If you've never had a coworker who made you ask yourself "how on earth did they get this job," I'd love to know the name of the utopia you're living in.
Reddit user u/kippersmoker helped accumulate some of the most glaring crappy coworker warning signs by posing the question, "In your line of work, what red flags identify a colleague as being useless/out of their depth?" Here are the top-rated responses:
1. "When you're training somebody and come across something that seems new to them. If you explain the law/procedure and they say, 'Yeah, I know that.' Then why the hell did you do it wrong if you knew?"
2. "Illustrator here. People who get offended at specific technical criticism (wrong perspective, bad anatomy, etc.) and/or justify it with 'That's my style.'"
3. "At one company, we had a guy who — when stuck — sat on it quietly, didn't ask for help, didn't make it known he was stuck, just waited until someone came along (some time later) to ask how it was going. Don't ever do this."
4. "Inability to use shared documents in Google or Microsoft. Or just being so out of touch with technology in general."
5. "Someone who does math on a calculator and keys the answer into an Excel spreadsheet."
6. "Worked in a psych hospital. People who think that it is a hierarchy, with patients being the lowest, are the biggest red flag. It is a collective effort to help people who are experiencing the worst time in their life..."
"...You don’t get to taunt and bully patients by threatening to take away the few privileges they are allowed just because it makes you feel powerful. There is nearly always a conflict-free way to handle a situation."
7. "I am a lab tech. When I get someone fresh out of school to train, their intelligence isn't a factor in my overall judgment. It's their work ethic. Are they willing to work past the frustration and tedium of a complicated situation? I'll take persistence over genius any day of the week."
8. "Asking the same question again and again. I understand the first 2–3 times, but beyond that, I expect you to consult your notes. If they don't take meaningful notes, I take that as a red flag right off the bat."
9. "Complaining about clients as soon as they leave or while they're STILL RIGHT THERE."
10. "Not acknowledging incidents/mistakes. If we find out about it in any way other than by your mouth and your incident report, it's grounds for firing. Bonus points if we find out you damaged a client's property or ours and didn't report it."
11. "I once watched a graphic designer measuring her screen with a ruler. She did not even have the zoom set to 100%."
12. "I’m always suspicious of other filmmakers who don’t watch movies. I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious. I understand people are busy and don’t always have free time to go to the movie theater for two hours and pay $10.99 for a ticket, but being educated about current trends in the industry seems like an obvious part of the job."
13. "I'm a barista at a café that serves food. We recently had a new hire and I knew she wasn't going to last long when she struck up a conversation with one of the customers at the counter with a line of about five people behind them..."
14. "I'm a social worker. I can tell who's going to burn out within weeks of their starting at the agency. Huge red flag if they start taking paperwork home on the weekends to 'catch up.' You never catch up..."
"...You do the best you can, prioritize correctly, and leave work at work when the week is done. The second you start taking work home for the weekend, you're going to burn out, and it happens quickly."
15. "Line cook here. It's pretty obvious the second someone picks up a knife. Or anyone who brags about going to culinary school a lot is generally a bad cook."
16. "RN here. I know I might offend some other nurses on here, but if you come into work and your hair is not put up, that's just telling me that you don't intend on doing any dirty work."
17. And finally, "We get a lot of updates that affect how we perform our jobs. We get a new update each week. I can't stand it when as soon as the email hits the inbox, a lazy coworker asks what the email is about — asking for details on the new policy instead of just reading it!"
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.