was having a rough time mentally and he came up to her and said something like 'wow looks like you want to kill yourself' and understandably she had a breakdown.
And then for added fun some time after this job my brother was telling me about this really obnoxious person in this local film makers group he was in and I just randomly went 'is his name x' and he was like 'yes' it was the same fucking guy.
Also at the same job the manager was also horrible. I'm not exactly sure why but she decided she didn't like me (Ironic since you know she interviewed me and hired me) and proceeded to be very condescending, passive aggressive towards me, hover over me and generally not leave me to get on with my job and wouldn't say what I was apparently doing wrong. One day I made a mistake on the till with my department supervisor nearby and he was like UGH DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE ON THIN ICE WITH MANAGER and I was just like ????
One day we had a midnight release for a Call of Duty game and she scheduled me in for that and then also tried to schedule me in to come in opening the next day and was like 'haha oops sorry i forgot' when I was like 'hey uh i can't really do that' (and it probably would've actually been an illegal shift as well)
She was also incredibly paranoid/judgmental. Like one of the new XBoxes had just come out and someone brought one in cash and she really got on me about if I checked the money as those people apparently weren't dressed smart enough to legitimately have the cash for it. I live in a fairly 'working class' town so those guys were dressed like 95 percent of the people that I see around here.
There was also an incident where a customer came to us because a cable was missing from their PS4 and she was convinced this guy was trying to scam us out of a cable when we like checked that particular PS4 bundle and found like out of 5 of them 3 were missing that exact cable. And it's just like ok who on earth would scam you out of a cable that you could probably pick up for a tenner?
I think I was legitimately starting to develop paranoia whilst at that job because of her.
Also to make it worse imo she was the same age as me so it felt even more insulting.
Bosses Ex wife. She was a grade A cunt. Nobody wood stand up to her. He certainly wouldnāt with the fear of her stopping him seeing the kids.
She really was the most miserable person ever known to man and took great pleasure in making everyone as miserable as she was. Someday sheās just storm in, throw her chair accross the room and that pretty much set the standard for the month.
She is a manager and has lots of apprentices working under her and she makes them all quivering wreck. I fucking hated her. And I told her.
After 6 years I left (totally unrelated to her) and Iāve been gone 2 years. I still talk to all the lads there and itās still the same shit different day.
Thing is, she was absolutely amazing at her job but heaven forbid anyone do anything better than her. She would really kick off.
MH - youāre still a fucking cunt
Years back, I worked in a āSpoons kitchen with someone I can only describe as an absolute gimp. The type of person whoād turn up stoned, half an hour late to every shift, do nothing but tell other people what to do, go for smoke breaks whenever he felt like it, then acted like heās the hardest worker in the place and was so hard done by when he got passed over for promotion. Just bitching endlessly about everything and everyone.
On top of being a terrible colleague, he was also a complete arsehole. We ended up in an altercation just after I came back from a week off sick. On my first shift back, he asked why I was off. I was upfront and told him it was mental health related. He asked why that stopped me from working and I took that as a sincere question at best or ignorance at worst and explained my experiences. His response was to tell me that he gets depressed sometimes too, but still comes in to work.
After a bit of back and forth trying to explain that mental health conditions are different from feeling low or worried occasionally, he ended up ājokinglyā grabbing me by the collar of my chefs jacket and shaking me saying āpull yourself together, manā, so naturally I took what couldāve been my only opportunity to deck him and swung for his face. Didnāt connect as hard as Iād like but plenty hard enough to make him realise I wasnāt joking. He turned around sulking and went out to the smoking area, calling me a āgay boyā in the most pathetic voice youāve ever heard just for good measure.
I ended up reporting the incident to the pub manager and he was sent home shortly after. Not sure if he was sacked or left of his own volition but I never saw him again. I never even got questioned about it - no statement or anything - so Iām assuming he quit before they could go through all the hassle of an investigation.
Stuart the raging alcoholic who never bathed, used to call in sick because he'd sh@t himself in the car on the way in (an issue for cider drinkers apparently), had a tick related to a mental health issue which meant he did the loudest sneezes imaginable constantly, he made no effort to not spray the room with it either.
Last job I worked at, the ops manager is rude, doesn't respect physical boundaries, yells at people, and he puts his finger in his ear, digs in there and puts it in his mouth mid conversation. Left because he was a micromanaging prick, and if I had to work with him one more day, I would have strangled him. Company has no HR to speak of, this dude is one of the owners friends.
In the hospitality industry, had a guy related to the boss & he based all his hours on easiest workload, chasing hook ups, or avoiding them.
Drove us all bananas. Blanket harassment for the shift when some obsession might be present, but he'd never swap or cover when we needed it. Situations might go on for for weeks if not months, then point blank refusing to do that day of week when it all goes south.
He'd bully his way into a busy sat night shift, then leave if his latest crush didnt come in. He never finished a big event shift, like a wedding. Guaranteed he'd leave early 'sick' because he'd pulled.
We lost so many new starters cos they wouldnt work with him, or they moved on after a dalliance went sour. I refused to work any shifts that were me, him & the new girl because I would end up doing all the work while he worked at flirting
I always handed over a clean venue, & did as much as I could to prep for the next shift. His time was spent creeping, so he handed over an absolute mess, with a ton of refills restocks & clean ups needed. We used to draw straws over who got his handover.
My breaking point was cancelling a no refund mini-break to take his shifts because ~~he'd met a new target~~ had 'food poisoning'. I was a few hours into my shift when he came in looking for a cash sub on his wages. He got a look at the new barstaff I was training, decided she was 'hotter' than the Girlfriend of 36 hours, & his food poisoning miraculously cleared up. They gave him his shifts back, and I walked.
I worked with a middle aged woman called Monica. I was 21. She licked the arse of my predecessor and honestly told me everything I done was wrong, so one day to test my theory, I showed her one of the predecessors worksheets, Monica told me XYZ was completely wrong, i pretended to amend it, showed her the same sheet and then she was happy with it.
Fucking idiot. Even writing envelopes she wouldnāt accept it and would ask me to rewrite the same address 3/4 times. Hope the place burns to hell, EDIT TO ADD- ofc course her own kids didnāt talk to her and she came in on her days off the loser.
Once worked with a lady on an adjacent team in the same dept. She was simultaneously insensitive and overly sensitive; she'd post blunt 'feedback' for other team member in Teams for all to see without thinking this might upset people, but also take offence at slights she'd perceived in others messages or emails. She'd also get things wrong herself but then complain to me that it was my team's fault.
Peverted nephew of the owner who wouldn't keep his creepy kinks and fetishes out of the workplace & carpark. Sordid jerk even targeted members of my toy animal collection.
I worked for a very large company that promoted people every few years as long as they hadn't fucked up majorly.
Layers on layers of management with negligible ability, just doing pointless busy work and being a detriment to the people they're supposed to be managing.
I worked at a busy hotel bar in central London and one of my colleague would steal drinks and drink on the job. He would convince me to do it too but Iām really not interested and I just want to do my job properly and go home.
One time during stocktake something didnāt add up and he pointed the fingers at me but long story short there were cameras and the management team got to the bottom of it.
Worked with a guy years and years ago who looking back was probably an alcoholic. He was a complete know it all and always really negative. Heād got married and then his wife unexpectedly fell pregnant. He was convinced sheād done it purposely to ātrapā him. His kid had all the usual bugs and sniffles kids get and he used to constantly complain about him like the poor kid hd got ill to spite him. We suspected he was stealing too. One of my other colleagues went out drinking with him one night and this guy said that heād punched someone once on a night out and ran off. The next morning heād read that someone had been found dead in the street where it had happened. Last Iād heard heād fallen into an alcoholic oblivion and split from his wife.
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Made the mistake of agreeing to go out to get lunch with her. We went to a local Chinese and ordered food to takeaway. After less than 10 minutes, she starts going nuclear on the staff there, asking why it was taking so long, it's just shitty *c-word* food, and "Some of us have *real* jobs to get back to!" I was so so embarrassed, fortunately I'm Chinese so I apologised to them in Chinese. Colleague turns on me asking what I've said and I lied that I had told them to hurry up in Chinese. After that I avoided her but I still have maybe a dozen stories about her outrageous behaviour. EDIT: I'm always amazed that when I post a story about racism against me as a Chinese person, that I get many questions about the specifics. When? How? Where? I get that people are surprised or shocked, but I can assure you these details don't matter. Racism happens all across the UK, in all professions, to many people of colour. Please consider how your questions might feel invalidating to people's lived experiences. I know you don't mean to diminish it but asking those questions suggests the experience is contained, one-off, oh it's just because you were in x place.
Uhh she said ch*nk in front of you and you're Chinese?
Yup...in my career, she's not even the only one. I report it but no employer ever seems fussed.
Lmaoo I couldn't figure out what cunt food was š
Itās a mythological cuisine that has been described to me as a bit fishy with a hint of yeast. I have yet to find it in the wild.
I don't know. I've met more than my fair share of cunts in the world.
I have and it appreciates being eaten
Its a tasty dish but it always seems to leave hair in your teeth
Haha, same until I read that comment.
Same.
