We’ve all been there…
You have a co-worker (or maybe multiple people) who just makes every day on the job an absolute nightmare.
Is there anything worse than getting that pit in your stomach on the drive to work every morning because you know that certain someone is going to be there?
UGH!
Have you ever had a co-worker from Hell?
Here’s how AskReddit users responded.
1. Liar!
“I had a co-worker who was a one upper. Drove us all crazy. Around 2002 in an IT department. Here’s some of his claims:
Friends with George Lucas
Dated Kirstie Alley
Stephen Spielberg was going to produce one of his screen plays, but someone was jealous and claimed he plagiarized her work and Spielberg believed him but she had “connections” so he couldn’t do anything about it.
Had a degree in law and was a lawyer before he became a software developer and won every case. (dude was maybe 25 at the time, he sucked as a developer and I flat out told him once he should reenter the legal field – which he somehow took as a compliment).
Played golf with Bill Gates on more than one occasion.
There’s a lot more but these are the biggest lies.
2. Get rid of that one.
“I used to work part time at a shipping warehouse and at one point, we ended up hiring this sixteen year old kid.
He made a ton of mistakes that we ended up having to fix for him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first just because he was new. But not only did he never learn from his f*ck-ups, but he was incredibly lazy and lacked any self-awareness.
There were instances where he was given a task, but then he’d either d*ck around on his phone most of the time, hide out in the bathroom for like forty-five minutes and then hoped we wouldn’t notice, or just whine to my supervisor that he didn’t want to do whatever he was assigned.
Because of that, he would often take half the day to do like thirty minutes of work and would then complain that he had too much work piled on top of him. It was ridiculous.
He lasted maybe a month before my supervisor let him go.”
3. Gossipy.
“Had a co-worker who always gossiped about others and would say horrible things about everyone in the office.
It created a super toxic culture and caused many people to leave, not because they didn’t like the work, they just hated the culture.”
4. Spoiled brat.
“The 50 something Turd that was the owners son.
Spoiled brat, reminded me constantly who he was if I stood up to him. Creepy as hell too, could never just tell any of the women they looked nice, actually told me one day that my legs looked nice…I was wearing a skirt. That was the last time I wore a skirt to work for a long time.
I immediately started looking for a new job within a month. There were so many other things that occurred I was turned off from working for a small family owned business since.”
5. Plotting.
“Had an assistant who plotted to get me fired and take my job.
Some of my workers let me know because he tried to get them onboard with him. Eventually, due to politics I was demoted but asked to be put on the shift relieving him (we would work 12 hour shifts on weekends). After being relieved by phone a couple of times (against the rules) I intentionally came in 4 hours early and he was no where on site.
I still got a call from him when he should have relieved me like he was still on site. I let the guards know and they videotaped him and I got him fired.”
6. Fired!
“I had the easiest gig ever once, on-call janitor on a university campus.
You had a few minor duties and could sit around shooting the breeze (doing homework, binging Netflix) for the rest of the shift. But you had to be ON SITE for the entire shift, and you definitely had to be there to lock up
Well, one semester the weekend shift comprised of one student and his new wife. Our boss kept getting complaints that they weren’t around to unlock doors, sick toilet paper, etc. There was always some excuse, along with a personal hand-to-God guarantee that they were on campus the whole shift.
Everything came crashing down around them when they got into a car accident driving back from Vegas (8-10 hours away) during a shift. And they told our boss all about the accident as the reason why they wouldn’t make it to their shift the next day.
Idiots. Obviously they were fired.”
7. Creep.
“She told our boss that she wanted to break into my apartment and touch all of my stuff because “I bet it’s all really cool”.
This was right after I found out she’d moved into the apartment next door.
She would send stuff to my apartment just so I would put it on her stoop and knock on her door.”
8. Not my fault!
“She was a lady in her 50s. We worked at a doctors office.
Nothing was EVER her fault, she could not take even the nicest constructive criticism, and constantly complained about EVERYTHING. One of my nicest co workers ever (who was around the same age so not an ageism thing) often was the recipient of her blame and because she never took responsibility, it was regularly the same issues she never learned to correct.
