CuriositiesFEB 21, 2022

People Are Sharing 30 Red Flags That Show That A Coworker Is Useless Or Out Of Their Depth

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When you work closely with other people, aka your colleagues, you inevitably see what they’re up to on a daily basis. You develop this procrastination radar, which basically combines the experiences from your own moments of slacking to that of your coworkers. With a single glimpse or an eavesdrop, you can determine whether the day for your teammate is a productive one or not.

So when someone asked on Reddit “In your line of work, what red flags identify a colleague as being useless/out of their depth?” people had a bunch of stories to share. Sometimes it’s the new coworker lacking skill so badly you wonder how the hell they made it here, other times it’s a person who can’t take criticism or no for an answer. Sometimes it’s a colleague that’s always so silent that you wonder if they’re secretly binge watching The Office at their desk instead of doing their assignments.

Oh boy, the stories are endless. Below we collected some of the most interesting ones!

#1

People Are Sharing 30 Red Flags That Show That A Coworker Is Useless Or Out Of Their Depth

Worked in a psych hospital. People who think that it is 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.

In 7 years, I never had to restrain a patient. And many other coworkers didn’t either, because we respected and worked with the patients and their disorders. Those coworkers who didn’t and “had” to restrain all the time, did so because they had an us vs. them mentality, and felt the patients were less than them. And the patients knew it, and acted out accordingly to the hostility they perceived.

tmmkitten, Meruyert

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240points

In order to find out how we could best deal with a colleague who procrastinates at work, and how they can affect the overall productivity in the workplace, we spoke with Christine Mitterbauer, a licensed and ICF-approved career coach and serial entrepreneur. “This can be very frustrating, especially if it affects your own work. Confronting your coworker up front can backfire, though, so you need to go about this more subtly,” she said.

#2

People that brag about how long they work and/or stay in the office.

That's cool buddy. You worked 12 hours and were about as productive as me and I worked my usual 7.

r4ygun, Karolina

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186points

#3

I am a lab tech. When I get someone fresh out of school to train, their intelligence isn't a factor in my overall judgement. 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.

level 1 inchwormwrath, Chokniti

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172points

#4

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.

This. Don't ever do this.

mendokusai_yo, Andrew

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165points

“One of the first things to try is to ask your coworker if you can help them with something. If they say no, tell them if they ever have any questions or feel stuck, you’d be happy to help them along,” Christine explained and added that “Procrastination is often caused by overwhelm and because the person doesn’t know where to start.” That’s why, she argues, telling them they can always come to you for support can be helpful and solve some of the procrastination.

#5

I’m a retired Immigration Services Officer. My job was to adjudicate visa petitions, and I also did fraud work. My job was similar to that of a judge. I needed to be impartial, look at evidence, request more evidence if needed, and approve or deny a visa (the fraud stuff was a bit more complex). If an officer has an obvious bias, they are worthless. Sure, we’re all human and have our own personal views, but those need to be dropped at the door. It doesn’t matter what our politics are, where our family is from, what our personal experiences might be, if we have an agenda, we can’t do our jobs effectively.

Birch2011, Erik

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147points

#6

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. I have pretty, long black hair and I pull it all the way up so it won't fall on my patient when I'm dressing their wound or get in my face when I'm doing chest compressions. You float on my unit with your hair down, I'm already judging you

cuteotaku93

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142points

#7

When you're training somebody and come across something new to them. If you explain the law/procedure and they say, "yeah I know that". Then why the hell did you do it that way if you knew? It's ok if you didn't know because I hadn't taught you that yet. Because now I can't trust them to be honest about their capabilities. So I have to check everything that person does because I can't be sure if they actually understand it.

UpYourAli, Pixabay

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134points

For those who’re wondering if it is often a good idea to complain about your colleague to management, Christine said that “sometimes we might have no other choice, but it’s not the first thing to do.”

She explained: “Before you complain to a manager, you should be able to demonstrate what you have done yourself to solve the problem. Did you offer help and support to your colleague, and have you recorded down several incidents in detail so you can back up your complaint to your manager? Always put yourself in other people’s shoes and try and see things from their perspective: What could be the reason that your colleague is procrastinating? If you think really hard, how can you help solve this before turning to your manager?”