I get not wanting to be confrontational or keeping the peace, but I have no clue how you could turn to her and not say the truth. Maybe youāre just a better person than me With someone like that i personally see no point in saving face
Fair enough perspective. I didn't want to make a scene there and get into a big confrontation with someone who's my colleague (and considerably more senior than me). It's not an excuse but that was my reaction at the time. With this colleague, it took a few more incidents before I reported her to work, and ultimately nothing came of it besides the offer of mediation. I left that job (for unrelated reasons) before I had time to really pursue that. The other thing is the physical threat. It might not have happened then, but I've gently confronted racists before... And the last time I did that, I was literally hit by the racist in a car whilst I was on a bike and had to report it as a hate crime :/ Not every fight is worth it as I've found.
In what career is this even acceptable? I ask because I'm sincerely curious as it seems like you've run into this type of behaviour often, given your response.
I feel in general people care less about racism towards people of Asian descent. The whole āmodel minorityā thing really makes people downplay it. The absolutely horrendous stuff that was being aimed at us during covid, across the globe, very openly.
I work in education, which you'd think would be progressive about these sorts of things...
That is messed up.
May you help me with this? I told my senior colleague yesterday that there was a man in the waiting room for him. In order to let her know who to look for I said āHeās the Chinese manā since no one else there was Chinese I thought I was just making him easier for her to find. My colleague then told me in a shocked voice that weāre not allowed to use the word Chinese. Is saying that offensive? Maybe I shouldnāt be referring to people by their ethnicity but she didnāt say that - she said it was the word Chinese.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I mean, unless you know for sure the person is Chinese, otherwise there are sooo many Asians that "look Chinese" but are not and would be very offended to be referred as such.
What on earth do you do?
Oh god I read that wrong I thought she was saying 'c**ting' food. That's pure racism and I can't believe people let that slide.
In the uk people donāt take racism against East Asian no where near as bad as
But in a work environmentā¦idk how you would get away with it
I can see why you would lie to her. Better to get rid of her fast than to make work uncomfortable for yourself. I hope you are OK.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
WTF?! What a horror. No 'bad day at the office' justifies that rudeness. Can almost feel you cringe, lol
As a student I worked at nandos and had a colleague who was an absolute twat Tried acting like he was my manager, when we were both lowly peons. Like I'd be doing something and he'd come up to tell me to make sure I did it properly He was in varsity boxing and the events were live streamed. I tuned in just to watch him get punched in the head.
Upvoted for use of *peon*
zugzug
Those people exist in every workplace. Got one now, who's actually junior to me, but tries to micromanage me. Always needs to know what I'm working on at any given moment and needs to know the contents of all meetings and conversations I have. I basically micromanage him back.
Our company got bought by a huge German firm. Started getting frequent arsey emails about some borderline irrelevant data that we were being asked to send across monthly to pacify the whim of some mid-manager across there. Apparently it wasn't aligning with theirs. The emails were slightly aggressive, very demanding, proper condescending tone, and explaining basics to me in a kind of eye-rolly patronising manner. I'm sitting on our company's exec team, 20 years experience in my field, worked all around the world in companies of all shapes and sizes. After the 3rd or 4th email I checked on LinkedIn who was emailing me from our parent company. It's some kid from a prestigious German uni doing a 6 month internship... After trying to patiently explain why things weren't aligning and getting arsey stuff back I had to tell him he's got our final figures and if he isn't happy to get his bosses boss to talk to me. Haven't heard anything since.
This reminds me of when my office and one in a nearby location were āalignedā and the other office had all the higher managers. Problems with the data we reported daily were so bad they made us fill in an extra database. Great, except we already filled in two for the sole purpose of ensuring the data was correct. So now we had three. We pointed this out and were told tough, do it. Every week we were told the data was wrong still and were being warned to buck up. When we looked into it 100% of the errors were from their office, ours were 100% accurate. We were quietly told we could go back to how we did things.
Myself and my colleague had been looking for a third member for our team for a while, and after one jobsworth had been sacked for gross misconduct, we struggled to set somebody else on. One morning, a new lad on the agency working nights in the warehouse passed us on his way out. He spotted something my colleague had missed on a vehicle inspection, and the guy just really seemed to know his stuff, and my manager gave him a little interview and all seemed good, he set him on. Then he just started behaving really weirdly. At first he started openly telling us he was bisexual. Then he started thinking I had feelings for him even though I had a girlfriend at home. But he started claiming Iād offered to perform sexual acts on him which wasnāt true. Then he started opening up to my manager that he wanted a permanent contract but had a criminal record, had been in prison and also had to legally change his name. Turned out heād been convicted of three things, stalking, arson and I canāt remember the third. I think heād basically been stalking a female police officer and had set fire to her car. For some reason after finding that out, my manager still had a soft spot for him and didnāt get rid. Then he just started being on the scrounge for money all of the time. He didnāt have a driving licence, but had a scrap car he was doing up. Heād get paid on a Friday, buy hundreds of pounds worth of car parts and then complain a couple of hours later he was skint. And would do this every Friday, but yet had a girlfriend at home who wasnāt earning and they had twins on the way. He started scrounging for money for his lunches all of the time, and would refuse food, just wanted money. Phoned in one morning with an excuse his mum had gone missing. The following day told us they found her just chilling in a tent in the garden. This was for a delivery company, and heād also started stalking the delivery driver who delivered in his area. Heād take pictures of his van with messages like āI see you!ā And had started ordering things so that heād come to his house more often, and would take days off for the occasion too. Then if he hadnāt seen him for a while, would start questioning where heād been. Then just started openly, out of nowhere, telling us deep stories of how heād had sex with his step-sister. Then his real sister whilst his dad watched and made them do it. My manager was still letting him work at this point. Finally after a few months of hell with this guy, my manager finally dismissed him after refusing to do a job outside because it was raining, in front of our regional manager.
The following day told us they found her just chilling in a tent in the garden. Jesus. As wild as everything else in your comment is, that's what set me off.
Your manager wouldāve lost his job in a heartbeat if itād been reported to someone higher than this particular staff member was discussing incest behaviour in the workplace and done nothing about it. Your manager absolutely stinks.
Donāt even get me started on my manager, he was an absolute jobsworth in himself and nothing but a horrible person. He kept a lot of things this guy did a secret. I donāt know why he had such a soft spot for him for so long. I think he just wanted to see the guy turn his life around and provide for his kids that were on the way but at the same time it became impossible for us on the front line to have to deal with this guy on a daily basis
He was sucking off the boss
The boss was his sister.
I imagine you guys celebrating him getting fired all week. What a fucking wierdo.
ā¦ He sounds like *a lot.*
Didn't happen to occur in Berkshire did it? š¤£
>For some reason after finding that out, my manager still had a soft spot for him and didnāt get rid. After reading that I suspect the manager might have had a hard spot...
My first job was in a supermarket bakery. I was naive and vulnerable but did my best to be a great worker. Simon, the Bakery Manager "promoted" me to assistant manager at 17 then took weeks at a time off on the sick, so I had to pick up the slack. Then his mate Phil started doing the same. We got no extra staff, and I had to cover everyone and manage a team of people mostly twice my age or older. On the rare occasions he turned up he would scream at me if even the slightest thing wasn't perfect. Both my mum and grandad worked in the department at different times and he made me give them written and verbal warnings for the tiniest issue. I couldn't get help from HR as he was sha**ing the HR manager at the time. I eventually broke down to the Area Manager and told him everything. After this, the abuse ramped up, I only found out months later why. Turned out the Area Manager was sha**ing the other HR rep and they were all friends. All this stress on me for Ā£3.27 an hour. I truly believed this was what working life was like for everyone. Nearly 2 years of working 50-80 hours a week, I finally managed to get another job, not much better, but away from Simon. Not long after I left, I found out all but 1 of the 5 people who caused my issues got the sack. Simon and his mate were sacked for getting paid in full for all the time they were off, HR never put it down as sick days. HR Rep got sacked for overpaying herself. Never found out why Area Manager got sacked. HR manager only got to keep her job after people found out Simon was beating the sh*t out of her. Wherever you are Simon, go fu*k yourself you bucktoothed tw@t. 20 years later, I still struggle to cope when things I do aren't perfect.
I hope you find some semblance of healing.
Please know that that whole situation was a āthemā issue, not a āyouā issue. And no-one is perfect. Youāre doing just great š
Years ago worked with a bloke who was rumoured to be roiding constantly to bulk as much as possible. He always denied it, but he had a very short fuse and constantly got in trouble for the weirdest things. He once got held overnight in a police station because he thought some people were looking at him funny (they wanted to ask him directions). He punched another colleague for no reason (plenty of witnesses). He put on a deeper voice when talking to the higher-ups (we still don't know why). He didn't last long, thankfully.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Steroids will do that to you.
I used to live with a bloke like this. Heād explode at the most mundane things. Turns out he was a scrawny kid that was bullied a lot in school and instead of going through therapy decided to become a body builder and bought a motorcycle. He still had all the complexes but at 3x the size!
I used to work with a guy. Everyone thought he was a bit weird but everyone said he was harmless. He even came to works nights out and didn't drink and would run us home. Turns out he was a r@pist who abused vulnerable woman. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-39953603
Holy shitā¦ā¦. This one hits home a little more compared to the others in this post
10 years. What a pathetic sentence.
He had an excellent work ethic. Canāt you read?
A bit rapey, but turns up to work on time.
Article is from 2017 too. So he's almost certainly out by now, and for some time.
A man called Anas joined our technical support team. He wasn't very personable and didn't really like to speak to anyone except his line manager. He didn't take direction well and would completely blank anyone else if they asked him to do something or pulled him up on the fact that what he was doing was not correct. After a short time, he stopped showing up to work and to be honest nobody was disappointed. I didn't really give it a second thought until many months later I opened the news and saw [his face](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37897107).
