Worst employee you have ever worked with?

tenton wrote: »

was that in the public service? I cannot see that sort of thing happening much in the private sector or the business would soon go bust.

It always comes down to the public /private sector argument. Not all public servants are lazy and not all private workers are saints.

I managed a in a shop at night with about 12-13 staff,one guy a English settled Traveller who was unbelievably nice but just mad,most of the times he done his work but you would have to keep an eye on him,one night when I walk in to take over from the security Manager he tells me he thinks this guy has a criminal record in England but cant get proof,a few weeks later this guy goes missing on a shift after the garda arrived (back gate was open for staff on lunch)when 2 of the other guys come up in tears laughing telling me they seen him run out,I checked the camera and the mad fella had run out the back crawled under the delivery van and ran out the gate,turns out the Garda only arrived to get access to the building as someone got stuck in the cinema:pac:,when this guy comes back 2 hours later im not even angry I cant stop laughing at what happened and his I was sick excuse,anyway I had to report it and he was let go,I hated doing it as he was a sound guy and I hate training new people in especially on nights as they tend to hire non English speaking staff.

I started working in Argos just after turning 18. They had taken on temp staff for Christmas and there was 5 positions after Christmas for temp staff to be made permanent. I started early December and most of the other temps had started just after Halloween. I got assigned to "picking" upstairs, so as soon as the ticket came out of the machine you had to go take it so the customer wasn't waiting ages for their stuff at collection point.

Well anyway, worked with this polish girl upstairs, and she would take all the tickets and be racing around getting all the stuff. Sometimes tickets would come out when she wasn't near the machine, so I would take those, stick them along my arm and go to get them. If she seen me with more than one picking ticket she would take the others off my arm telling me "no no no, I go!"

Now that often meant there was a delay, and when a manager would come upstairs to see what was going on, there id be standing doing nothing, waiting for the ticket machine to bleep, and there's your one racing around the store room up and down ladders with a heap of tickets.

I was sure it made me look bad and lazy, but I think somebody must have told a manager because she was let go on Christmas Eve and I got one of the 5 positions. She was a nightmare, just trying to make you look bad and generally aggressive to work with.

Wanderer2010 wrote: »

Im with you there, but what made this situation really unfair was that if it was a man lazing off all day, he would have no problem demanding they get off the computer and do some work. Its a lot more common than you think- never mind the public versus private sector debate, the debate over the expectations from men and women is much more relevant. A lot of women want equal pay but not equal work, and men are never expected to goof off or be stressed.

I used to work with a guy who spent all day with his feet up playing solitaire - you'd email him to get some information, hear nothing for hours and when you'd go over to badger him into doing something he wouldn't even bother to take his feet off his desk as he gave you a generic "I'll look into it" kind of answer.

Based on this experience I'm going to generalize that all men get a much easier time in the office compared to women because... I don't know, they talk football with the office manager and thus he doesn't feel comfortable reprimanding them?

You see the point I'm making here about lazy generalizations based on a sample size of 1?

Wanderer2010 wrote: »

^ It isnt just one though, in practically all the places I have worked, women tend not to be disciplined as often for infractions as men for any number of reasons..women can realistically claim stress, badger a boss over and over until the boss just gives in because its easier and in general, they argue their cases more than men making it easier for weak bosses to give up on them. Im not saying all men are hard working but definitely theres a higher expectation on men to work harder.

A friend of mine works in a small office with just 7 people and the boss is male. Lunch is from 1pm to 2pm but one woman strolls in at half 2 after lunch every single day and the boss has never once pulled her up on it, even if the other workers make a private complaint. I doubt a man could get away with that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Wanderer2010 wrote: »

Right, fair enough, I must have been making up the reaction of the boss when asked to pull up a lazy female worker, I also must have been hearing things when I heard the same guy demand action from a male worker, and maybe all my long workplace experiences in the whole male vs female treatment were all a result of bias too....great theory there. :rolleyes:

No, I'm suggesting that when you see a lazy male co-worker, you appear to think "that guy is lazy", whereas when you see a lazy female co-worker, you jump to "Jeez, women are so lazy".

Can you see the difference?