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Co-worker Trouble:

First, let me say this is a long one so I’ll put this up here:

TL;DR: My co-worker is lazy and causing me more work and trouble. What do I do about it, if anything at all?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had co-works from the bowels of the pit if you will, but my current co-worker is confounding me. When I came onto this job everything was a mess, literally and figuratively. As a level 1, I only have to worry about so much before the ability leaves me because of policy. The co-worker has been here nearly two years and just of late, about 6 months through a very busy tax season on his own, so I figured it was just pressure and not enough time that made things… well a mess.

So I cleared it with the bosses and cleaned up the server room, called in an e-cycling company to get rid of the junk, ordered and re-stocked everything we were short on, and inventoried everything. Stuff is missing but I am on the hunt for the users who last had the missing items. I helped him catch back up on his backlog and have been working with the users on submitting tickets instead of walking in and expecting us to drop everything and rush to help.

But during the two months since I was first hired I have begun to notice something weird about my co-worker… he’s, well, lazy and I don’t even know how to deal with it in an office setting. I’ll give you some examples:

  • He never writes down an SN and never places inventory stickers on anything. This process pre-dates him. We had no stickers when I started and the boss who came in to train me also took the time to show me how to inventory and then get everything up to speed with me. The co-worker showed no interest at any point in time with this process. He has no idea which user has what, what we have on hand and he doesn’t seem to care. Now we seem to be missing computers again, already. We are supposed to have 9 of a model in stock and we only have 8. I can’t find the missing one and he doesn’t know when it is either. I don’t know how to explain it to my boss as I have no idea.
  • He writes things off very quickly. If a user monkeys with settings, he doesn’t try to fix anything he just labels it broken and tossed it into the recycle pile or swaps hard drives / transfers data to spare computers. I found two small Dell projectors in the recycle pile, along with six portable monitors. All had been written off as a loss. I was curious and plugged one projector in and saw it worked but the VGA wasn’t operating. I tried mini-display to HDMI and it worked. I checked the settings and the VGA/DVI ports had been disabled. I reenabled them and it worked great. The other I changed the bulb on as we had a spare in stock and again, it worked fine. These little portable projectors were 750 bucks a pop. Four of the portable monitors worked fine. I still haven’t found issue with them. I asked the Head of Help Desk and he said since I fixed them, take them home. The company had already eaten the cost. Same with computers. One was label “bad fan” but it was just cat hair from the user’s house. Gross but an easy fix on a new model computer.
  • He never returns anything to where it is supposed to go. I know I re-did everything, but I labeled every drawer, cupboard, and shelf. Things stay in roughly the same spot just drawers weren’t catch all drawers anymore.VGA cables have VGA cable drawer, Connectors and adapters have their own drawer, and everything is wound up and tied to be neat. But on a calm day, I’ve watched him walk in and toss VGA cables on a pig-tail connector into the DVI drawer. When I asked if he needed help finding the drawer he said no. I asked then if he would take the VGA cords off the pig-tail, wind them and place all three items away, he said he was busy and would do it later. Then proceeded to giggle at his phone.
  • He forgets everything. I’m bad at this too, but I have spent all my life fighting it off. ADD is not a pleasant thing. He will start something, like imaging a computer, then sit down and not touch it for the rest of the day. Or start working on fixing something and then not touch it for three days. We won’t be busy. I’ll remind him and he’ll panic and finish the task. We have the tools to work through shortfalls like these. I use the white wall we have and have put down whiteboard tape on my desk so I cannot eat through 6 large stacks of sticky notes a month. I offered him the rest of the roll or my now unused sticky pads but he declined. We divided the whiteboard wall and one side was his, one was mine and a third was the IT Team’s. But his side stayed blank until someone took notice and made a comment about all the things I had written in the mine and our’s sections and his being blank. When I came in the next day the wall was relabeled Awesome Agendas and all divides were gone… ???
  • He frequently asks me to take on his jobs because he can’t keep up or doesn’t know how to do simple things. I’ve imaged every new hire’s computer since I started, my co-worker who did it before walked through the process once, but certain computers/users deviate. He doesn’t know things such as how to check in file work in a business critical program (this is a simple task, once I learned.) and how to install and configure special connections for certain software. He has no idea. We didn’t have it recorded. I’ve had to contact the Network Admin or IT Help Desk Manager, 4 states away to get configuration settings and gotten scolded for not asking my co-worker. When I replied I did, and they asked if he knew it, I was honest and said no.
  • He seems to lack basic IT skills and passes the buck. He has a hard time with new issues and can’t seem to trouble shoot well. He doesn’t know the difference between a twist tie and a zip tie. He also has trouble with anything that isn’t just plug and play. I had to show him what a run command is, and does to get drivers setup off of a disk that wouldn’t autoplay. I’ve shown him basic CMD, and Service.msc. I’m avoiding RegEdit with him as I don’t trust him in there.