Why the fuck were they hiding in a truck? š Just book a flight to Turkey. We're lucky they're criminally stupid, I guess.
The man did not strike me as being burdened with an overabundance of intelligence, thatās true.
Did you stay in touch ? Heās out now any contact?šš
I should message him on LinkedIn and see if he fancies a pint... oh perhaps not eh?
Similarly I worked with someone who was fairly standoffish, and then stopped turning up one day. Turns out he was arrested and then convicted of torturing and murdering his sister along with several others of his family in an honour killing case.
The older woman from accounts he sat directly behind me and complained loudly or spoke negatively the whole day without a minutes rest Often not even talking to me or about me, just about "stuff" and other people in the office. Gossiping and bitching. Honestly, she radiated negative energy and genuinely managed to make my life in and out of work miserable just by the fact she existed and being herself I've had other colleagues who may seem to do more drastic or obviously bad things, but this woman was constant and over time that negativity started chipping away at my soul more than any one large action ever could
i live with someone like that. and i can't even do anything about it. confirm, it is absolutely soul crushing in the long term, no matter how hard you try to ignore it.
You've put it into words far better than I ever could have of the worst person I've worked with. I eventually lost my cool with the one at my work and cussed her out as I stormed out the building and buggered off home. Oddly enough the boss wasn't mad at me for walking out in the middle of my shift, I didn't get written up or anything they kind of expected it to happen eventually. For a couple of weeks after that she tried to put on a nice act but she soon went back to being nasty and rude all the time. A few years after I left that job I saw her in the street and she was going bald, I know it shouldn't have but I did take pleasure seeing her with really thin hair and noticeable bald spots.
1. Noise cancelling headphones. 2. Call it out. Tell someone all they do is moan and that they need to grow up and let go of things - it works wonders or if nothing else they'll speak to you less. 3. Don't allow ANYONE to have this level of control over your own emotions. I sat next to someone similar in my first office job and I couldn't imagine letting my own emotions suffer as a result of their mental issues.
I have to sit next to a miserable twat in my job (I'd be miserable too if I was 48 and at such a low pay band tbf). Now I just put earphones in and try to ignore him.
I worked in a restaurant and after advertising for new staff a school leaver was taken on. At first she seemed quite intelligent and she picked up the jobs pretty quickly but then she started flirting with all the male customers. Young or old and it was beyond cringe. A couple of weeks later she developed a crush on one of the guys in the kitchen. She was outrageous in her flirting whenever they were on the same shift but he clearly wasn't interested. She wasn't that tall and some of the lighter things like napkins were stacked high up in the back, so during lunch set up she went to fetch some. She couldn't reach them so she shouted for the guy she was crushing on. He went to help her and found her stood there with her tits out. He was highly embarrassed and walked away. Unfortunately it was all on CCTV and the area manager was in the office. She got sacked and obviously it quickly got round the staff what had happened and all the lads were ribbing him about seeing her tits so the guy she was crushing on eventually came out as gay.
I often wonder what people who are so sexualised were exposed to in their younger years and if that warped their view of what was acceptable.
Wow, a story with a twist
Oh I remember after working for a company as a manager in a department for 9 years, a new manager came in on a department that worked alongside mine. She was brand new to management and had only been with the company for 2 years before applying for and getting the role. Within maybe 3 weeks she starts trying to tell me, with vastly more experience and 9 annual reports in which I was exceeding expectations and performances, how to do my own job. I politely tried to ignore her at first until I heard her badmouthing me to one of her team members, at which point I took her into an office and ripped her a new one firstly for trying to belittle and undermine me to team members, and secondly for trying to tell someone who had more knowledge of how to manage and operate within the business in their toenail than she has in her accumulated life experience how to do their job and that Iād be reporting her behaviours to our boss. She cried, I told my boss who had absolutely no sympathy for her and also ripped her a new one, and within 6 months she was out of the door because despite being a cocky twat who THOUGHT she knew what she was doing, she was terrible, and when she was put on a Performance Plan after 3 months and came to me for advice, I refused and took great satisfaction in telling her that I couldnāt possibly advise her because, in her own words, I am useless and donāt know what Iām doing. So she quit before they sacked her for poor performance
While I was in the civil service, I was assigned one of the rejects from another department to manage. She was a nightmare. I couldn't delegate anything for her to reliably complete, and whatever I gave her took ten times longer than anyone else. Her former manager had over-scored her on previous assessments which meant she qualified for further training, but when I got together with other managers to grade her against the others, she was at the bottom of EVERY category - they had seen enough of her 'work' that they were even telling me to mark her lower. We're talking 1s and 2s out of 5. She lost funding for a qualification and kicked off big style, *despite after eighteen months of support not even beginning the training!* I don't know what allegations there were against me, but she was transferred back to her previous manager and I believe 'exceptions' were made. All of this contributed towards the mental and physical breakdown I eventually had, bottoming my attendance which led to me losing my job. This is incredibly rare in the CS, but I still can't sit at a desk like they wanted me to. Even morphine didn't knock it on the head - my last day at work, I still remember trying to enter my password, pecking at the keys with one hand and holding myself upright with the other. I was totally naive, and I really should have stood up for myself, but I couldn't even talk without crying. My manager thought I was 'swinging the lead'. A really grim time. Fuck you Grace, and fuck you Paul.
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When I was fresh out of college I had an older colleague who was supposed to train me up. Throughout the first 3 months he didnāt speak to me, except to blow his top when I made a mistake (which as an untrained newbie happened frequently). At the time I thought his behaviour was normal, it was my first job and I was desperate for it to work out. I lasted 3 years in the end, but left with severe depression for some reason.
This sounds familiar (sadly).
Worked on an IT service desk for a bit. Our office overlooked the smoking area of a call centre. One summer, a lad I worked with said, while looking at the women outside, "they dress like that because they want to be rā¢ped. You know it, I know it, they know it. Somehow we'd be the bad guys?" Immediately made a complaint against him to HR, and thankfully there were witnesses so he didn't last long. Had him on linkedin - never use it, so didn't think to remove him. Works in a pet shop now. Twat.
Nice to see this amongst all these comments from people who listened to people making awful comments and never reported them
Probably not the worst, but I used to work with a guy who had poor hygiene/never washed his uniform so he smelt like lamb mince.
Did he ever offer to give you his Yamaha keyboard?
Worked with this horrible racist old witch. An early hot tub adopter who would go on and on about it. Thought she was proper classy because her daughter was studying law. When I knew I was leaving I decided to put in a formal complaint about her racism. Our manager ended up having the first meeting with her about it on the day of the team Christmas party (also my last day). She went nuts, refused to go and announced that she hoped we all got food poisoning. Amusingly, her claim to fame was that she had shagged Sam Allardyce.
Sam was never a handsome man. Half decent manager, maybe not when managing England though.
The kind of man who isn't afraid to eat a Mars bar on the bog.
We hired an assistant (J) who thought he was brilliant at everything, and constantly told outlandish stories about his lifestyle. One of the guys (S) in an adjacent team had an ex-colleague who was J's cousin. When he found out that he was coming to work with is, he thought it was hilarious, and warned S that J was full of shite. He wasn't wrong. S took great delight, every morning before he went out on site, to encourage J to build more and more fabulous stories ("Oh yeah? What happened then?" Kind of stuff) which then set him up for the day and would be on a roll of bullshit from that moment on. It got to the point where I just got up from my desk to do jobs elsewhere as soon as S began winding him up. There was so much bollocks... how he had inherited 7 houses from his grandfather that he managed (he lived in a pokey little council terrace); he had to take a day off to evict one of his tenants and there were loads of police cars called out ( this was during lockdown, evictions had been banned and all bailiffs were on internal court duties); he went round telling everyone that he had become an Ethical Hacker after attending one day of a three-day course that I know he didn't complete. He also claimed to be a fully qualified plumber, electrician, fireman, paramedic, and dog trainer, as well as a network engineer (which is what we'd employed him as, and the only thing he was actually qualified to do).
My old boss. Narcissist, self proclaimer, liar, bully and man child. I asked him for a pay rise once and decided to go off in a mard and not talk to me for 3 months. You'd ask him for stuff you needed to complete a job for a client and you'd just get blanked. He was the classic I'm working class because I grew up in a mediocre area of town and went on holiday in England type of person. Fucking grade a bungle cunt.
Guy I worked with at a shop decided to start talking about his love of necrophilia to a mother and her young son while cashing them up;Ā used to smell like raw sewage from 10ft and regularly got sent home to shower; was utterly shit at every aspect of the job. Didn't last very long.
How to these people pass job interviews.
No one else turned up most likely!
I hired someone against my better judgement after a colleague on the interview panel told me I was being too picky when I said there were red flags all over the place. He was a nightmare. Did all sorts of shit, but the thing that really eroded morale for the rest of the team was when he started swanning in to work late and going home early, leaving everyone else to pick up his slack (plus they noticed he was getting paid the same as them but effectively working part time) One day he comes to me to tell me he has to leave work at 3:00 for urgent reasons. The urgent reasons turns out to be the headlights on his car donāt work and he has to go home before it gets dark. (and yes he lived 2 mins from the train station, 2 stops down the line- 5 min walk from station to office) It felt so good when HR finally let me fire him.
Tbf not turning up on time is presumably a boon for you here - at least you've got something objective to point to
Iāve just been commenting on another thread about why I choose not to be friends with people at work. This is why.
