Working with numpties

[MisterTommyH]

Originally Posted by Owenski

I know some of you are bossmen (and women) Im not a "boss" but I do have delegates and doesnt it just drive you mental when you give them a task you deem simple but then have to walk them through it. Made even more frustrating that they've done that task in the past and even more so that they've been doing it more recently than you have.
But thats not the best bit, oh no its even more enfuriating when they hand over the work as "complete" and its just a load of tosh.

Brought to you by Matt, the bloke who's just spent and hour and half picking through the turd of drawings handed to him by someone who supposedly helped do a quick half hour job for him yesterday.

cseless uunts

It's even worse when you're off for a day, leave them work to do perfectly well explained, but you get back to discover it's not been done because they 'don't think we should be putting that on our drawings".

Excuse me, but I'll make that decision, and now you've made me miss the deadline. Shame they can't go to the meeting and take the flak.

Or at least, if they're the one deciding what should and shouldn't go on the drawings take the initiative to read the file to discover that I've covered our backs a hundred times over.

People who have never been self employed might be offended by this post.

But Matt you have set out very clearly why I will never have employees again. Maybe my experience was particularly bad, those I inherited from the firm I merged with were completely workshy clueless morons, thought they'd done the job for years so why change.

A few things stick in my mind.

For example:

• why use the online Land Registry service (instant result) when you can use the paper version (4 days). 'Oh we've always done it like this.'
• Refusal to use the case management system that I personally had just invested £30K in.
• Clock hits 5, and they're off!!! Just like at the races. And f*ck the client who needs some work done and it will take till 5.30, oh no 'I'm going out tonight', so muggins had to it, never mind, I'll just stay until 11pm instead of 10.30pm, no of course I don't mind.
• Their attitude sucked big hairy donkey balls, how many times did I hear 'it's not my job' - what, to empty your own feckin bin - yes they'd rather sit with trash (including rotting food) all round their feet than get off their fat ar5e and pick up the bloody crap that they themselves had thrown on the goddamn floor because they were too f*cking lazy to put it in the ****ing bin, so in the end I got fed up and one weekend I removed all the bins and made them use the central bin. So what they did? Well you know those plastic cups that come with the water chiller - well they started lining those up along the desks and started ramming all their trash in those, pressing it down real hard so it would all fit in. So I removed the plastic cups...
• And then they sneered at the recycling bins and deliberately put glass in the paper bin, or used it as a new home for their food debris from lunchtime.

I could go on and on.....

Never again.

Originally Posted by Ed

People who have never been self employed might be offended by this post.

But Matt you have set out very clearly why I will never have employees again. Maybe my experience was particularly bad, those I inherited from the firm I merged with were completely workshy clueless morons, thought they'd done the job for years so why change.

A few things stick in my mind.

For example:

• why use the online Land Registry service (instant result) when you can use the paper version (4 days). 'Oh we've always done it like this.'
• Refusal to use the case management system that I personally had just invested £30K in.
• Clock hits 5, and they're off!!! Just like at the races. And f*ck the client who needs some work done and it will take till 5.30, oh no 'I'm going out tonight', so muggins had to it, never mind, I'll just stay until 11pm instead of 10.30pm, no of course I don't mind.
• Their attitude sucked big hairy donkey balls, how many times did I hear 'it's not my job' - what, to empty your own feckin bin - yes they'd rather sit with trash (including rotting food) all round their feet than get off their fat ar5e and pick up the bloody crap that they themselves had thrown on the goddamn floor because they were too f*cking lazy to put it in the ****ing bin, so in the end I got fed up and one weekend I removed all the bins and made them use the central bin. So what they did? Well you know those plastic cups that come with the water chiller - well they started lining those up along the desks and started ramming all their trash in those, pressing it down real hard so it would all fit in. So I removed the plastic cups...
• And then they sneered at the recycling bins and deliberately put glass in the paper bin, or used it as a new home for their food debris from lunchtime.

I could go on and on.....

Never again.

How did you not murder these people?

[maviczap]

Plenty of tales to tell, but easiest one is I have staff who want to get promoted, but can't prise themselves away from their Iphone or Internet to do some work!

They can't wait to knock off early, but I'm there doing my mandatory jobs, when they've long gone

Try basic things like a lawnmower. The last time I used it the thing worked fine, someone else then used it and his description was "it run out of fuel so I filled it up and it didn't work". So he left it there for the next person to find not working which was me. Then to top it off a closer look at the fuel to see that it was red. He only put 2 stroke oil in with the fuel on a 4 stroke engine that has a clearly marked oil compartment on it.

A couple of days later one of the guys made the easy task of filling up a van in the yard with LPG look impossible. All you have to do is pull up to the pump, connect it to the van, press a button until full, take off the pump and then fill out a sheet. He done all of that right apart from taking the pump off the van. The pump didn't suffer too much damage but the connector on the van and the bodywork was all bent and twisted £££.

This is why I spend most of my time working alone. I would explode if I had half of the issues that some of you had mentioned.

[andrewsmith]

Originally Posted by Sean_C

How did you not murder these people?

+1

[dizzyblonde]

Could be worse, you could be sat in Pegs shoes right now, with a bunch of numpties that have caused mess with their customers and conveniently have left him in the office to deal with his own stuff and theirs. When passed the phone, colleague 'accidently' cut them off, so they have to ring again and he deals with it all over again.!!!

Having been boss, employee and self employed i can see all sides.

simple to you doesn't mean simple to them.
Why did you go through it - that just mean your delegate thinks that he work was an acceptable standard. I would have given it back. ( still done my own version) and told him where it went fell short of standard and why

I must admit the staff I had I never had any problems with.
i would explain as needed ( people learn differently) however there was always the caveat of if you don't pick up soon you will be out of job as it a mandatory element/ onto training plan/ bonus docked.
If i need to 'speak to you' then you were in major trouble and normally resulted in discplinary action (i believe in 2 chances)
If I had deadlines I would explain that I had deadlines to person i was leaving the work with and a contact number. Only once did somebody not complete and that was a b0ll0cking for me and then the same b0ll0cking for the staff.

I've done the its not my job predominatley to wind up the old boss and because it wasn't my job. I wasn't getting credit or wages for staying back hours to work on it and I knew that thank you was not in my bosses vocab.

Sound like you got a bunch of idiots though. Personally a quiet word in their shell like

I have a young guy in our team who has the opportunity of a lifetime, who is good at what he does but he can't get up in time to get to work on time. He has a great chance to get in, get working and get on, but he's been going through the disciplinary process for 6 months now. His managers have helped him loads, they were even giving him early morning phone calls at one point.

All he has to do is get in on time and he's fine, he can't and now I'm going to sack him next week.

This is another form of numptiness!!! Waster.

[Bri w]

In the last 30 years I've had good teams and not so good teams. In most cases the numpties were rarely thick but they were lazy or chancing their arm. And on occasion you'd get someone who had their own agenda's and ambitions, who was just downright awkward.

Getting the best out of a team doesn't happen overnight, and just sometimes there's a bit of shouting and screaming to go through when creating the team. "Stormin, Formin, Normin." Its a painful experience but once through it you'll have a good team, providing you're firm, fair & consistent. Not forgeting the 3 R's respect, recognition and reward.