The co-worker who won’t go home when she’s sick, but instead takes her temperature every ten minutes, between doses of Robitussin and episodes of coughing, hacking, and blowing her nose.
And she does this because she truly believes the company will go under if she misses a couple of days. Very inflated, she is.
The absolute worst coworker is the supervisory slacker. This person is almost never actually anyone’s designated supervisor, mind you. She’s just someone who has taken it upon herself to birddog everyone else, note every little thing anyone does that might not be exactly right, and broadcast all transgressions to the rest of the staff. She spends so much time monitoring and bitching about her coworkers that she doesn’t quite have time to, you know, work. You get all the drawbacks of the regular slacker, plus the annoyance of listening to her bitch about everybody else, plus the sneaking suspicion that she’s bitching about you behind your back.
The subtle racist, who manages to make little cracks that are ambigious enough that they can’t be called out, but common enough that silence beginsto feel like concurence.
The media whore, who takes sour, poorly informed gossip to the media in hopes of annoymously embarresing their work place, and then plants rumors that someone else was the source.
I used to have one of those in my office. I was ripped to shreds on one of my annual reviews because that bitch shamelessly sucked up to the editorial director and told her that I was nasty and uncooperative (despite all the hours I spent teaching her how to use the computer programs she needed to do her work).
The editorial director was just as bad. When I asked for clarification of what I did wrong, she wasn’t able to tell me. She just warned me not to do it again. :rolleyes:
The Control Freak: Demands to be CC’d on every e-mail that even remotely relates to anything that he or she might have to do with. Hounds people about details of things that are not even close to the deadline. Shows up in you office or cube without notice and forces you to work on a pet project with them (for hours maybe). Tends to also keep management informed of every little detail that goes on.
Or the kind that can’t figure out how to not reply to the entire office wide listserv when they’re just saying something like “Gosh, boss, that’s a GREAT idea.”
The ones who have absolutely nothing to do with a project you’re heading, but somehow manage to walk around telling people when it will be done. Of course, their idea of when it will be done is about two weeks short of possible, and four weeks short of the actual promised delivery date.
And of course, they’re not lifting a finger to pull it in any faster, and they’re not the ones wearing egg on their faces when the project comes in a week ahead of deadline - but three weeks behind the “new” deadline the considerate person sets for you.
I’m currently working with one of those, and it sucks. Except that, at the same time he’s trying to undermine everyone else, he’s also actively trying to get himself fired. You see, he hates working for the company, but if he quits he won’t get anything, so he wants to be fired so he can get severance. :rolleyes:
Just writing this much makes me want to go through with my half-formed pitting of him and his little work-place buddy, and the way they’re poisoning the atmosphere between them.
I went through one of these situations for about three years. A soap opera the proportions of which were legend in the office. The sad thing is that no matter what the underminer did, it didn’t get her fired. Management knew and simply looked the other way, even when she got drunk and bailed in the middle of an office function. I left, and she’s still there.
Yeah, I’m not terribly optimistic about the ability of the undermining cow-orker to get himself fired, especially since the department head also deserves a spot on the list - the manager who tries so hard to keep everybody happy that he finds it impossible to actually ever make a decision.
I think we’ve all had one of those. Bloody bastards!
How about the ones that instead of letting your department head negotiate a pay rise for the entire department, go to see the director on their own, act like a little baby, totally dis the people they work with and completely fuck up any chance of a payrise because even though they have less experience/skills, they think they are better than everybody else?
I swear i’d be on more money at my place now but for that cunt.
paulberserker, posting under garius’ name
I also nominate the MicroManager.
I had one of these. She’d tell me to do something, I’d do it, then she’d yell at me because it wasn’t what she wanted done.
I had to ask permission to do anything, even order more toilet paper for the bathrooms. I had to tell her why I was late to work (caught in traffic, bitch) and cover the front desk during the receptionist’s lunch even though that was not my job.
She tried to undermine a good friend of mine, by telling me to keep track of his arrivals and departures at work, until the big boss put his foot down.
I think she was insecure about her responsibilites and intimidated because I’d been there since the company started.
Not on the same level as some of these, but the person who whistles.
GAAAH! I’d rather chew on tinfoil than hear that off and on all day no matter how often I politely ask to stop.
3 f-ing jobs in a row now I’ve dealt with these —I’d better stop now, not the pit.
Oh, sorry! I thought you wanted names! 
B- Micromanger Psycho. Someone spilled coffee once and she had the receptionist hire a carpet cleaner. But she wanted a background check with the BBB and 3 references first! :eek: Then she ended up hiring someone else after putting the poor girl thru the hoops of fire.