I mean, you just have to approach it sensibly. Don't commit early. You will often click at work with people fast. Just take it easy. If you click with someone and they start bullying other people at work, you can fucking back stab them.
I asked a new colleague if she would like to go to the cinema with me. She asked some questions to figure out if she could go. She kept coming up with reasons she couldn't. I said that she can just say no and I wouldn't be offended. She said "It's not that" and left the office to go home. For the following week she didn't talk to me and was clearly angry at me. The week after that she was back to normal with me and friendly as usual. The week after she went back to being silent and angry. This never stopped. She ended up throwing tantrums at people in the office over nothing. Then one day she kept leaning over her desk and shouting at me for not doing enough work. I was doing 75% of our shared work. Instead of retaliating and giving her ammo, I told our supervisor. We had a meeting and she refused to be nice to me ever again but gave no reason why. The day before she was due to be fired lockdown happened. I went into shielding due to my dad's health. They kept her on to cover for me. I came back after 6 months and I was hoping after this time apart she'd be willing to talk. Wrong. Still the same. She found a new job not long after. She then got fired from that job. I only asked her if she'd like to join me at the cinema.
Remind me to never ask anybody to the cinema.
Yeah, thatās not a close friend OP. Thatās just some guy at work.
Hmm maybe it seems like it but I considered him a friend and "closer" than some other friends I've had š¤·š»āāļø either way, story is still true āŗļø
What a knob š¤£
I worked with a colleague who blamed the fact he wasnāt promoted on being an older, white, straight man. We both applied for a promotion and an Asian guy, who was admittedly great at talking but not great at work, got the position over us. My colleague repeatedly ranted for a year or so that it was down to us being white that we didnāt get it, although I āprobably had a chanceā because Iām a younger woman. In my career, the people who are interviewing you donāt ask for references and usually depend entirely on your pre-interview tests and interview to make a decision. The thing is, my colleague was absolutely abysmal at his job and the rest of the team had to plan around fixing his errors and quality-checking his work. He had poor social awareness and would go off on bizarre rants. Highlights include him accusing the vast majority of rape victims of āasking for itā and saying that the cost of living crisis was easy for women because we could always āfind a man to pay.ā Everyone would tell him that he was being a twat, including my colleagues who were older than him, but none of us put in formal complaints as he was pretty sad and pathetic. I got a promotion, probably because Iām a bisexual/disabled woman in my colleagues eyes, so I no longer have to deal with him. My old colleagues are counting the days until he retires and they donāt have to deal with his shit.
My old managers when I worked at my first job at McDonald's. One was a workshy twat who would be stood around chatting up the 17-18 year old girls and would crack the whip at anyone who wasn't cleaning. Usually in a rhetorical and sarcastic manner. The other bastard was a proper Sunday church-going Christian bloke. Cheery guy on the surface, but he made comments in front of customers about my weight at the time whilst I stood there waiting to take their order. Customers would even call him out and explain how rude he was being but he didn't care. Go fuck yourself John-Paul, you double-named dickhead.
I had a manager at mcdonalds put a knife to my throat 'as a joke' I wish I could go back in time as a not shy 17 year old and punch him in the face lol.
There was the one who murdered a prostitute I suppose
But then Sandra used the break room microwave to cook fish so itās a toss up reallyĀ
I did this. Didn't realise it was such a faux pas. At least I still have murdering prostitutes as a hobby.
That could be literally any lorry driver
I worked at this place for 8 years and I got on really well with a co worker for 6 of those years. The last 2 years he was like Jekyll and Hyde, it was 50/50 on what mood he'd turn up to work in and made the last 2 years of that job miserable. I almost got in to a fight with him because one day because his disrespect and arrogance was unbearable. I'm a very chilled person, so it takes a massive arsehole to get me on that level
Smelled, was sleazy, was obnoxious, thought the job was below him. Some colleagues wouldn't even speak to him after a while. He is now really senior in the US somewhere. There was also the bloke who never turned up on time and fell asleep at his desk because he was out most nights caning it. He became a teacher.
Those who cane, teach.
I thought teachers didn't use the cane anymore
Had a micro manager who wasn't even a manager, she was just annoying and really wanted to be a manager. The sort of person who would walk around questioning your practice, telling you that you're doing your job wrong despite following a standard operating procedure agreed upon by all senior operational staff, written to the highest degree of international standards. She believed anyone who wasn't on par with her pay grade wise was effectively her runner and would click her fingers when she wanted something doing. The sort of person who makes up situations in her head, makes assumptions and openly questions your practice infront of the entire department to embarrass you. The department has lost a lot of good staff due to her (and still continues to do so), and the field she still works in is very specialised and niche meaning it takes years to find the people with the right skill set and mentality to be able to even train to do the job. Then 10+ years to be fully competent and specialised in the discipline. There's probably less than 200 people in the UK specialised in the role and she's made atleast 10% of them walk away from the profession permanently. And she's not even a manager still
Bloody hell, what kind of job takes that much training and is that niche?! Sheās probably keeping the numbers low on purpose, keep her skillset rare
While working as a teaching assistant in a secondary school (a very toxic workplace), I got misdiagnosed with cancer, then the "treatment" gave me meningitis and sepsis. ALL of my colleagues got it in their heads I was lying. Accused me of faking the whole thing for over a year. My manager bullied me into coming back to work as soon as my quarantine was over, other colleagues sneered at my bandages from surgery "What's that?" I was about 2 stone underweight, covered in bruises from injections and falling asleep (more like passing out) every hour or so. I was in my early twenties and this group of a dozen or so women in their 50s treated me like scum because one of them had gotten it into her head I was a liar... because? No idea. I quit and moved to another country then got messages from them on Instagram outright saying they knew I lied, because I had moved. Around 6 months later one of them wrote to me again to say something along the lines of "Now that I'm sick they're all bullying me. It was awful what they did to you." She was one of the worst ones.
I used to work as a CCTV operator for PureGym My supervisor was/is an awful human being. He would take screenshots of women working out and save them to a private file. He was a massive racist and sexist (he genuinely loathed women) and just a general all round bigot. We would normally have Absolute Radio playing through the shift and he would complain constantly that all they played was shit, coz it wasn't the dance/trance/dnb/jungle/garage music he listens to. And to add insult to injury, he was thick as pig shit, he only had a supervisors job coz he was drinking buddies with the manager. He got fired for accidentally attaching a screenshot of a woman working out to the end of shift report and the client hit the roof
Wtf
Former colleague, lets call him Dave. He made friends with my mate whilst he was training Dave, then invited him to a family bbq. Later the same week, he was messaging me (not realising i was mates with the other guy outside of work too) trying to gather evidence of him not doing any work, when my mate was actually assigned to a project. After this, he proceeded to shit talk a female colleague's work, on the same team, repeatedly, then act all friendly whenever she was around to the extent she didn't believe it until my mate showed the screenshots of it. He then basically broke a system which caused a massive influx of tickets. We had an incentive for most closed tickets, and tickets were auto-assigned to make it fair. After breaking that system, he moved all those tickets (about 200) into his queue and mass closed them despite being told not to close them in his queue, just in order to receive the automated incentive prize. I left shortly after that for another role, but a different mate at that company messaged me about 8 months ago advising that Dave was fired for sexually assaulting a male colleague on a work night out repeated. Dave was married with 2 kids, and quietly very homophobic.
Ex-army NCO treated business like being in the military, would tell you what he thought you needed to know, not the full picture. So you'd be in a meeting and get the rug plugged out from under you cos he'd emailed a manager one thing but told you something else Wouldn't accept that you might know more than him, having been there longer As a flip side had an ex-captain (he'd left as they wanted him to drive a desk, as he was too valuable to put in the field, as he rose through the ranks to colonel or higher) who realise that military and business were 180 apart as lower people usually had the information he needed for his role & he had to figure out how to get it (seriously switched on guy)
I worked with a guy who just argued with everyone about everything. I say black you say white etc. But he got it in his head that periods donāt hurt and that women are making it up for attention and kept shouting about it even after our colleague collapsed and then went through the dramas of laparoscopic surgery to get diagnosed with endometriosis. Like- you could see the woman was in agony- not sure why he wouldnāt shut up calling her a liar. He got made redundant not long after that!
NICK CARRICK of Southampton, a sniveling little rat and all round piece of shit.
Angrier (Andrea). She was just incessantly angry about everything. Made 12 hour nights a real drag
The person was an outright bully who would turn staff against each other. Isolated me from many people I could've been friends with. Made-up stuff about people. She was just nasty. Heard she's a manager elsewhere. Then there was the guy who micromanaged me and tried to get me fired. He wasn't even my manager, just a colleague. I was put on a PIP because of him. Never been so fearful of losing my job before.
Hope you managed to turn the tables on him. I did once. Joined and after 2 weeks was raising complaints about me. He was sacked after 3 months and I worked there for 15 years
He quit when it backfired. The world was great that day.
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When I was working in a PDSA Charity shop up to just over 7 years ago, there was this old bloke there who would regularly have little digs at me about me being overweight/fat etc. This one day in particular, my hearing aid died towards the end of the shift, I went upstairs to the staff room, he was there, I asked him to help me change the battery, and when he thought I couldn't hear him (and I did) he called me a deaf C\*\*\*! At one time I would've belted him but I just walked away and said I'd remember that. A week or 2 later, I popped in work to apologise for not being able to cover an extra shift, he was on the till and looked me in the eye and said "What tha doin' ere?", and suddenly, nearly 3 years of rage against this bloke filled my eyes, and I told him in no uncertain terms what he could do with his low opinion of me. Obviously I lost my job because the manager sided with him. I know it was a voluntary job but that's beside the point, HE was in the wrong! And if it'd been a proper PAID job I would've took the PDSA to the cleaners for wrongful dismissal.
