[Coworker #1] had to take early retirement suddenly, due to health issues. This left the company racing around to try to fill everything he did. [Coworker #1], being the guy he was, would help anyone and everyone, so we kept finding things after he left that were not getting done. It was always, “Oh, yeah, [Coworker #1] used to do that.” It was remarkable how much that man could do.

Eventually, we had a few new starters join to help get things back on track. I was asked to look after [Coworker #2] while she got used to the role and company.

[Coworker #2], however, knew that I wasn’t her boss and quickly stopped doing anything I asked her to do. I had to get her boss to tell her, to her face, to follow my instructions as his own. This worked for a while, until [Coworker #2] realised she could “forget,” “run out of time,” or just create excuses and not do it.

Me: “Oh, [Coworker #2], I see the meeting room hasn’t been restocked. Could you do that, please? There is a major customer meeting in a few hours.”

Coworker #2: *Smugly* “Can’t.”

Me: “You can’t? Why not?”

Coworker #2: “The storeroom is out of coffee.”

Me: “You’re the only one that uses that storeroom, [Coworker #2]. When you use the last of something, there is a big sign that asks you to let finance know.”

Coworker #2: “Well, that’s not my job.”

Me: “Please, can you ask finance for the petty cash and go grab some more coffee from the shops?”

Coworker #2: “That’s not my job, either.”

Me: “Fine, I will do it, then… Not like I don’t have far more important stuff to do.”

I grabbed some petty cash, apologised on [Coworker #2]’s behalf, and managed to buy some supplies for the meeting room.

I decided I’d had enough and let [Coworker #2]’s boss know that I would not be managing her anymore and why. She lied and told him I was bullying and picking on her. However, she could provide no evidence, and no one else in the official backed her up. She was fired the next day. She screamed the building down on her way out that they were losing their best employee. Truly delusional.

They ended up hiring a single mom on a part-time contract. She works twice as hard as [Coworker #2] did, in half the time.

Me: “Hey, can you pass [report], please?”

Apprentice: “No.”

Me: “Sorry?”

Apprentice: “I said no. You always get me to do stuff around here.”

Me: “Yeah, it’s called your job.”

Apprentice: “Well, I, err… I want to be doing other stuff, interesting stuff.”

Me: “You know what? I will get the report myself.”

I walk around to his desk, and he knocks the report to the floor.

Me: “Real mature.”

It’s only a small office, so everyone notices. People stop talking to the apprentice, and he eventually goes for a break and doesn’t come back. It gets late in the afternoon and I have forgotten about it, until the boss comes into the office and addresses us.

Boss: “I’ve had a phone call from [Apprentice]’s dad, claiming that he’s being bullied and that we are not giving his son any actual, meaningful work. Does anyone want to explain?”

The office is a bit tense and no one wants to say anything. Out of the blue, an older woman, the sort of grandma type — she actually bakes cookies and brings them in — speaks up.

Coworker: “He’s a lazy little s***. He’s rude, arrogant, and doesn’t want to be here. Don’t bring him back, [Boss].”

Boss: “Okay. I, err… Well, I will certainly pass on that message.”

True to his word, he did, and the apprentice never came back. We eventually took on another who was great and stayed on for years afterward.

Everyone working on the assembly line has had to move around after some new equipment was installed. I’m now working with a bunch of new people. They seem okay, but the guy down track from me seems a bit of a waste of space. I don’t know the guy, but any opportunity to slack off, he will. I’m not sure he actually checks anything, which is pretty bad as he is supposed to be the goalkeeper to stop stuff getting out.

It gets close to the end of the day and [New Guy] disappears. The problem is, if he doesn’t pass off my parts, then I quickly run out of room, and then the guy before me will do, too.

I keep working until my section is full and I literally can do no more. I ask around to see if anyone knows where he is. 

Me: “Do you know where [New Guy] is?”

Coworker: “What time is it?”

Me: “It’s 15:30.”

Coworker: “Did he leave about fifteen minutes ago?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Coworker: “Yeah, he goes for a smoke and then something to eat about this time on a Monday.”

Me: “And that’s okay?”

Coworker: “Well, no, but he gets away with it.”

Me: “The line has stopped for me. I’m backed up.”

Coworker: “Oh, just pass the parts through. He doesn’t check them, anyway.”

