I am fortunate enough not to have had truly terrible coworkers over the years but I have run into some downright annoying people. Like the coworker who would go for their millionth smoke break when the rest of us were stressed out working at a busy restaurant. And the other coworker who was late all the time, never answered their emails, and who had to practically be stalked around an office I once worked at the time in the event anyone wanted a response.
After Redditor Fruntledumjam asked the online community, "Who was your coworker from hell?" people shared their stories. I don't envy some of these people and their bad luck.
"She's very manipulative..."
Had a colleague who genuinely enjoyed seeing people not do well and enjoyed when people felt uncomfortable. She's very manipulative and is actually quite good at it. She would ask you questions and sympathize with whatever you've got going on, only to turn around and tell everyone what you just confessed to her.
After about 2-3 months with the company, if she hasn't already somehow screwed you over, you've heard enough about her to know that if you don't want the rest of the room to find out, then you don't tell her.
Yeah, I'm talking about you Carolina.
Yeah, Carolina!
Now the whole internet knows about you and is on to you, Carolina!
"Fast forward 8 months..."
I had a 50-year-old colleague who would message women on sugar baby apps and rub one out over his trousers. He sat next to me.
Kept on happening, reported it. He said he had a genital rash, but admitted to 'messaging people on social media'. I got in trouble for my accusations.
Fast forward 8 months, he's sitting opposite me now. He starts rubbing one out in the open office again. I recorded him. Showed my manager, and he was finally fired.
"People mostly kept quiet..."
He told the General Manager that he might be a bit late for a shift due to his second job. When the GM reluctantly said OK, he apparently took this as thinking he had free reign to come and go as he pleased. He'd show up anywhere from 7:30-8:30 for his 7:00 shift. Then when the doors closed he'd insist he had to "head out" and he had an early morning the following morning, leaving everyone else to do the closing work. He also had other issues like being rude to customers and other employees.
People mostly kept quiet until one day a higher-level manager had to sub on the night shift. When he went to leave early and the rest of us with the work, the manager flipped, "If you lay a fucking FINGER on that money before this work is COMPLETELY DONE, don't bother coming back." The guy insisted he "had permission" and left anyway. When our GM returned and he tried to come back, our manager said, "You warned me you were going to be late ONE TIME, and I never once gave you permission to otherwise start late or leave early. Clean out your locker NOW."
"She was constantly complaining..."
This woman who was one of those people who always had to one-up you. Like if you cut your thumb off, she was just recently sawed in half. She was constantly complaining and miserable and it was so draining.
"She almost got me fired..."
She almost got me fired because she wanted to find the weakest-looking guy to be her little errand boy. When I told her politely to go screw herself, she told HR that I had been taking work out of her queue in the system.
It wasn't a very good lie though, because why would I want to do more work than I have to? I even said this to HR in the disciplinary meeting.
Nice save.
No one wants to do extra work.
No one.
"She constantly tries to discourage women..."
I work with a woman who is threatened by other women, especially if they are younger and have more education than her.
She consistently tries to discourage women from furthering their education, and constantly tries to get women she is threatened by fired. She is a goddam nightmare.
"He lasted maybe a month..."
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, 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, hideout 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.
"It created a super toxic culture..."
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.
"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 unknown.
That's Fred.
Oh, Fred.
What could we do without you?
Probably a lot.
"Some of my workers let me know..."
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 on board 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 nowhere 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.
Let's just say I'm happy not to have dealt with any of these people.
Life is hard enough. I'll be sure to walk in the opposite direction if one of these people so much as looks at me.
Have some of your own stories to share? Were you that coworker? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section below!
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
