Where I work I know an employee that is starting to irritate alot of my co-workers, this person is in his early 20’s and started his job the same time I did. He does have some medical conditions, of which I think sometimes can prevent him from doing some manual jobs which are required in our company, however this didn’t stop him before from doing them. He is also quite a thin build for his age but can talk a good talk.
He gets along with most of the managers in spite of the following;
[ul]
[li] Late for work,[/li][li] Incompetent at his job,[/li][li] Disciplinary for using other peoples tools without their permission[/li][li] Bad attitude if not getting his own way/stressed[/li][/ul]
All this has been in the space of 6 months of having been given a permanent employment contract.
It’s taken a while for my co-workers to realise his manipulative behaviour, I for one knew about it months beforehand, but my mind goes blank to how he’s getting away with all this crappy behaviour in work, for example, today he got various permissions back to complete tasks and was then invited back to work in a section of our department, where as I was never considered for the role again despite having less of a bad track record than he did. He annoys nearly everyone I know at work.
He always seems to be able to book time off for ‘hospital’ appointments and never seems to get his comeuppance. I’ve talked about this with others and we agreed that if any of us did similar things like he did, we’d be out the door.
So what should I do? Leave him too it and let him fuck up again? Or collaborate with some of my co-workers to bring this problem up to higher managers of blatant favoritism?
Because he is obtaining an unfair advantage over other employees (Myself included) who work harder than him, it’s a morale issue, why should I work hard at my job when the guy next to me can just coast by and not really suffer any significant consequences?
Just from your posts, it’s impossible for the rest of us to know for sure what’s going on here. It could be that this guy is lazy and incompetent, yet somehow brilliant at hiding his true nature from his bosses. Or the bosses are too clueless to realize that they’re giving an unfair advantage to the one guy who doesn’t work as hard as everybody else. That would suck, and my advice would be to re-evaluate whether you want to work for people who show this kind of favoritism to someone who obviously doesn’t deserve it.
It could also be that you aren’t really in a position to see exactly what he does bring to the table and management has decided that he’s the best candidate for the job, despite what you consider his flaws to be. His ‘hospital’ appointments (not sure why you put that in quotes) may also be perfectly legitimate as well, the nature of which has not been shared with other employees because it’s none of your business.
Workplaces aren’t democracies, and you don’t get a vote. I guarantee that complaining about your coworkers is not a good way to endear yourself to your supervisor. Suck it up and do your job the best you can.
I do the job the best I can, but I hear alot of complaining behind closed doors about the way in which he conducts himself, I’m asking whether it’s best for him to be left alone to fall himself or as to whether we should organise and complain to upper management about this favoritism.
And we do work with him in close quarters on a regular basis, there have been repeated situations where he has used other peoples passwords and permissions to complete tasks more quickly without their permission, he even got a disciplinary for it even though it’s a sackable offence, and subsequently continued to do it after as well.
The reason why I made this thread was to canvass opinion from similar experiences and compare them to my own, currently I haven’t gone to any manager or supervisor and complained, I haven’t even complained to the guy himself, I’ve just been observant of his behaviour and the reaction from others because of it.
Well, I have no idea if this applies to your situation, but a close friend of mine developed renal failure when he was 29. He needed to go for dialysis 3 times a week which necessitated leaving work early.
He looked mostly fine - a bit tired, but he wasn’t bleeding out of his eyeballs or anything. This caused a coworker to start grousing about 'Why does P get to leave early?!? I want to leave early too! Wah, wah, wah."
So P pulled up his shirt sleeve and showed his coworker his pic line along with all of the hematomas as well. Coworker felt like an ass.
So, even though you and your coworkers may feel like there’s nothing wrong with this guy, he could have something serious going on which is why he seems to be getting a buy on all the shitty tasks. It’s really none of your business what his health issues are.
Removing his health issues from the frame, he does seem to get picked over other more competent workers for mentally challenging tasks even though he consistently fucks up on them and was removed from the position previously for not doing his job properly.
Your subsequent posts have shed a bit more light, but I stand by my earlier point: Workplaces aren’t democracies, and you don’t get a vote. I guarantee that complaining about your coworkers is not a good way to endear yourself to your supervisor. Suck it up and do your job the best you can.
The one thing that may possibly concern you is the fact that he uses other people’s passwords. Make sure he doesn’t use yours. Change it and don’t tell anybody what it is. If this isn’t possible, or if he somehow gets your password and uses it, then you can go to your boss. “Just for the record, the activity on my log-in from 1:15 to 1:45 wasn’t really me, it was Eddie using my password. I’m not really comfortable with that practice, by the way.” Don’t make it whiny.
Other than that, if he’s as bad as you say, he’ll get his. Or maybe he won’t. Life ain’t always fair. Just take care of your own business and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
His time off for required medical appointments may fall under FMLA leave or accommodation of the ADA, which the employer could be legally required to provide for. I’m not really seeing a cause for resentment there. It’s not really easy to lie about this kind of thing. Employers require documentation for medical appointments, as such. Everyone has different medical needs, and you don’t have enough information to judge him for this. Maybe he’s so tight with the bosses because he has a disability that they’re accommodating… who knows?
Anyway, it sounds like he has some other issues that make him a bad employee. Focus on those instead of being resentful that he “gets” to go to the doctor all the time. It’s not like he’s on holiday or something.
I didn’t have him leaving to go somewhere on medical grounds as the main point of resentment, if you read the OP, it was the other aspects, provided with bulletpoints, which were the main bone of contention.
I don’t think you can do that much about it. As Wheelz said, complaining about it to supervisors often makes you look like a resentful whiner, even though you may have perfectly valid concerns. If management hasn’t caught on by now, chances are they never will. Favoritism is the workplace really sucks, especially if it’s misplaced, but I think you’re SOL. The more you bring it up the worse it will reflect on you.
If you see actual poor work it would be perfectly fair to report that to your boss. If he is really violating company policies you need to report that now. If you just feel like things aren’t “fair” in some way you can’t articulate then you would just come across as a whiner.
At my job, there are people who spend the who day trying to get things done and there are people who spend all day trying to look good for the bosses. I know you can guess who gets the promotions most of the time. But, if you are one of those people who can’t bring themsleves to suck up all day, someone who feels the need to get things done when they need doing, then that is who you are. There will always be more suck-ups but you can’t change the way things work. Unless you want to change your nature you will have to live with some of this in most jobs.
This. The only complaint you’ve mentioned that would actually be a valid thing to go to a supervisor over is using someone else’s passwords, and that’s kind of on the person themselves for letting him get his hands on it.
There may or may not be favouritism going on here, but it’s just too bad for you and everyone else. At my last temp assignment, there were three smokers (including the supervisor) and two non-smokers. The non-smokers worked all day with a one hour lunch break. The smokers took about four half hour smoke breaks each day in addition to their one hour lunch break. That wasn’t fair in any way, but there wasn’t a damned thing the non-smokers could do about it that didn’t sound whiney (and it would also involve going over their supervisor’s head). They just had to count on someone else noticing that these three were ALWAYS outside smoking.
Just tend your own knitting, cover your own ass, do your own job, and let your co-workers sink or swim without your input.