In my experience very few managers were able to handle such employees, either because of inexperience or not wanting to rock the boat with TPTB. At one point I was one of those employees who always covered for the slacking on the premise that “this is what the job is and if it’s not done heads are going to roll”. Didn’t matter if I was actually doing the slacking employee’s job on top of my own – the whole point was EVERYTHING had to be done in X amount of time, and that fed into my “gonna be a hero” thing I had at the time.
When it was pointed out that my own work was suffering as a result, that’s when I stepped back. The acid test came when I was out for a time on short-term disability and things literally fell apart. Management was on pins and needles as to when I’d be returning because they didn’t want to deal with the slackers – they just wanted everything DONE already.
So let’s say the slacker is the “bottler”, the guy who sends the 22 tonnes of product from the reactor to the storage tanks. You’re saying the other workers in that line should just let the line stop?
Absolutely. Then management are going to know there is a problem and deal with it.
Managers don’t care if everyone else is doing the slacker’s job as long as the work gets done and they get their bonus.
I give my coworkers as much lead time as I can possibly can give them when I need something from them. With plenty of friendly reminders.
If we’re barreling close to the drop-dead deadline and I still haven’t gotten their work, I will send them a firm email asking what’s up (making sure to cc the boss).
If my boss asks if we’re on schedule and I still don’t have all someone’s work, I’m going to tell him no and tell him who hasn’t submitted what. And then let him handle it from there.
What I will not do is cover for the coworker and let the poor workmanship reflect on me.
Machines seem to do that with me. I get a lot of “Hey Joey, can you come take a look at the cardboard compactor/furnace/scale/forklift/cooler/[freezer] compressor/garage door etc, it’s making a noise/rattling/not working/really hot/broken”. Almost every single time, as soon as I walk over the problem is gone and the thing is working perfectly. Like, not even worth my per-emptivly looking it over to see if I can tell what was wrong that prompted the person to call me over to begin with.