Describe the worst coworker(s) you ever had?

[shortylickens]

Petty Officer Portillo. He left us in 99 and got stationed in San Diego. About a year later we heard he murdered his wife and a hooker on the same night.

 

[shortylickens]

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1324231.html

http://www.metnews.com/articles/port040703.htm


Ahh, apparently the stories I heard were exaggerated. He only killed a hooker. That will teach me. Listening to scuttlebutt is not wise.

 

[brianmanahan]

Most of you have never worked with a really bad coworker it appears.

These are trivial, I should still have one old one arrested for putting s**t in my coffee, which I believe is a Felony.

yeah, that's bad. sounds like some of the guys my grandpa worked with at the steel mill.

with the stuff they did there, i am surprised more didn't die, get fired, get arrested or get sued.

 

[MongGrel]

yeah, that's bad. sounds like some of the guys my grandpa worked with at the steel mill.

with the stuff they did there, i am surprised more didn't die, get fired, get arrested or get sued.

The really screwed up part is, someone else actually showed me the Face Book post.

I went and pointed it out to the supervisor.

He had all ready done several things that were pretty much off the scale.

I was told "I'm not going to do anything about it, call the Police then"

And he was a retired Cop.

 

[radhak]

I had a colleague once in NJ, fresh of the boat from India. (I'm from India too, so there's no racial bias here; he just was the most memorable character I knew).

First off, this chap had no real grasp on English (yeah, from India, and a degree in Comp Science too, and still...) : I once heard him spell out his own name on the phone to somebody : "... 'S' as in Chicago..." (He must have believed Chicago spelt Shicago).

Anyway, he used to count his output (as a programmer) so carefully, and demanded credit every day for working 'harder' than others because he had coded 122 lines more, or was testing for 45 minutes more, or had come into work 20 minutes earlier, or something :\! Made a pain of himself all around. Even worse, he'd keep tab on others around him, and deliberately bring it out during status meetings - "Mary, you would have missed this because you were late coming back from lunch that day..."

Once both of us had to go on a work trip together to LA, for some software installation and stuff. We were booked into a 'guest house' the client had arranged, which was only an apartment with just the two of us. He was a clock-watcher, so he quit real early the first day while I was at the office till close to midnight trying to finish off the job. Finally when I reach the apartment, I found that he had locked himself in, and refused to let me in. I spoke to him thru the door, trying to convince him to open the door so I could come in, but he was adamant that he had no obligation to open the door so late in the night, and that it was my fault I was late, and it was very unsafe to open the door so late in the night, and that too in a dangerous city like LA. I had to call our supervisor in NJ (3am her time) so she could call him and order him to open the door for me. He tried to argue with her, but she was in a sore mood by then, and told him to either open the door or pack his bags and go to the airport to head back to India !

I have dozens of stories more about him like these, but the thing is that I found out he was just the same when in India too. His colleagues were so happy when he left for the US.

 

[manimal]

microwaved fish at work


nuff said.

 

[lxskllr]

Surveying/engineering is full of drug addicts and alcoholics, and that's not getting into the dumbasses and weirdos. I don't have the patience to type it all out on a cell phone.

 

[brianmanahan]

Surveying/engineering is full of drug addicts and alcoholics, and that's not getting into the dumbasses and weirdos. I don't have the patience to type it all out on a cell phone.

every time it is nice outside, i think to myself "why didn't i get a surveying/engineering job?"

and then as soon as it is crappy outside, i think "glad i didn't do that".

but all told it seems like it would be pretty great.

 

[Imp]

every time it is nice outside, i think to myself "why didn't i get a surveying/engineering job?"

and then as soon as it is crappy outside, i think "glad i didn't do that".

but all told it seems like it would be pretty great.

It's all fun and games until you have to start applying sunscreen. That's what killed it for me: knowing that every second I spent outside during prime daylight hours was one step closer to skin cancer and prematurely aged skin. Or you could ignore it like most of the people I worked with... they all had leather for skin in their 50s.

 

[MongGrel]

You guys are working with different engineers to begin with it appears.

But irrelevant.

