Export thread

I've been dealing with a problematic co-worker for the last...year or so, and its finally starting to get under my skin. Just to be clear, one of the things I am very good at in the workplace is dealing with difficult people. By supervisor and this guy are considered to be the 2 most difficult people to work with in the group, and I'm the only one that works closely with both of them (to be fair to the super, he has gotten a lot better in the last year.)


I guess the fastest way to describe him is that he is an only child who is extremely religious, so he has that great blend of being very self entitled, inconsiderate, and judgemental. He also is a chemist that doesn't believe in evolution and thinks the world is 6000 years old. Good stuff.

That, I could deal with, but to top it off he is also really damned lazy (which is hilarious because he's also super republican and always talks about the lazy immigrants.) See, I don't care if someone I work with has a personality defect, as long as they are good at their job, but when someone sucks at their job and is someone I simply don't like, well....that's the kicker.

Recently he's been working on some task outside of the lab, and it has taken him way longer than it should have, which has stuck me doing a bunch of repair work for both of us. I really need him back in there, carrying his weight, but hey, someone has him on another job. What really bites my ass though, is that he will come in, see the work I am doing on his system, and have the fucking GALL to complain about it.

The reason this pisses me off so much is that there have been many many days where he comes in at 10 AM and leaves at 4, and the best part, the absolutely fucking brilliant part, is that he pulls overtime. I have even seen him leave early some days and made a comment about it, and he will say 'well I finished the job.' So he is salaried when it lets him leave early, and hourly when it lets him get overtime, and on top of that he will simply lie about his hours to pull overtime.

On top of that, I am catching shit for not having completed these repairs.

There's a part of me that wants to complain to the boss, but 1) I have no proof of what I am saying about his OT, and 2) I am simply not the kind of guy to bitch about a coworker to my boss. I think its unproffessional, and really its not my place to be judging my coworker. On the other hand, I don't think my boss has the balls to go after him. I'm pretty sure my boss already knows about him skipping work all the time, but at a company my size it is very difficult to fire someone (some say impossible.)

fuck. I am just so pissed off that today, I was finishing up some work on one of his lines, which I had gone over with him, and when he sees it he starts complaining loudly that I should completely redo it. Not because what I had done was done poorly, but because he wanted it a different way all along. I basically told him that this was going to work, and if he wanted it a different way then he could do it later. And of course, he pouted.

This is where all the only child stuff comes in. There's this pouty passive agressive way of complaining about someone doing you a favor. My girlfriends room-mate is the same way. She redid the apartment floors to hard-wood, just her and a couple of friends, and he has the balls to complain that he had to pay too much (250$). The best part is that he doesn't work, he gets all of his money (including his rent), at 26, from his mother.

My coworker one day told me how he had to meet his girlfriend at the gas station on his way to work to give her his laundry. I was a bit confused, until it dawned on me that he was having her wash his clothes. He's 46 years old. She works. I asked him, kind of shocked 'your girlfriend washes your laundry?' His response, surprised that I find it weird, was 'Well yeah, I'm really busy.' Selfish asshole.

I guess I just needed to vent. I'm not going to go all Columbo on the guy and figure out how to prove that he is lying on his time-cards (which would definitely get him fired). My boss and damn near everyone else in the group actively dislikes this guy. He completely threw my boss under a bus to save himself at a meeting recently, it was a paper-thin attempt, but utterly vicious. Of course, it didn't work, and just made everyone dislike him more. After the meeting one of the PhDs told me 'someone needs to give him a beat down.' I've defended him up until now, but no more.

I guess that's probably the only thing I will do. Hopefully he will be transfered out of this group or just quit.

Have everyone on the panel bring a sock and a bar of soap...

Stop doing his job and let him fail. Make damned sure that it's HIS duty to do and not something that falls to both of you. If your job depends on it, tell your boss you can't finish until he gets his stuff done and then you start working on something else. Do what YOU are supposed to do and nothing else.

Only then will your boss realize what the guy has been doing. And ask your boss outright if this guy is salaried or hourly. When asked say, "His hours are so erratic I was just wondering."

Thing is I have to do his repair work to get my system up and running (otherwise yeah, I would totally let him flounder.) He is incredibly territorial though, and doesn't like someone else doing work on his system which I understand, but I don't have a choice other than working on his system because I can't wait for him to do it.

For the salaried/overtime thing, it would be overtly rhetorical, because there's no way I wouldn't know he was hourly.

Document everything. Document his hours daily, document the work you do of his daily. If and when it comes to a head and the boss has to make a decision, he is absolutely going to need detailed PROOF. And your files will fill in the gaps of memory and anecdote with actual data. I don't recommend 'letting someone fail' because nowadays the big corporate thing is 'teamwork' - letting him fail makes you look bad more than him, especially to dumbass HR departments.

Definitely document everything... I know you said you don't want to invest the time to document his hours, so as to confirm he's lying on his timecard, but I really think you should.

Is there a way to install a keystroke logger or something on the computer, to note when he ACTUALLY starts working? Or is it not feasible? Failing that there is always, as they are so fond of telling us these days" the fact that "there are cameras everywhere. Everything you do gets filmed."

Frame it to your boss as a "I'm stuck until he gets his work done" problem, via email if possible. Don't bring up anything else yet. From what I understand, this guy doesn't answer to you, right? So make it clear to your boss (and anyone who would care to check), that you're getting everything done that you can, but you lack the support you need to complete it, and you're stuck until you get that support. That makes it your boss' problem. I know that's frustrating, but unless this guy actually works for you, that's all you can do.

And if you do so in writing (especially if you get your boss to respond), if things go bad, then you've made it clear to HR or whomever that you did everything that was in your power to do.