Gonna be honest, if I was still welding I would have been screaming at him by now. Disorganized, willfully-ignorant on purpose, passing off work on others, avoiding solving the problem… I am used to walking up to someone and telling them my issue, and either fighting it out or helping fix the trouble. Heck, I’ve even had fists thrown at me, so confrontation doesn’t scare me but I’m not sure what to do with this in an office setting. I’ve done everything short of sitting my co-worker down and asking what his trouble is.

It just doesn’t seem my place to do so, and besides continuing, to be honest when trouble comes, I don’t know what to do. I feel like a tattle-tell and feel stupid saying “I don’t know and he doesn’t know either.” to my bosses.

Any stories, or personal experience anyone has to share on this would be welcomed.

113 Spice ups
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Personal experience? Yes, with this exact scenario and attitude.

Resolution: I told my boss.

While there’s a negative stigma around “tattling,” the point is that my coworkers’ lousy attitudes/lack of work ethic affected everyone else’s job. It affected our customers. In the end, it’s not about preserving hurt feelings, but about getting the job done. We’d tried subtly and overtly explaining what needed to be done, and it just got to the point where nothing we said was going to change anything.

So we needed to bring the boss in because that’s his job.

44 Spice ups
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Just be glad they aren’t on SW. Otherwise you can’t post things about them…

28 Spice ups
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Thanks, WeirdFish. I know you have a point about telling the bosses, I just feel like a smuck doing it. I haven’t talked to the level two yet as he just had a kid and has been off the last two weeks with his wife and new son. I’ll see if he has any ideas about what we can do to try one more time to get him going. If it doesn’t work I’ll have to bit the bullet and tell the bosses.

3 Spice ups
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Very true

1 Spice up
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If he’s just a pain in the ass which it sounds like you really have only two options:

  • Report to management and hope they’re not too far up their asses.

  • Leave and find something more structured with employees who give a shit.

6 Spice ups
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Prob a big reason he/she is such a derp derp…

12 Spice ups
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Been there, and been that guy too!

He may just not care anymore, you have to remember a few things. First off you are there for the company, they pay you to make the tech tick, period. That is always your fall back position when you don’t know what to do, always. We all want to be nice folk and play nice in the sand box, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

First CYA, make sure EVERYTHING you do is documented, a ticket for everything. Something he did cost you time? note it nicely in the work order, you’re starting to build a case. Have to take work over from him so it gets done, note it in the work order. He’s not getting his stuff done, let him fall on his own sword! keep your hands out of it, he owns it, he can step up or fall behind.
He’s not following process, call him on it. Nicely of course, but call him on it. After a time or two, run it up the chain.
Chances are your bosses have no idea how bad it is, and he is working against your prime directive, remember? you are there to make the tech tick… while it’s not your call, it is your job to make sure the brass knows what’s going on so they can decide if they want to address it or leave it bee.

34 Spice ups
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Do your own job the best you can. If it’s not your job to motivate the dude next door, talk to the person whose job it is. Tell them you’re doing all you can to help, but… and so on. Take the high road.

People who get comfortable without too much responsibility (or by totally avoiding it long-term) are usually not completely lazy, just insecure and not being held accountable. The rare exceptions are evil geniuses like Wally in Dilbert.

8 Spice ups
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your coworker needs to fall down the stairs BOFH style

6 Spice ups
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Document everything you do in tickets, emails or other means. When you cannot accept additional jobs or projects you’ll have a ready paper trail to show management that you are doing your job as well as the other persons for months. If nothing gets done, inform HR or ask for a raise rom upper management and show that you’ve been doing the work of two people for awhile now.

This worked for me recently and changes were made in a hurry to even the workload and set expectations.

2 Spice ups
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Don’t think of it as tattling. At the end of the day it boils down to one thing; Your coworker is being paid to do a job he/she isn’t doing (either to the fullest extent of his/her ability, or he/she is just unable to). Either way, it is entirely on your coworker. You can’t work as a team if one of you isn’t giving it their all and this will eventually reflect poorly on you if you get overwhelmed taking care of a two person workload solo.

