Do you have a lazy person at work?

[ColinJ]

I worked a night shift for a year and a colleague once actually had the cheek to bring a sleeping bag in, intending to sleep during some of his shift. (We were sometimes unsupervised overnight.) I told him that if he did it, I would stop on until the management came in next morning and report what he had done. We had production targets to meet and he seemed to think that the rest of us should work harder to make up his deficit. He got a major strop on and told me to mind my own business, but ... he stayed awake and worked through the night!

The same man used to stuff a copy of The Sun up his shirt and disappear into a toilet cubicle 20 minutes before every break and not emerge until the break was about to start. He'd extend the breaks by 5 or 10 minutes when the foreman wasn't watching him, and he'd always be at the head of the queue waiting to clock out at the end of each working day.

He started work later than everyone else, worked slower than everyone else, apparently had a really terrible bowel problem, and was always off the premises before anyone else. If it had been my company, I'd have had him in the office and given him a good talking to!

Yes - he was one lazy bugger!

 

[YahudaMoon]

Then you have to other end of the scale so the speak 'Do you have any mugs in work'

Up until about 5 year back I would bend over backwards and do anything for any company. Yeah the 'Mug' Well not any more.

Depending on how I feel the company treats me then I try and do my best the give back what the company gives me.

I've worked for some right orrible b++s21$ s over the years and if that ever the case nowadays then I do my best to do what ever I can to do as little as possible. Though this usually ends up me being sacked though it aint know loss as it was a poor company to work for and I got away with doing as little as possible for as long as possible

Most companies I ve worked for have been excellent though the industry I was in has basically finished and only one such place exist in the north west of what I have never / won't work for as I know so much about it

There is also the saying working yourself into a early grave of what Ive seen a few times over the years.

 

[Fab Foodie]

No. It's pretty impossible to be a shirker where I work. It's blood sweat and tears only or go elsewhere.

 

[TheDoctor]

It's always worth having a lazy or incompetent person around.
When you join a new team, look around and identify the person that will be made redundant when hard times strike. If you can't see them, chances are it's you...

 

[hotmetal]

Yahudamoon, yes, I think that's what they call equity theory. Perfectly reasonable really – if the company treats you well, you work hard and hopefully it's appreciated by your teammates, even if not the boss. But if the company takes the pee all the time, it's gloves off.

Some people seem to be natural born slackers though, whereas others get lots of satisfaction from knowing they've done a good job.

I work for myself too and the only reason I'm still up at this hour is because I've only just finished a job for a client who completely re-wrote a document I'd just laid out, sent it to me at 9pm and asked for it back "this evening"! I don't fall into the category of "mug" for this though, they will appreciate my commitment and I will appreciate charging them time-and-a-half… equity theory!

 

[summerdays]

Then you have to other end of the scale so the speak 'Do you have any mugs in work'

Mr Summerdays is one of those I can't let the company down. Last Friday there was some buck shifting going around and he got a phone call on the Friday late afternoon to say that some client documentation needed to be fully reworked over the weekend for 9 am Monday. It wasn't anything to do with his team but lots of shuffling of papers and someone said that he was the only person available who could do it (ie someone who wouldn't tell them to get lost!). He wasn't happy, neither was I at the prospect of our weekend disappearing. Somebody in France was meant to help him as well and strangely enough they seemed unable to answer their phone on Friday afternoon at all. We were having lots of discussions about how he should say no, and that if he did work the weekend (not for overtime - merely that it might "recognised in the next pay review"!!!), that I would expect him to get two days off during the week to do the things he was going to do about the house.

Luckily we got a reprieve at the 11th hour when the person rang to say their boss had decided to go with the original set of documents rather than re-doing it all.

But that is how Mr Summerdays works - he finds it difficult not to commit to the job 110%, and it is getting him down in this particular job (though there is a hint of redundancies to come which he is actually hoping for).

 

[Chromatic]

I'd have had him in the office and given him a good talking to!

Yes - he was one lazy bugger!

You are GregCollins and ICMFP

 

[asterix]

Yes, they all were. But I don't care any more as I got redundancy.

Anyway, can't waste any more time on t'internet as I have work to do

 

[tyred]

I was going to write a reply but I'm too lazy.

 

[*Dusty*]

Yes, we have a company full of people whose standard response is “not my job”. There is a complete lack of common sense, and if I was in charge I would have a lot of people gone.

One of the managers told me in confidence that if they want to get rid of someone it takes a year, short of actually doing someone an actual physical injury or stealing something. We recently had a foreign national stab HIMSELF with a screwdriver because he was refused time off to go to a court case with his girlfriend/whatever and he’s actually suspended on full pay. There is an ethos among the long term workers that they are OWED fully paid long term sick leave at some point ie 6 months or more, simply because it’s available.

I hate the place, I hate the mentality, a lot of the office staff are nothing but dossers who can’t do their jobs but are good at making a simple thing difficult and time consuming. One person in my department spent three days doing a spreadsheet only to be asked why he’d done it as it wasn’t a scheduled task.

As also mentioned above, I'm a worker, I can't not do my work if you follow me. Last year however I had a small experiment, did nothing more than was expected as opposed to staying behind and going above and beyond so to speak. End of the year they gave me a not unsubstantial pay rise, completely validating my theory that the less you do the more you're thought of.......... weird........

 

[twowheelsgood]

The best way to be lazy is to be far smarter than everybody else. I remember a fried of mine who had a job part of which was transcribing some details from emails into a booking engine and a separate database.

8 lines of Perl coding later their productivity was carefully pegged at around 1.5 times their colleagues while spending 6 hours a day on the net.... Of course they could have released this little tool to the bosses but didn't want to be responsible for the sacking of most of their colleagues.

 

[rich p]

. God, he's an idle bastard.

True.He doesn't seem to have done a lot since the 7th day

 

[compo]

I worked nights in one job. It was a job where we actually worked, not an office job polishing the seat of a chair. I told the bosses I go to bed at 11:00am so no phone calls after that. They sometimes phoned with queries about issues regarding the night shift. One day I received a call at 2.00pm, and not a very important one at that. I asked the caller if she was going to do my shift that night, and when she asked me what I meant I told her I wasn't going in. If I couldn't sleep during the day I couldn't work all night. I didn't go in, I got a bollocking, but I never received another phone call at home. In other places non smokers have complained about smokers skiving out for a smoke, which would be fair enough if those same complainers didn't spend half their day nattering.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

apart from me?

 

[MattHB]

most of my students and quite a few of my staff??