They bickered a lot after a couple years of this. One day the nice coworker went to the car to grab her anxiety med, and the obnoxious one went to the office manager and then HR saying she thought the nice one went to get a weapon to hurt her. Like what?! She didn’t even own a weapon? And the nice one GOT FIRED. I was absolutely SHOCKED.
Any lingering respect I had for her was gone. I’ve had a lot of jobs and met some sh*tty people but she was the most stressful nightmare who could boohoo her way into getting pity parties on cue.”
9. Horrendously inept.
“Canadian Air Force here.
The number of horrendously inept people I’ve dealt with over the past 10+ years is amazing.
One kid I worked with met a girl, got married and divorced within a year of joining. Refused to wash himself regularly. He walked around with GREASY glasses. Like, his everyday glasses were smeared with weeks worth of finger grease and dandruff and skin flakes form his dry dirty skin.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if he knew how to do his job (which a trained monkey could do), but this kid couldn’t. He also got his mother to move in with him in military housing to help him with house work and bills.
There are a lot of great people I’ve worked with/for. But the bad ones really make you question why you try so hard when you could be sh*t and still get by.”
10. That’s Fred!
“I briefly had a co-worker at my current job at a local grocery store. We’ll just call him “Fred”.
Fred is one of those people who’s always talking on his phone in the break room and that’s my personal pet peeve at work. More often than not, he’s usually arguing with his girlfriend and he doesn’t seem to care that anyone’s listening.
He’d do other annoying, gross things like chewing with his mouth wide open and wiping his boogers all over the place, but then there was one day when he tried to flush a hot pocket down the toilet.
Needless to say that it didn’t play out so well and that temporarily put an end to our closest employee restroom right by the break room. He surprisingly didn’t get fired over that, but he did get fired when one of his old high school teachers came in shopping and he threw a whole sack of potatoes at her. She was an elderly woman who got seriously injured and both the ambulance and the cops had to get involved.
I never did hear about what happened to his old teacher, but Fred on the other hand is currently in jail for not only assaulting his teacher, but he apparently also attacked his lawyer for reasons unkown.
That’s Fred.”
11. Yikes.
“Former Supervisor – A bully, gossip, and all around horrible person that picked 1 or 2 people to be her punching bag.
My introduction to her was when I was sitting at lunch and she came barreling at one of my coworkers and proceded to litteraly scream and curse in his face in the Break area. She also had a habit of gossiping in the the warehouse office in full hearing of other people which made me uncomfortable.
It’s one thing when a co-worked gossips to another, it’s an entirely different thing when a supervisor gossips about those under them to others.
I actually cassually mentioned to a different supervisor that it made me uneasy to be in the office while this was going on and she got wind of it, she then decided to make me her target. Over the span of 6 months she bullied me and behaved in some really disrespectful ways:
– She gossiped about me: How did I find out? She started doing it in front of me.
– She gave me a very unflattering nickname: I found out when she blurted it out one time when I came into the office after being paged
– She was passive agressive towards me in all respects – Growled at me in the ladies locker room, put papers to cover her face so I couldn’t “look” at her, sighed or scoffed when I tried to engage in conversation with other people (not her) Ignored me or outright walked away when I needed a supervisor override.
– She told me I needed “To step it up” with my work. I was the 2nd most productive with the the 2nd lowest fault rate of my department. To give you an Idea on a typical day 1st would do ~25 jobs, I would be at ~23, the other 5 people averaged ~15 jobs a piece.
I finally had a breakdown after she started doing it in front of other Supervisors and the Manager, this was a week after I told the manager, again, about her behavior. Nothing was being done about it. I was ready to just walk off the job and had a breakdown.
Someone told the Managers boss that I was having a break down and she called me directly to find out what was going on. I was walked through an official HR report that went to the front office. She was given one last chance. I told them she wouldn’t last a month. 3 weeks later she had a screaming match with another employee and was suspended and subsequently fired.
I later found out she was directly responsible for 3 people quitting and one person getting fired becasue they couldn’t take it anymore and threw gloves at her.”
How about you?
Who was (or is) your co-worker from Hell?
Talk to us in the comments!