Moreover, in terms of taking on the manager’s perspective, they’re probably very busy and have lots of other challenges to solve already. “What will they think about you for coming to them with a problem you might have been able to solve, or at least initiated to solve, yourself?”

#8

I once watched a graphic designer measuring her screen with a ruler.

She did not even have the zoom set to 100%.

Edit: she was not using Photoshop, it was Illustrator. She just did not know that there is a window that tells an object's size when selected, and she was measuring a single object.

She yelled at me when I showed her.

Rhebala, ANTONI SHKRABA

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132points

#9

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. If I gave you a week full of 50 hour days you wouldn't 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.

xyentist, cottonbro

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129points

#10

Not coming out from behind the nurses station to help staff answer call lights. If I see a fellow nurse spend more time in the nurses station than on the hall, I know 1) you’re lazy, 2) you don’t care about the patients, and 3) you have sloppy nursing technique.

Nursing is a team sport. If you’re not actively busy delivering nurse only patient care, roll up your sleeves and help out your fellow staff or go home and be lazy there.

TiFaeri

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126points

Having said that, Christine confirmed that unproductive colleagues may damage the productivity of the whole team or department. However, she stayed positive and assured us that there are a lot of things you can try to help, before it even comes to this.

“Once you have exhausted offering your own support, been patient and slept on the challenge, it might be time to tell your manager about it. But prepare well for this meeting—make sure you can explain what all you have done to solve the problem yourself, how exactly the problem has affected the team and/or the company’s performance, include time and dates when this happened.”

Christine’s advice is also to make sure you comment on the behavior of the incompetent colleague, not their personality traits or anything else that might make you be seen as unprofessional.

#11

Security: people who brag about how they're all tough, best at [insert martial art here], will tackle the first person who looks at them the wrong way, and generally put out an air of aggressiveness. Nobody wants that. In security, you want level-headed people who don't go off like a rocket at the drop of a pin. Worst of all, in my experience, the rawr-I'm-so-tough-people are usually the ones who cause the most problems and/or the first to be absolutely useless when an emergency happens.

Annonrae

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125points

#12

Talking down to the techs.

Don't do this if you are an engineer. Please don't.

pm_your_lifehistory, Kateryna

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112points

#13

can't bring themselves to shower/change a grown woman

can't clean up s**t
I'm a health care aide at a group home for disabled women. If someone can't deal with a woman's tantrums, or has trouble using the hoyer, that's something that can take time, patience and practice. But if you can't get past those two things above, you're just not going to be able to do it. Really, it's mostly a matter of being able to do things out of your initial comfort zone. Too many people get grossed out by the disabled and all the different ways that sometimes they need to be assisted, and if you can't get past that then you're just going to be bad at the job and bad for the resident. They deserve better.

hannahstohelit

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106points

#14

Unwillingness to be wrong. If you get called out for being wrong and don’t agree, have the civil discussion and defend your position, if you can’t defend it without getting upset, you, in fact, are wrong. You just learned something new - be grateful.

OGluc1f3r

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105points

#15

Line cook here. Its pretty obvious the second someone picks up a knife. Or anyone who brags about going to culinary school alot is generally a bad cook.

:edit if you cut yourself just bandage it up and put a glove on and get to it. Unless you're missing a finger, that's different, lol.

allharveybman, Maarten

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101points

#16

Someone who does math on a calculator and keys the answer into an Excel spreadsheet!

newsfan, Polina

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100points

#17

therapists claiming they’ve “never needed therapy” almost always need it, really badly

lighteningheart

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96points

#18

I barista at a cafe 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 5 people behind them. You can definitely be friendly, but there is too much stuff to do to make time for a full on chat about life and stuff. She ended up being fired the following week.

unknown, Chevanon Photography

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93points

#19

Illustrator here. People who get offended at specific technical criticism (wrong perspective, bad anatomy, etc) and/or justify it with "That's my style".

nellfallcard , Vojtech

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91points

#20

Former Field technician here.

In college we had a Halloween themed labs where we went out and measured the distance from our transact (The line we walk) and any zombie poster we can see from that transect. One of my classmates was hugely biased, saying things like "I can't really see that poster" or "That's really far away, let's skip it"

In a real job when you are collecting data, being lazy is the worst thing you can be. It creates biased data and can noticeably skew your results.

Wafflemakerbreaker

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88points

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