R- Backstabbing, slacking, un-supervisor. Used to sleep in his cubicle. Didn’t do anything. Blamed all shortcomings and failures on his subortinates. I got him good, once. I shreaded a stack of his people’s vacation time paperwork that he had not filed with HR for months. I hope those folks all enjoyed the extra pay on the year-end check. On a side-note: Never trust an adult male that doesn’t drink beer. Especially if he’s a fat bastard anyway.
K- Bi-Polar gossiping emotion freak. She had a new catostrophic life-disaster nearly every day, and had to make sure EVERYBODY heard about it at least 2-3 times. Total strangers would call the business, and I’d hear her spouting her tales of woe to them over the phone! I have never met a person who had more involvement with local law enforcement and lawyers in my life. And I’ve been to jail! 
She filed more reports about frivilous shit and issued more restraining orders than a weeks worth of “Law & Order”. Also managed to break damn near every piece of office equipment in the joint. Me and my boss used these printers, copiers, staplers, computers, shreader-- whatever-- for YEARS with no problem. 
I’ve got drummers. Energetic ones, but apparently heavily influenced by disco - so, not even very interesting riffs.
We have a conference call with my boss, who’s in another city, every morning and I often have trouble hearing what he’s saying. He knows I’m the only one of us who ever actually played the drums, so he thinks it’s me.
Not really a huge problem; just kind of funny.
I think I’ve worked with almost every type mentioned here, and thankfully few of such now. I do have the corporado political B.S. to deal with, but I think I’ve got that in hand.
My current bothering coworkers are the (several) travelling shooters of shit who want to suck up a lot of my time just talking about the news, their kids, etc.
I don’t mind a little conversation, or a joke or whatever, and I’ll join in during the lunch hour, but I really do have quite a lot I need to get done, and having 3 or 4 of these guys making daily assaults on my time is wearisome. I have, of course, developed some tactics by which I often deflect the onset of a B.S. session, including having just left three of these guys in my office to go logon to the system elsewhere and continuing to work.
Can we include the office martyrs on the list, please? Those annoying colleagues who say “I have to do everything myself, there’s no-one who can help me”, at the top of their voice. (To which I reply, in an equally loud voice, “Have you tried asking”?). Who sit around all day repeating the same converstion seventeen times, only to spend the next day telling everyone “I didn’t leave the office till gone ten last night” ( Standard reply: “Well have you tried asking for our help?”)
Meanwhile, the support team sit three desks away doing - literally - nothing.
We have a martyr who hasn’t actually done a single bit of filing in almost three years. His desk is currently under a foot of paper, which of course he can’t file, because he’s too busy. Of course, if he stopped moaning, he’d have enough free time in the day to get it done.
The other day, I finally made him give one of the admin team a report to put together, rather than him doing it himself. The next day I was met with the comment. “It was very kind of her to help, but it took me four hours to format it”
“Did you ask her to set it up like that?”
“No, I couldn’t”
It’s her job, damn you!
He’s on leave at the moment, and the office is so peaceful.
n every organization, there seems to be someone who has a direct line to the boss. This person has no real assigned duties, except to spy on everyone else. When such people are around, nobody tals freely, and it is obvious what is going on.
Such an arrangement results in lots of memo-writing, because people have to watch their backs and cover themselves. I saw just one such creep in action: he regularly badmouthed the management, cheated on his expense reports (and encouraged others to do the same). I knew what this bum was up to, and would never participate inhis political games.
Last I heard, he got a big promotion!
I once worked with a woman who was the “I’m a Parent, Cover Me” type, to the extreme. She never worked a 40 hour work week, yet got a salary based on the presumption that she did. (I did the timesheets, so I know this isn’t an exaggeration.) She constantly took time off of work to tend to her kid’s “multiple psychological problems,” (about 10 hours per week), and I had to take over her responsibilities on top of my own when she did. Then, at least one day per week when she did work, she brought her kid along. She’d lock him out of her office and he’d go pester other people who were trying to work. Often, she’d ask us to “babysit” even though we had our own work to do. As low (wo)man on the totem pole, I usually got stuck with this task. The kid was a total brat.
Let’s see…
Misses every freakin’ deadline with no plausible reasons. Yet, can’t understand when an ass chewing ensues because of it. Currently on probation.
Finds it impossible to be on time for work and gets upset because she falls behind and is counseled (read ass chewed) for doing so. Oh wait, she now has all the time in the world she needs, she’s currently unemployed.
Whines to the boss (me) about what everybody else is doing instead of doing what she’s supposed to be doing. Very soon to join the above person in unemployment.
Cannot make a decision on his own and has to ask the boss (me) for reassurance constantly. Maybe unemployed soon.
swampbear is on a tear at work. Can y’all tell?