 

[lxskllr]

every time it is nice outside, i think to myself "why didn't i get a surveying/engineering job?"

and then as soon as it is crappy outside, i think "glad i didn't do that".

but all told it seems like it would be pretty great.

It's ok. I loved it when I started, but now it's just "alright". Looking around old properties is probably the best part. Shooting topo the worst. Topo is almost all some companies do. I'd have eaten a gun years ago if I were at one of those companies.

 

[Imp]

It's ok. I loved it when I started, but now it's just "alright". Looking around old properties is probably the best part. Shooting topo the worst. Topo is almost all some companies do. I'd have eaten a gun years ago if I were at one of those companies.

Don't worry, man. At my last job, a company came by to peddle their wares during lunch one day. It was a car mounted laser scanner that drew everything into CAD (3D) just by driving by at highway speeds. Stick that thing on a 4x4 and you're all set. I'm sure they'll figure out how to account for vegetation soon.

 

[lxskllr]

Don't worry, man. At my last job, a company came by to peddle their wares during lunch one day. It was a car mounted laser scanner that drew everything into CAD (3D) just by driving by at highway speeds. Stick that thing on a 4x4 and you're all set. I'm sure they'll figure out how to account for vegetation soon.

Can't imagine the accuracy's any good for something like that. I've seen a few schemes for automating infrastructure location, but none of it has taken off around here. It's done the way it's always been done; well mostly. I don't think xsections are required anymore. If I could think of the most retarded way of locating ground features, it would probably be xsections.

Our company(not me personally) was involved in setting control on the US capitol building to prep it for laser scanning. This was back when the tech was fairly new, and just after 9/11. They apparently didn't have good plans for the building, and wanted to be able to replace it in case of terrorist destruction.

 

[cavemanmoron]

Too many years too many stories.

Had one co-worker who is dead now, we were plowing snow during a really bad snow storm, and he said "I need a nap". Instead of taking the truck back to the garage to take a short break he gets this big dump truck stuck on purpose, drove it straight into a huge pile of snow with the front plow off the ground. I was controlling the passenger side wing plow, I was like WTF Dude. I called on the 2 way radio said we needed a loader with a chain, this other jerk comes by with a Chevy Blazer. Oh the Huge Manatee.

Nice being retired and away from most all the B.S.

 

[poopaskoopa]

This person:
-Was consistently caught looking at colleagues' hands/typing as they entered passwords. I brought it up and nothing was done.

-Once made changeS(plural) that negatively impacted the environment, tried to blame it on a change I made 5 days later, and after I pointed out the discrepancies, he "figured out" the problem, told me that I "owed him one". So I put together log files to show that it was his "script", which was really a poorly written batch file with one line, that caused the problem. I brought it up to mgmt again, and when given an opportunity to come clean, he actually fabricated his own evidence to show his innocence. Sucks for him that the log files are uploaded automatically to the vendor so all my manager had to do was get the file from the vendor to see that he made shit up. Still, nothing was done.

-Volunteered to "help" me as I was involved in a weekend maintenance immediately after my return to work from a paternity leave by setting up config files and such. He modified a config file in the middle of the file(not like missing a carriage return at EOF) to make the rest of the config file not load correctly. That could have been passed off as an innocent mistake, but after I wrote up what I did to fix the problem to the team that night, the first thing he did the following morning(I'm talking like 7am kind of morning) was go in and modify the file he had given me to make it syntactically correct(how did he know to look in the middle of a 1000+ lines file?) AND deleted the snapshots of that volume to make the history go away. Nothing was done after I brought this up.

He no longer works there and I'm not there any more either. It's a pretty big company.

 

[angminas]

I'm losing faith that I can ever be a manager because my co-workers seem completely incapable of thinking for themselves. I answer questions for them on basic shit that they should be able to figure out for themselves, and I get those questions multiple times.

At this point, I draw every difficult assignment because they're flat out incapable, and I still have to help them with the easy ones. My poor manager is at her wits end.