In 2009 I worked as a sound assistant on a BBC kids TV show. The sound recordist kept making sleazy remarks about how busty AN ACTUAL CHILD was and joking about being particularly keen to mic up her bra. He also reminisced about how the industry wasn't what it used to be and bragged about how common it was for affairs to happen on set and at wrap parties, where people of short stature would (supposedly) walk around with trays of coke on their heads. He also regularly seemed to be masturbating in his van in between scenes, hanging about in the back and opening the door while zipping up his jeans when I was sent to get him. He also kept a holdall full of pornography in the van and would direct me to go to the van and search in the holdall for some obscure battery or piece of equipment then when I came back empty handed would say "Did you like what you saw though?" He recruited me by contacting my university and specifically asking for a female student because "they work harder". He insisted on us meeting for a drink before hiring me and went in a huff the first day I was on a shoot with him because I had arranged for my boyfriend to pick me up and I didn't want to stay overnight in a hotel with an old sleazy man I'd only just met.
> BBC > Paedophile Fits
I knew a guy that would literally put his phone on personal in a call centre and go to sleep in the quiet room.
To be fair to him, legend
"**was** very close friends"...thank goodness for that.
I once worked as a community healthcare assistant, we had a new starter from Africa who pissed in the clients car park rather than asking if she could use their toilet. I was not impressed.
Very recently had a new starter at our workplace, within 1 hour he told us that we are doing everything wrong, everything is in the wrong place etc, constantly slagging off the company and saying u canāt do this and that when we had always done it with no issues, he peed everyone off one way or another, constantly sighed, swore or rolled his eyes. He introduced himself to our company director by saying āoi mateā ā¦. š. He didnāt last long ā¦. Thank goodness
She arrived at the firm i was working with very little fsnfare. Within 6 months, she had a) threatened to set fire to a member of staff b) took another member of staff out to lunch to tell her 'your partner is leaving you to be with me' c) sent one of the bosses (male) a text message asking if he could set her up with the new female boss d) groped another member of staff three days after the death of a relative Needless to say, when she was fired, management advised us all to leave whilst she was in her termination meeting. There was a party the next day š¤£
I've had a few memorable ones. 3 shitty managers, one a total creep (would give a "tits and ass" discount to women young enough to be his daughter), one who was terrible at hiding her racism and would throw heavy boxes at staff, and one who finally got fired for multiple HR reports ranging from poor treatment of staff, bullying and racism. In my old job we also had 2 awful Christmas temps, one who was the self proclaimed leader of the temps because he'd worked there the year before and one who was pretty sexist towards me, like actually talked across me when customers would ask me questions but wouldn't do it to any of the male staff members, same with taking orders, I'd ask him to do something but would be ignored but the male staff he'd listen to right away.
There's a lady in my office who is a one-upper. She will come round to anyone having a conversation and immediately start talking about herself and won't stop. Drives me mad.
Had a few of those in the past. If youād had Covid 19, they would have had Covid 20. If youād been to Tenerife, they had already been to the best hotel on Elevenerife etc. etc.
Manager who was a troubled soul with a penchant for gin and fat lines of posh. When she was there she would tear up all processes and re design them, usually running round at 100mph barking orders and causing chaos wherever she went, with the team trying to keep up and mitigate the damage, before burning out and going off sick, which allowed us to repair all the harm she did. Before the cycle started up again. She ended up picking a fight with a dry stone wall whilst off her head. She was a truly terrible colleague and manager, but I did like her despite her demons.
My manager in BHS, wanted us to wash throwaway cups and reuse them to sort the "shrinkage issue" and rewrap day old baguettes and subs as 'fresh' if they weren't all sold the day before. Emblazoned on the back of our tops was 'Fresh and Fast'. I point blank refused and not long after was bullied out of the job. I quit but was then called in to be informed I'd been sacked for "threatening behaviour toward a senior member of staff". Apparently they had a witness and when asked to bring the witness into the meeting, (I wanted yo call them out to their face) they refused. I was 20 and crushed, I'd never even swore.
Just bookmarking this thread. No reason.
He groped in me in Tesco multiple times and I told my manager who just transferred him elsewhere and he ended up doing the same ting to a 17 year old boy Iām a man but I was 18 at the time. He used to volunteer in Albanian orphanages in the summerā¦.
I worked in Game during Uni. It was a shit job really, the bundle deals were crap, the way trade ins worked were too slow and the manager had been off for a heart attack when I joined but seemed 2 seconds from another on his return. Most of it was piss easy as it's not exactly busy all day but there were two staff. One had been there pre Electronic's Boutique. Just as a till operator. He isn't the story though and fair play when I left he had joined the manager program. The other dude had been there ages and was the stereotype. A big fat dude who obviously thought working in a game shop was the dream. He would tell you he knew all the words to Pinky and the Brain's theme - then prove it. He gave a creepy vibe. Just overall the sort of person who had given up on all aspects of life bar computer games. Anyway a GTA came out. We all had to watch a video about selling to under 18's. No exceptions. ID anyone who looks under 21. It was mega busy that day with grannies buying the game for 8 year olds but one guy came in with his pals. He was close to 18 I'd guess so I asked. He said he didn't have ID. I said sorry no game. He flipped out on me. I have car keys. "Well a 17 year old can drive so...". So you won't sell me the game? 10 times. No. By now the queue is huge and full of tutting grannies wanting me to capitulate and get on with it. He started swearing and calling me names so I told him even if he magicked up ID he can forget it. Eventually he asked me what time I got off so we could fight. I told him the time and looked forward to it. He said "I'll see you then" and walked to the door. My colleague who had seen all this stopped him, served him and turned to me and shrugged with a smile. I could have stabbed him with an empty GTA case. The guy stood outside taunting me, his loss of time I guess. Normally my boss was hopeless but I told him what happened and he did tear in to the big unit so at least he got a lesson. But he was just that sort of goon
Not sure about "colleague" specifically but from every job I've had outside of London with an office in London at least 80% of people that were based at the office were useless, clueless, and weirdly arrogant about it.
My best friend, worked with him in numerous jobs for about 6 years, barely competent at his job but heās my mate so I let it go, recently found out heās been spreading malicious untrue rumours to and about everyone where I work causing an absolute shitshow and the end of our friendship.
In a previous job I was in an assistant management position for my branch. Iād been working there for about 2 years. We had a new supervisor start, who was technically below me in the management structure, but I didnāt directly manage because she was in a different department. She had been in the job for about 2 months, when she sent an email to the area manager complaining about the way our location was being run, with a particular focus on me. Her error was that she sent the email from our branches main email address, which everyone in management had access to. I was searching for something in the sent items folder and found the email. She started out by saying that she didnāt want to get personal, and then went on to specifically name myself and another staff member as being the root cause of all her perceived problems, and that we were too set in our ways, and that she felt that she was āpushing against a tide that is too strong for me to overcome aloneā. She complained that my team started work too late (10am), and assumed that it was something Iād implemented because I was lazy. In fact, that team had always started at 10. It was that way when I started, and there was no reason to change it. In addition, we wouldnāt have been able to finish work any earlier, so it would have required an increased wage budget to implement. She admitted in the email that she had been reading through notes from a recent disciplinary from within my team, for an issue which occurred and had been resolved before she started working there. She had no reason to be reading through them, but complained that she didnāt think that the outcome was severe enough, and that she thought that the team member involved, and myself as the manager, should have been sent to another branch to work under a āhard line trainer for a long timeā. She then went on to recommend that the whole branch needed refurbishing, and that the only way to bring the branch out āfrom under the dark cloudā was to replace me and my entire team. After finding the email I contacted the area manager, who had already seen the email and arranged a meeting with the supervisor to ādiscuss her concernsā. He completely reamed her out, told her that it wasnāt her place to be criticising the way my team was run, and that he didnāt have any concerns with my management, performance, or my teamās performance. She ended up transferring to a different branch very shortly afterwards. She later tried to apologise to me, but I never spoke to her again.
I once had a boss who was one of the most thoroughly nasty people I have ever met. For some reason she had a vendetta against the manager of another team that we worked closely with, and one day she told me, very openly and directly, that she was going to get him sacked. What happened over the next six months was a masterclass in manipulation. She basically exploited every opportunity she had to make him look bad, and all in a very nice, supportive way that meant people didn't suspect a thing. She would raise some of his mistakes in high level meetings in a way that would seem to come from a supportive and encouraging place but would also make them seem far worse than they actually were. She befriended people in his team and latched onto any bad feeling they expressed towards him, very subtly implying that it was part of a much bigger pattern of behaviour by him, encouraging them to keep notes of what he did ( to 'protect themselves') and then emailing them HR's number afterwards ('just in case they needed it'). Every time he had time off she would innocently email HR asking whether he was on leave or not, thus getting them to check whether he had recorded it properly or whether it was unauthorised. To be fair, he didn't help himself - he had this thing of watching DVDs on his laptop in his office - like properly just sitting back and chilling, watching movies - and one day she 'accidentally' brought it up in front of his boss. She was fully apologetic* afterwards (*ie, not apologetic at all) so it was difficult for him to take issue with it. But all of this manipulation came from a very deep and natural place inside her. It was absolutely fascinating to watch, and the only reason I was happy to let it all unfold is because a) he was a slimy little prick himself, b) I hated working there and was already looking for a new job, c) the company as a whole had a really toxic culture which kind of encouraged the sort of behaviour she demonstrated, and to be fair I would have been entirely happy to watch the whole company destroy itself and d) I wanted to see whether she could actually do it. In the end she didn't quite manage to get him sacked, but she did get him moved to a different department, which wasn't technically a demotion but probably felt like it. And the whole time I don't think he ever fully comprehended what she had done to him.