I’d talk to your coworker. If that doesn’t resolve it go to your boss.

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Here’s the thing; sometimes, people are just no damn good.

You have to be who you are; do your job to the best of your ability. If he’s no good, then that’s your bosses problem in the first instance, not yours.

Having said that, if he is making your work harder, then you have every right to complain; to him, to your boss, to HR. You might want to slap him upside the head, but that is not cool, and will almost certainly get you in trouble. But if he makes a mess of something that you’ve done, you are perfectly within your rights to tell him that he’s a lazy slob.

You should tell your direct manager about this; a brief discussion at first. Highlight that you are not there as a maid to clean up after them. If he doesn’t take your comment seriously, or just ignores you, put your comments in writing. If there is still nothing done, then go straight to HR and give them a full breakdown.

4 Spice ups
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Document everything. Any time something he does causes you more work, note it. Start asking him to do things via email when you can so you have that documented as well. Begin looping your boss in. Little things like “I found these projectors in the trash pile, but found that the VGA port was just disabled on one and the other just needed a new bulb, so both are usable again.” Once you’ve got enough, you can approach your boss. Detail how the coworker not only refuses to follow policy but also actively goes against it. You’ve already tried to address it with the coworker directly, which is often the best way to go, but since he’s unresponsive the next step is to get your boss involved. If that fails to work, the next step would either be looping in HR or polishing up your resume.

12 Spice ups
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Indeed. It wasn’t easy, and I’m sure there was some level of trust broken, but I have to remind myself that if they’re not getting the job done, then it’s career suicide for me to keep support it or covering up for them. I have to remember that they broke MY trust by not doing their jobs (just that I don’t have the authority to initiate corrective or disciplinary measures).

Also, I sympathize with wanting to “be cool” considering his personal situation, but then the question will come back around to the fact that he behaved like this before he had a kid, right? If his job is in jeopardy, in this kind of situation, he brought it on himself, not you.

4 Spice ups
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Thanks for the TL:DR at the description.

Answer: Complain to business ownership and get him fired.

1 Spice up
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Cattle prod maybe? PFY Style!

2 Spice ups
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Make sure everything you do is documented (as said before, many times): CYA. If Spiceworks taught me anything, these three magical letters are on the top of the list.

And don’t be afraid of telling your boss: he’s holding you back and jeopardizing your position. He’s supposed to help you out, not give you more and more trouble. Do you really want to get flak for his lazy attitude? Where is his sense of responsibility? And more: you already did everything in your power to help him out and teach him something, and all he did was to prove he’s a waste of company cash.

Pretty sure management will have your back on this one. Talk to them.

1 Spice up
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If it’s affecting the job performance of you and your co-workers, or the department as a whole, then it NEEDS to be brought up to the boss. It may feel like tattling, but it’s the boss’ job to know about issues that are affecting the department that he/she is in charge of. I’ve had issues like that before with co-workers, and have never gone wrong informing the boss. I simply explain that I’m not trying to be a complainer, but that I’m having issues doing my job with so-and-so.

If they are a good boss, who listens as well as observes the performance of their employees, then they will inquire as to what is making it difficult. OR they will simply agree and think “FINALLY, one of my employees opened up to me about it, so I’m not the only one!!!”

Then work with the boss on ways you can improve the situation, or just stay out of it at that point if the boss says they will talk to said co-worker, and let them deal with it. If it’s a situation where the co-worker has an “in” with the boss and the boss just looks the other way and lets them get away with it, that’s where I’d be casually (and quietly) looking for work elsewhere, because that company has fallen into the (sometimes irrecoverable) pit of “good-ol-boy” politics. That can almost always take a company down in the end, due to high turnover and sometimes failure to find anyone to hire due to bad rep.

2 Spice ups
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I take these threads with a grain of salt. You get only one point of view,

That being said usually people like this continue to be employed because the place they work at has organizational sickness that allows this type of performance to go unchecked. By the OP’s accounts this person is totally incompetent, or just doesn’t care. He could be a product of a total lack of oversight - which it sounds like this is the true cause of the issue. Some people just need firm and strong leadership.

What can be done? Only you know if going to the boss is going to work. By now you should already know if your place of employment suffers from a severe form of apathy. If it does than your complaints will fall of deaf ears. What you could do is go on vacation for a week, the place will fall to shambles and now people might actually notice if you aren’t there to clean up after him.

5 Spice ups