One key to this is to realize that, especially in particular fields or companies, people really are that stupid. Once you lower your expectations, things tend to go much more smoothly. People are handed assignments they can actually handle, and the manager's stress is lowered dramatically. In most situations, I'd much rather have a person do one thing right and nothing wrong than three things right and one thing wrong. The mistakes are often many times as impactful as the successes.

The followup step is to can the lazy people who can do what you ask of them but won't. This is the part that so often gets ignored. Dumbass is going to get mad if Lazyass gets paid but doesn't work. At least Dumbass is producing something. Strategic incompetence must not be tolerated.

 

[clamum]

This person:
-Was consistently caught looking at colleagues' hands/typing as they entered passwords. I brought it up and nothing was done.

-Once made changeS(plural) that negatively impacted the environment, tried to blame it on a change I made 5 days later, and after I pointed out the discrepancies, he "figured out" the problem, told me that I "owed him one". So I put together log files to show that it was his "script", which was really a poorly written batch file with one line, that caused the problem. I brought it up to mgmt again, and when given an opportunity to come clean, he actually fabricated his own evidence to show his innocence. Sucks for him that the log files are uploaded automatically to the vendor so all my manager had to do was get the file from the vendor to see that he made shit up. Still, nothing was done.

-Volunteered to "help" me as I was involved in a weekend maintenance immediately after my return to work from a paternity leave by setting up config files and such. He modified a config file in the middle of the file(not like missing a carriage return at EOF) to make the rest of the config file not load correctly. That could have been passed off as an innocent mistake, but after I wrote up what I did to fix the problem to the team that night, the first thing he did the following morning(I'm talking like 7am kind of morning) was go in and modify the file he had given me to make it syntactically correct(how did he know to look in the middle of a 1000+ lines file?) AND deleted the snapshots of that volume to make the history go away. Nothing was done after I brought this up.

He no longer works there and I'm not there any more either. It's a pretty big company.

Ugh. Sounds like a shiesty little prick to me. I wouldn't trust that fucker as far as I could throw him.

 

[Muse]

No one really comes to mind. But I had one job in a very small company and I was the programmer. I was in a small room and across from me was a guy who was on the phone most of the day (his job was sales) and I had to listen to him chewing the fat with people ad nauseum while trying to concentrate on my work. It was horrible. I finally told him to fuck off one day and got in trouble with the owner. Of course, I apologized. The owner had promised he'd put me in a quiet space, but never did. eventually they let me go. I got a better job in short order. At that job there was a guy whose job I never got. He was French, spoke with a strong accent and loved to enjoy a croissant every morning. I often saw him come in with that croissant. After a couple of years, and no raise, I inquired about a raise. I was doing a good job and I was the only programmer there, I did all the nuts and bolts work on the mission critical information management application that was the backbone of the enterprise. So, this Frenchman reviews me, makes some strong criticisms (he acknowledged that I was very good at my job, however), and I had to figure he was just trying to justify the company's not giving me a good raise. I got a small raise that basically covered inflation. The dot com bust took the wind out the sails of the company and they started axing personnel and eventually my job was farmed out to people in India! Even the woman who started the company (working out of her home) got axed after she'd ceded control for some funding.

Edit: Oh, I remember a guy where I had a job on a dairy. I loved that job, riding horses and herding cows. Of course, there were other duties not so romantic (I still have the rubber boots I wore walking through the shit in the stalls). There was a guy who milked the cows who I talked to one day and he told me he had a lot of motorcycles, parts, frames, etc. and he said he'd build me a Harley from parts. I gave him a few hundred dollars and later he got me in trouble and got me fired. I never got my Harley or my money back. He was a pretty greasy kind of character.

 

[kranky]

Finally when I reach the apartment, I found that he had locked himself in, and refused to let me in. I spoke to him thru the door, trying to convince him to open the door so I could come in, but he was adamant that he had no obligation to open the door so late in the night, and that it was my fault I was late, and it was very unsafe to open the door so late in the night, and that too in a dangerous city like LA. I had to call our supervisor in NJ (3am her time) so she could call him and order him to open the door for me. He tried to argue with her, but she was in a sore mood by then, and told him to either open the door or pack his bags and go to the airport to head back to India

Now that right there is a 4-star jerk. Awesome story. And trying to argue with the boss about it!