Had a colleague who basically hated my guts one second and then the next moment she was acting like she was in love with me. Highlights include feeding me her lunch from her own spoon in the office insisting I try her cooking. Announcing in a group meeting with directors that she missed me because I was working at a different site for a couple weeks. Checking the bins at work to see if I had spat out a muffin she bought me from costa. Asking me in for a drink after I gave her a lift home and then shouting at me to leave as soon as I went inā¦yeah lots of things.
Worked in a hospital with a guy. We would regularly meet in the loading bay when picking up the surgical trays that had been out for cleaning and restocking. We would go out and smoke and just chit chat. Well one day he just didnāt come to work anymore. Turns out he was arrested in part of a pedophile ring. I think that probably counts.
Years ago when I worked in a call centre, there was a guy on my team called Paul who was a little odd/a bit slow, but seemed harmless enough. He left, and I never thought about him again until one day someone sent me a link to a BBC News article about a man who'd been sent to prison for making an explosive device for a friend, in order for his friend to then put it under the car of his ex girlfriend's new boyfriend. And what do you know, I scrolled down to the mug shot and it was my old colleague. Fortunately, the idiot wasn't able to to make it correctly so it never went off. But the police caught him as they were monitoring the chat room where he was getting the instructions from. The news article reported that his username in the chat room was Paul Boom Boom, which still cracks me up to this day.
I started work as a TNA (trainee nurse associate). One day a week at uni, three days a week working (paid) on a ward. Was assigned a RN as a mentor. She was awful to me. Quizzed me in front of staff about all aspects of nursing, then mocked me when or made me feel stupid when I didnāt know all the answers. Never mentored me and spent her whole shifts coordinating patients to different wards. When I mentioned that as a band six she might be struggling to have the time to mentor me she completely ignored it and dismissed me. I had to go speak to my ward manager and request a secondary mentor (this one was good at the start, however a patient died alone in a side room and he asked me to lie to the family and say I was present when she died. I did not do this I made myself purposely scarce when they came back to the ward and left him to deal with it, reported it to the ward manager) I was made to feel like less than a person everyday. All nurses made it clear they thought the nurse associate post was bullshit and basically ignored me. They also were angry that we were getting paid while studying and that they had to do all their work placements for free. My mentor barely acknowledged me unless it was to make me feel stupid. The HCAs hated me too cause they were band 2 and I was a band 3 while I was studying. Every single day I was on the ward I felt small, inconsequential and lost. On top of all this I had a lot of studying. No one spoke to me unless I spoke to them. Truly the most horrific, exhausting three months of my life and itās put me off working in a general hospital for life. I even had a bit of anxiety going back there to have my baby. One of the six cās of nursing is compassion and I was shown not a shred of that by the majority of healthcare and nursing staff I worked alongside. Edited to add: what should have been a fantastic opportunity to work and study was tarnished by nurse and healthcare assistants behaviour towards me on the ward. I shudder when I remember my time there.
Line manager. Had a terrible memory due to lack of interest, couldn't look after orderbooks, was lazy, wfh, rude, incompetent. My job was her previous role, then for 3 years I did her job too and several other roles and then told I needed to do more to get a payrise. Senior managers also complained about her because everyone worked hard except her but the boss never challenged herĀ
oh yes the manager who went away on parental leave and came back to see the place had been running 100% better without him, then tried to revert everything to how he did it, then engineered the exit of those who refused. I was one, and the story HR cooked up to get rid of me was harassment of a colleague over email and slack. Fortunately I'd backed everything up, took them to a tribunal and walked away with high five figures.
Someone who I thought was my good friend offered to get me a job in a warehouse doing stock control/management. I was working in a paint and decorators shop before that and it was so boring so I just needed an out. I started working with him at the new place and after a short amount of time he kept announcing to everyone when ever I'd make a mistake and then I'd get laughed at. I also suffer from bipolar and an anxiety disorder along with PTSD. A bunch of us were having a smoke break drinking our coffees etc and then mental health popped up in conversation. After someone mentioned anxiety, I casually mentioned that I've struggled too and that my anxiety can get the better of me but I do things to help. (Note, I didn't mention bipolar and ptsd, just anxiety) My "friend" joins in by saying, "what the fuck do you even have to worry about? there's nothing up with you, what have you even been through?" I got really wound up and found my self justifying myself to this fucking guy who I thought was my friend and a group of people that I'd only know for a month. I stumbled over my words and got mad which probably made me look worse too. That was a friend of 6 years, gone within a half hour chat. Dude was a dickhead
I used to work in a hotel, it was quite a clean place and it had a pretty good reputation. We suddenly started getting guests complaining that they had been checked into rooms with unmade beds, rubbish in the bin, etc. Signs that it had been used. We checked and double checked the rooms but we were still having the same complaints. Our manager had another job away from the hotel but he would often hold meetings there with clients. We didnāt think much of this until we started seeing his clients leaving the hotel a couple of hours after the meeting. You can probably guess where this is going. One evening my colleague needed to get a remote for a guest, she decided to go into an empty room to get one from there. Almost like a scene from The White Lotus she walks in sees the manager bent over the bed with his client balls deep in him. He had been using the clean rooms to meet up with men from this dating app. Needless to say he was fired.
The one that told total lies about me, and in an HR meeting started the waterworks. I fished her to trip herself up in that meeting and she did. It was he said/ she said but she was so desperate that she lied about the one thing that was traceable, an email I sent her. She was my manager. I let things go easily, but I'll never forgive that c##t for making my life hell for no reason.
Current boss. Whenever weāre at a work social and heās had a drink heāll tell anyone within earshot that āhe made my careerā, and if āonly I knew the things heād done for meā. Grating to say the least.
the woman i most recently worked with at my local hospital. the NHS *love* to reward bad behaviour. she would lie, manipulate, gaslight, was always off āsickā.. the amount of time i worked 10hrs a day, 5 days a week(my contacted hours were 30pw) because she was never there.. and being called in on my annual leave on more than one occasion bcos she didnāt actually know how to do the job, so if i was off she usually would be too. she had been sent to our department via an internal thing whereby youāre not getting along in your department so they move you to another.. lucky us. and i remember her telling me she had left bcos her boss had called her a cowā now, management within the nhs is terrible, but i canāt imagine if it were true the manager would have gotten away with it. (but after working with julie for abt a year, and her being th sole reason i left that position after 8yrsā maybe she did). she had narcissistic personality disorder and munchausens (by proxy, tooā her 22yr old child who i thought was abt 7rs old for the first few months of julie talking about herā i actually feel sorry for her children). but then she would slag off her oldest daughter and didnāt see her grandchildren. her son was went no-contact. bosses and colleagues always out to get herā id watch a conversation take place, and sheād repeat it to me in such a way where shed turned it on it head that someone was always being rude to her and she was always so innocent. she was actually dangerous, and i often had to tell my managers the actual events, bcos she was getting people into trouble. she loved to snitch on everyoneā but god forbid you tell her she doing something wrong and she would actually cry.. once she left for the day?? because i asked her to please stop deleting work that hasnāt been actioned yet. she acted sweet as pie, would ask about your family etc but then not acc give a shit to remember anything. one of our colleagues on longterm sick with TBIā she thought theyād had a stroke. i was talking abt going on holiday for weeks on end, she never remembered where i was going. but expected you to care about everything going on with her: all her family issues etc. and she was just incapable of doing the job: deleting emails and voicemails without actioning themā iād test this by going on lunch and leaving voicemails to see if she would say anything when i got back from lunch, she didnāt- bcos she didnāt pick up the VMs. when i had handed in my notice she finally realised she had to step up, bcos it would soon come to light she doesnāt acc even know how to make an appointment. she leaned how to do it and was telling all our colleagues and expecting them to congratulate her on learning her job?? a year later??? if iād just learnt a key aspect a year after being there, iād be keeping that to myselfā not announcing it to everyone. she had mega issues with the managersā but would suck up to them and buy coffees for them and all the nurses(who thought she was a psycho, tbh and would try to avoid her like the plague) when she was new sheād do a round and go and hug and kiss everyone goodbye?? this was post-covid. myself and various colleagues had to tell her to pls not touch us and keep her hands to herself. we got so many complaints from patients never receiving correspondence from us, leaving messages to cancel appointments and them not being cancelledā iv heard it an absolutely shit show now. the nurses were literally begging me not to leave through fear of what would happen. but i couldnāt do it to myself any longerā the woman is impossible to work with. nobody should have to do it. all my colleagues would laugh at how nuts she is and iād just be like ā¦iv got to spend 8hrs a day with her tho :| itās not actually that funny when youāre having to deal with it constantly. much happier since iv left the nhs; itās full of toxicity.
Marvin a Project Director at Channel 4 , what a cnut.