Me: “I can’t.”

Coworker: “Oh, come on, man. Just do it. We’ve always done it that way.”

Me: “No. I mean, I can’t, even if I did want to. I don’t have the access and the PC is locked.”

He swore and grabbed his phone. He tried to call [New Guy] but he didn’t answer. We went down to his machine, where, apparently, he leaves all his passwords. But they weren’t there.

Just as [Coworker] decided to go and find [New Guy], the timer alarm went off and management came down.

Eventually, we had to tell them what had happened. Of course, just letting parts go to the customer without a safety check is pretty bad, and they didn’t know how many parts were out there.

I think they wanted to fire [New Guy] on the spot, but they couldn’t, so they transferred him to work in the yard doing actual labour. He lasted two weeks.

Our supermarket cafe has a very strict rule for staff: no eating the food unless you’ve paid and are on break. It’s an absolute rule, and it’s a fireable offence. We have a hot food line out front where customers can select food, but we also have a back area where we grill food to order and have the big dishwashers and refrigerators. We’ve all been guilty of grabbing a snack here and there, but if a manager is around it’s an absolute no-no.

Our fresh cream cake slices — usually three different kinds — are all individually plated and marked with the date. It’s late in the day, and our manager has just instructed us to pull all of yesterday’s cakes and mark them down. Then, he headed out into the main store. We finish the job, but as no managers are around, my coworker keeps one piece of cake back and starts eating it.

She is standing there, fork loaded with cake halfway to her mouth, when the manager walks in deep in conversation WITH OUR AREA MANAGER. Everyone freezes. The coworker, cool as a cucumber, carries on, eats the mouthful of cake, and then says:

Coworker: “Yes, the customer was right; this is stale. I’ll pull the other slices.”

Then, she breezed out, collected two other plates of cake, and recorded them as “waste” as she binned them.

I’m pretty sure the manager knew what was going on, but she got away with it.

We all have that god-awful coworker who no one wants to work with, right? Mine takes on too much responsibility and then expects me to do it. Because she is bad at communicating, she just assumes I will do it and know everything. She decided she wanted to take over interns from me. Fine, great. Less work for me. I gave her a budget in March with a list of tasks and sent her on her merry way.

However, because she is really bad at communicating, she did not convey anything to the interns at all. It is now May, a full two months after, and one of them contacts me the day before he is scheduled to start. I am not sure why he would contact me as we haven’t interacted before, but he is friendly with past interns who were under me. I direct him to my coworker who is in charge of him, copying her on the email.

The intern also emails her asking about his schedule. She sends some superfluous email out where she tries to lay the blame on me for everything not being set up. He doesn’t have a computer. We don’t have a game plan. The works. I helpfully tell her I have a spare computer that I am placing on her desk for her. I also forward her the proposal that is already approved by our manager — the same proposal I sent her two months prior and she told me on three separate occasions she had read. Our manager is copied on this.

My coworker then tries to call me about “interns things.” I ignore her because, well, it isn’t my job, and I don’t know what she told him. I also know there is a real chance she will yell at ME for the audacity of the intern emailing me, despite, you know, never having a conversation with him before right that second. 

Nevertheless, I do contact our manager to let him know what happened. He tells me to shoot the intern an email to come in anyway and I go home peacefully knowing that it is not my problem.

This exchange happens the next day.

Coworker: “Did you see the email I sent you in regards to [Intern]?”

Me: “Yes, and [Manager] was supposed to call you about it. Did he not?”

Coworker: “So, you didn’t see my email?”

Me: “I saw it. [Manager] said he would call you about it so I didn’t feel the need to respond.”

Coworker: “You know, you really need to be a better communicator. We are a team. We are all in this together. We need to support each other.”

Me: *Pause* “Yes, and I just told you that [Manager] should’ve called you about it.”

Coworker: “About what? You need to tell me about what. You cannot say, ‘it.’”

Me: *Internally rolling my eyes* “The email that you sent about the intern.”

Coworker: “Oh. Well, you need to be better at communicating.”

Me: *Thinking* “And you need to be better at listening.”

This woman really just approached me to pick a fight so she could blame me for her not being prepared with two months of planning. Later, she tried to insist I was in charge of interns, but luckily, the manager shut that down real quick.