 

[Harrod]

microwaved fish at work


nuff said.

I've got that beat, someone microwaved squid in the microwave one day, also they didn't just heat it up, they left it in there for 5 minutes.

 

[Homerboy]

I could turn around and take a picture...

 

[Muse]

Any of the many "button pushers" I work next to that have no true grasp of what they're doing beyond "Push button A, proceed to step 2 and push button B". Thank god they have, for the most part, competent managers that I get on well with so I can skip dealing with them when necessary.

I can deal with assholes and jerks and cunts. It's the incompetents that bug me the most.

I have encountered so so many incompetent people that I start to think the vast majority are incompetent. It's positively disconcerting. I mentioned this to one of my bosses (who I was hoping would hire me, it was a temp assignment), and his reaction was to tell me I should feel good about myself because of my relative competency. That did not satisfy. Of course, he never offered me that job. It wasn't a great job, it was with the county government, but I was tired of scraping by on sporadic temp assignments, so the prospect of a permanent job was attractive.

 

[Guurn]

Other than the usual cadre of people having sex at work and taking drugs while working there are two that stick in my mind.

I worked with a guy who walked in on a manager (old guy), getting a BJ from his newlywed secretary(not to him), she was 19 he was 50ish. She was a new hire and we all knew she really needed the job. He reported it and the manager was moved laterally. He should have been fired.

I once worked with a very incompetent physicist. We were never sure if his degree was real. One memory- He was doing maintenance on a linear accelerator which involves taking output measurements using a water tank. The tank has adjustable feet so you can level it to the water. Instead he tried to level the water by pouring it on one side of the tank. Yeah, that level of incompetence.

 

[Muse]

Most of you have never worked with a really bad coworker it appears.

These are trivial, I should still have one old one arrested for putting shit in my coffee, which I believe is a Felony.

The old idiot even bragged about it on FaceBook, he only even learned how to use a netbook less than a year ago.

He actually thought he could put MasterCam on it, when he can't even hold plus or minus .010 on most the shit he makes, hell have the time he blows it by .1

He thinks he's a Tool and Die Maker, and has no clue whatsoever, but I've seen that a lot around these parts.

He even drove my my house about a week being a stalker, the guy is insane and should be retired and he only hangs out in the Tool Shop I used to work at for god knows what reason.

He must be related to someone, even the managers at the time were saying I wish he'd just get the fuck out of here.

But he can't actually really produce anything realistically, and sits in a corner being a shop troll getting paid less than I was to not do much other than being a pain in the ass.

Then you have things like engineers fresh out of college actually asking this guy for advice, and kids still going to college getting moved into QA inspecting your parts when they can't hit their ass with both hands when you've been in aerospace over 30 years telling you that what you're doing is wrong.

It's like a constant face palm, you'd have to turn around and tell them how to inspect a part right.

Then they get all pissy and run to daddy or something.

I'll maybe find something else, at this point working with people that do not know what they are doing period just depressed me to where I do not care much anymore.

It sounds to me like you are very ripe for a career move!

 

[Muse]

Once both of us had to go on a work trip together to LA, for some software installation and stuff. We were booked into a 'guest house' the client had arranged, which was only an apartment with just the two of us. He was a clock-watcher, so he quit real early the first day while I was at the office till close to midnight trying to finish off the job. Finally when I reach the apartment, I found that he had locked himself in, and refused to let me in. I spoke to him thru the door, trying to convince him to open the door so I could come in, but he was adamant that he had no obligation to open the door so late in the night, and that it was my fault I was late, and it was very unsafe to open the door so late in the night, and that too in a dangerous city like LA. I had to call our supervisor in NJ (3am her time) so she could call him and order him to open the door for me. He tried to argue with her, but she was in a sore mood by then, and told him to either open the door or pack his bags and go to the airport to head back to India !

I have dozens of stories more about him like these, but the thing is that I found out he was just the same when in India too. His colleagues were so happy when he left for the US.

That is the funniest story here, no doubt about it. This had me LOL...