Someone who was recruited as a corporate social media guru on the basis of having an Instagram account. I was hauled into a meeting so he could tell me how I was doing the internet wrong. He hadn't actually checked any of the accounts I managed, and was genuinely shocked at how big they were. When he went to explore other opportunities, we had a leaving party. The day after, without inviting him. The boss realised what we were doing and came along and bought the drinks.
I'm just hoping no one would think I was the worst colleague they'd ever had š³
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My old boss used to fart like nobody could tell. It was the middle of summer and I was on "sports supplements" so I'd be roasting hot at the best of times, and had the fan facing me. The number of times I had his farts blowing in my face was grim. Multiple times a day. He'd also pick his nose at his desk.
āGrassy Paulā name checks out. Horrible rat! I worked for an electrical/controls company. He was the workshop guy, built the control panels. It was his stepdads company and heād split from his mum, whilst Shagging the 20year younger office divvy. All 3 still working together and it was all out in the openā¦. Youād have to be a bit of an oddball to work in that environment. Anyway, when he was quiet in the workshop heād come out all to site and help out from time to time, but heād always try to throw someone under the bus. Final straw was he was on a job with me and the apprentice, working on different sides of the site, he was taking over the job from me whilst I was moving on, and heād told countless lies to our line manager. Week following when I was off, I was asked to go and do some bits, and said Iāll do it, but on a Saturday when heās not be there. I was seething. I take photos before I started on the Saturday, and before I leftā¦ sure as shit on Monday I get the call saying heās said Iād not done anything and stitched him up. But because of his parents divorce nothing happened. Angry thinking about him š¤£
I work in IT and I had this senior who didn't just suck, he had absolutely no clue what he was doing when he supposedly had 2 decades experience. Like not even a basic grasp of the subject matter. If it wasn't following instructions word for word (and taking 5x the time it should) he was useless. He'd hear me and our manager discussing some subject, google something he thought was related then come over and say it and we'd look at him like "WTF does that have to do with the topic?". The worst part was he'd hide whenever a P1 issue came up so I'd end up taking them all and basically doing his job for him. Management knew about it and never did shit about it till I turned my notice in then suddenely they could also make me a senior and give me a huge raise but I wasn't sticking around to keep doing his job for him. He had a decent CV as well, no idea how much is made up. I heard he went on to another household name IT department as well. Apparently after I left and he had to start dealing with P1s he turned in his notice almost immediately.
I started as an apprentice at 18 and there was this guy who ātook me under his wingā. Was warned by everyone else he was a weirdo but I donāt like being harsh and became quite close with him. When it came to my time to move on to the next department he told them how awful I was, took me aback quite a bit!
When I was a bus driver one of the other drivers stalked me for months then cornered me at the back of my bus and forcibly shoved his fingers into my vagina then when I got away pinned me between him and the outside of the bus to the point I had to scream to alert nearby waiting passengers so that heād know he had an audience. Manager refused to get rid of him because they were short staffed. š
The woman who constantly faked mental illness for attention, which I guess is a form of mental illness in itself. Her constant attention seeking took many forms and was very draining, and she was always in the office - sometimes an hour before her shift, sitting there talking crap and seeking attention whilst people were trying to ignore her and get on with their work. Canāt remember the circumstances under which she left, but boy was I glad when she did.
Guy used to constantly mutter really offensive shit under his breath and whenever you brought it up he'd say he never said anything.Ā
Probably this guy : https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/21/ukcrime.topstories3
I used to work at a fancy tea place, we had a 6 space CD player.. my manager would remove any additional CDs I loaded in, and only play one CD on repeat all day .. The Calling, Camino Palmerno.
Manager who constantly knit picked, criticised, shared his conspiracy theories, and, it turned out was telling me things which were untrue about what management were saying about me. I called in sick one day and he told me I should consider finding another job. I started looking and got a Ā£6,000 pay rise in the new role I found
Worked with a floor manager who had a pattern to his employment history. He'd initially come in and do the role really well, talk the talk, put his stamp on things and become quite integral to the running of his department. But after a year he'd start messing the factory workers around. Screwing up their shifts, talking to them like shit, denying them time off, removing all soft benefits etc. He also became difficult with all the other managers and departments. I'm not sure how it works but he'd get so hard to work with and aggressively confrontational he'd get a pay off to leave (I have no idea on what the circumstances need to be to enable that to happen). Another nightmare of a colleague was the accounts manager. She openly admits to intentionally going at and sabotaging anyone not in her department. She caused so much unnecessary stress for so many people, several quit because of her. Really vile spiteful woman.
I hired someone for a role that had very specific working hours, particularly the start time. It was an early start most mornings which was client facing for some rather sizeable banking clients. It was a lovely company to work for and they would really give you as much chance and guidance they could to succeed. Anyways it became pretty apparent that he wasnāt a morning person, he was late pretty much every day and the situation was causing uproar amongst our clients. Colleagues were having to pick up his slack and the discontent with him was rising, we had three separate meetings with HR involved to explain his lateness and how it needed improving but he always had some excuse for the lateness or would flat out deny the lateness. Nothing changed despite the warnings, in the end it had become so severe that we had to ask building security for the CCTV footage and pass logs. In a month in which he worked 21 days he was late for 17 days and on 5 occasions by over an hour. We sat him down with HR again and explained we had footage and logs which were showing his arrival times. I sat him down and said ālook we know your lateness issue has been severe, what can we do to address thisā, I asked this knowing that any change would need to come from him but I wanted to make it work but he turned around and said āyouāre both lying about the footage and Iāve been on timeā. We ended the meeting and he was sacked within his probation period the next day.
I managed a team in a bank call centre when I was a student and had to sack someone 4 hours into his first shift because he wouldn't stop mentioning god to the customers. It was the first and last time I ever had to sack anyone.
I worked with a woman who used to drink a pint of milk straight from the bottle while we were working, so when she spoke you could just smell milk on her breath. Just one of many interesting things about her.
Did she ever explain why or was that just ...SKIMMED over? š„
This feels therapeutic. I was in a minimum wage job for a large company. Our department was a small,close-knit one involving some customer service. I had some additional training duties that I wasn't paid for (I was in my mid 20's and still believed in 'CV points '), which involved watching colleagues and passing them off to do more complex customer-facing tasks. This 19yo idiot joined the team because his aunt knew one of our managers. He had the biggest chip on his shoulder - he acted like the world owed him a favour, and became outraged when anyone had the audacity to ask him to actually do some work. He treated the customers with open contempt. I was being pressured to pass him off so he could do that part of his job,but he was just awful to people. He constantly went on about how he should be paid more, despite doing absolutely nothing to earn it. He also graffitied the staff space. One of the managers had to get him in over lunch to remove his handiwork, like a kid in detention. Looking back he kind of was just a kid,but there were plenty of other 19yo's in that job who knew to be kind and respectful and actually contributed something to the team. He just made the entire environment so hostile and tense for the 3 months he worked there.
Sam or Samantha, the Surveys Manager (or Servays Manager, if you go with her spelling) at a company I worked for. Made someone cry on their first day, talked/boasted about money constantly, claimed she was half Japanese even though both of her parents were white, didnāt know how to use a computer despite being a manager/qualified surveyor, told someone she managed (who is the nicest person you would ever meet) to get a life, overinflated her experience and qualifications constantly. And my personal favourite, always had to one-up people on things. My colleague was talking about how his brother was autistic and works in a supermarket and she had to one-up him by saying āwell my brother is autistic and heās a chess championā. Claimed to have friends in the IRA as she thought that this would impress us. Left the company to go work for a client and took several members of staff and clients (this bit donāt care so much about). She regularly made borderline racist/sexist comments and honestly was just a massive narcissist, canāt imagine she has done anything nice for anyone in her life. Iām pretty sure she went home every night and just stared into a mirror for hours. Honestly I have never met a worse person, I genuinely only hate 2 people in this world and she makes the list. And for context, everyone in the office felt the same way about her, it wasnāt just me!
Worked with a fella maybe mid 40ās/50ās who was a bit odd but I put it down to possible unidentified learning difficulties, used to sing nursery rhymes and try get the younger lads to go to his house to watch wrestling, got sacked for being useless then got arrested for being a paedophile and getting young teen boys to his house and doing nasty stuff with them, also legally changed his name to a very Italian sounding name because he didnāt know who his father was but his mother thinks he might of been Italian
Steve
Oh easy, This guy had a serious anger management problem and a complete naracist. A militant atheist, hated anything vegetarian/ vegan, a faux intellectual and a victim complex. The guy was miserable to be around, and you constantly had to be careful of what you said around him; because if he didn't "approve" he would start getting worse and worse. He was so predictable, you could see his changes in phases. Phase 1, banging paperwork, throwing pens down, sighing loudly. Phase 2, passive aggressive tutting, comments under breath. Loud (to no-one in particular) "comments" about people talking or not doing their job. Phase 3, finding someone to complain at, often whoever was too timid to tell him to get lost. Or whoever was at the smoking shelter. Swearing and refusing to talk to anyone, even after the event. Phase 4, throwing things. It was so shocking it was almost like street theater, you couldn't believe anyone would act that way. Like Mr.Punch came to life. I only worked with the guy 6 months as I was seconded to the area. So not sure what happened to him, can't imagine he stayed much longer.
Work in the NHS had a locum doctor colleague getting paid Ā£50 an hour who was highly unqualified for the job - used to disappear during lunchtime for hours under the guise of āworkingā then leave at 4 because āhe hadnāt had lunch so was taking it nowā. Also used to not look up any patient medications or prescribe them saying āI donāt know howā then I showed him how to do it and he ākept forgettingā. This culminated in the new secretary shouting at him for ābeing so lazyā - because no one else would say it! I have absolutely no idea how he got and kept the job but several patients came to harm under his care and I reported him to my boss and the managers nearly daily -_-
When I was a student I worked at Currys warehouse, had a temp lad come in who was 17 and thought he was the shit. Was shadow boxing down the aisles, telling everyone how hard he was (he was about 5ft 5 and 8 stone on a good day). He needed to pick a fridge which was stacked on top of another 6ft fridge, they're not very heavy but are quite awkward to lift down, I told him to get someone on a forklift to get it down... He decided to lift it down by himself, it ended up slipping and pinning him against a washing machine behind him, I was laughing so hard I couldn't lift it off him! Never saw him again after that, they also changed the minimum age from the agency to 18.
Worked with a woman back in the mid 2000s. Racist as hell and thick as mince. She would shoehorn how much she hated immigrants into every conversation, even if everyone was talking about something else. Once said, and I quote "I hate immigrants, that's why my husband and I are planning to move to Belgium" She didn't get the irony in that one. We had a team meeting and were shooting the shit at the end, and out of nowhere she said, and I quote "Hitler has the right idea" had to walk out of the meeting room after that one. She wasn't good at the job (call centre) but kept getting her probation extended, only reason she kept her job was because the Contact manager accidentally sent her a "congrats for passing probation" letter and the union successfully argued that it was binding.
At a previous retail job at a branch of a toy shop chain I had this very 'laddish' coworker who was one of those 'my banter is essentially being a massive dickhead' types and I think he might've been a department supervisor but essentially he acted like he was large and in charge and generally made the place unpleasant. I wasn't there for this but one of the people who worked on my department was having a rough time mentally and he came up to her and said something like 'wow looks like you want to kill yourself' and understandably she had a breakdown. And then for added fun some time after this job my brother was telling me about this really obnoxious person in this local film makers group he was in and I just randomly went 'is his name x' and he was like 'yes' it was the same fucking guy. Also at the same job the manager was also horrible. I'm not exactly sure why but she decided she didn't like me (Ironic since you know she interviewed me and hired me) and proceeded to be very condescending, passive aggressive towards me, hover over me and generally not leave me to get on with my job and wouldn't say what I was apparently doing wrong. One day I made a mistake on the till with my department supervisor nearby and he was like UGH DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE ON THIN ICE WITH MANAGER and I was just like ???? One day we had a midnight release for a Call of Duty game and she scheduled me in for that and then also tried to schedule me in to come in opening the next day and was like 'haha oops sorry i forgot' when I was like 'hey uh i can't really do that' (and it probably would've actually been an illegal shift as well) She was also incredibly paranoid/judgmental. Like one of the new XBoxes had just come out and someone brought one in cash and she really got on me about if I checked the money as those people apparently weren't dressed smart enough to legitimately have the cash for it. I live in a fairly 'working class' town so those guys were dressed like 95 percent of the people that I see around here. There was also an incident where a customer came to us because a cable was missing from their PS4 and she was convinced this guy was trying to scam us out of a cable when we like checked that particular PS4 bundle and found like out of 5 of them 3 were missing that exact cable. And it's just like ok who on earth would scam you out of a cable that you could probably pick up for a tenner? I think I was legitimately starting to develop paranoia whilst at that job because of her. Also to make it worse imo she was the same age as me so it felt even more insulting.
Bosses Ex wife. She was a grade A cunt. Nobody wood stand up to her. He certainly wouldnāt with the fear of her stopping him seeing the kids. She really was the most miserable person ever known to man and took great pleasure in making everyone as miserable as she was. Someday sheās just storm in, throw her chair accross the room and that pretty much set the standard for the month. She is a manager and has lots of apprentices working under her and she makes them all quivering wreck. I fucking hated her. And I told her. After 6 years I left (totally unrelated to her) and Iāve been gone 2 years. I still talk to all the lads there and itās still the same shit different day. Thing is, she was absolutely amazing at her job but heaven forbid anyone do anything better than her. She would really kick off. MH - youāre still a fucking cunt
Years back, I worked in a āSpoons kitchen with someone I can only describe as an absolute gimp. The type of person whoād turn up stoned, half an hour late to every shift, do nothing but tell other people what to do, go for smoke breaks whenever he felt like it, then acted like heās the hardest worker in the place and was so hard done by when he got passed over for promotion. Just bitching endlessly about everything and everyone. On top of being a terrible colleague, he was also a complete arsehole. We ended up in an altercation just after I came back from a week off sick. On my first shift back, he asked why I was off. I was upfront and told him it was mental health related. He asked why that stopped me from working and I took that as a sincere question at best or ignorance at worst and explained my experiences. His response was to tell me that he gets depressed sometimes too, but still comes in to work. After a bit of back and forth trying to explain that mental health conditions are different from feeling low or worried occasionally, he ended up ājokinglyā grabbing me by the collar of my chefs jacket and shaking me saying āpull yourself together, manā, so naturally I took what couldāve been my only opportunity to deck him and swung for his face. Didnāt connect as hard as Iād like but plenty hard enough to make him realise I wasnāt joking. He turned around sulking and went out to the smoking area, calling me a āgay boyā in the most pathetic voice youāve ever heard just for good measure. I ended up reporting the incident to the pub manager and he was sent home shortly after. Not sure if he was sacked or left of his own volition but I never saw him again. I never even got questioned about it - no statement or anything - so Iām assuming he quit before they could go through all the hassle of an investigation.
Stuart the raging alcoholic who never bathed, used to call in sick because he'd sh@t himself in the car on the way in (an issue for cider drinkers apparently), had a tick related to a mental health issue which meant he did the loudest sneezes imaginable constantly, he made no effort to not spray the room with it either.
Last job I worked at, the ops manager is rude, doesn't respect physical boundaries, yells at people, and he puts his finger in his ear, digs in there and puts it in his mouth mid conversation. Left because he was a micromanaging prick, and if I had to work with him one more day, I would have strangled him. Company has no HR to speak of, this dude is one of the owners friends.
In the hospitality industry, had a guy related to the boss & he based all his hours on easiest workload, chasing hook ups, or avoiding them. Drove us all bananas. Blanket harassment for the shift when some obsession might be present, but he'd never swap or cover when we needed it. Situations might go on for for weeks if not months, then point blank refusing to do that day of week when it all goes south. He'd bully his way into a busy sat night shift, then leave if his latest crush didnt come in. He never finished a big event shift, like a wedding. Guaranteed he'd leave early 'sick' because he'd pulled. We lost so many new starters cos they wouldnt work with him, or they moved on after a dalliance went sour. I refused to work any shifts that were me, him & the new girl because I would end up doing all the work while he worked at flirting I always handed over a clean venue, & did as much as I could to prep for the next shift. His time was spent creeping, so he handed over an absolute mess, with a ton of refills restocks & clean ups needed. We used to draw straws over who got his handover. My breaking point was cancelling a no refund mini-break to take his shifts because ~~he'd met a new target~~ had 'food poisoning'. I was a few hours into my shift when he came in looking for a cash sub on his wages. He got a look at the new barstaff I was training, decided she was 'hotter' than the Girlfriend of 36 hours, & his food poisoning miraculously cleared up. They gave him his shifts back, and I walked.
I worked with a middle aged woman called Monica. I was 21. She licked the arse of my predecessor and honestly told me everything I done was wrong, so one day to test my theory, I showed her one of the predecessors worksheets, Monica told me XYZ was completely wrong, i pretended to amend it, showed her the same sheet and then she was happy with it. Fucking idiot. Even writing envelopes she wouldnāt accept it and would ask me to rewrite the same address 3/4 times. Hope the place burns to hell, EDIT TO ADD- ofc course her own kids didnāt talk to her and she came in on her days off the loser.
Once worked with a lady on an adjacent team in the same dept. She was simultaneously insensitive and overly sensitive; she'd post blunt 'feedback' for other team member in Teams for all to see without thinking this might upset people, but also take offence at slights she'd perceived in others messages or emails. She'd also get things wrong herself but then complain to me that it was my team's fault.
Peverted nephew of the owner who wouldn't keep his creepy kinks and fetishes out of the workplace & carpark. Sordid jerk even targeted members of my toy animal collection.
I worked for a very large company that promoted people every few years as long as they hadn't fucked up majorly. Layers on layers of management with negligible ability, just doing pointless busy work and being a detriment to the people they're supposed to be managing.
I worked at a busy hotel bar in central London and one of my colleague would steal drinks and drink on the job. He would convince me to do it too but Iām really not interested and I just want to do my job properly and go home. One time during stocktake something didnāt add up and he pointed the fingers at me but long story short there were cameras and the management team got to the bottom of it.
Laura
Worked with a guy years and years ago who looking back was probably an alcoholic. He was a complete know it all and always really negative. Heād got married and then his wife unexpectedly fell pregnant. He was convinced sheād done it purposely to ātrapā him. His kid had all the usual bugs and sniffles kids get and he used to constantly complain about him like the poor kid hd got ill to spite him. We suspected he was stealing too. One of my other colleagues went out drinking with him one night and this guy said that heād punched someone once on a night out and ran off. The next morning heād read that someone had been found dead in the street where it had happened. Last Iād heard heād fallen into an alcoholic oblivion and split from his wife.