Getting along with coworkers is great, be it because you always have company for coffee breaks and lunch outings, or because there’s someone who knows exactly how frustrating certain situations at work can get.
But unfortunately, not all people are lucky enough to have colleagues they like; or can stand, even. Some have to endure individuals they hate with a burning passion, which, needless to say, doesn’t make the workday any easier.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently opened up about the worst people they ever had to work with, covering everyone from micromanagers to walking epitomes of entitlement, and more. If you know exactly what dealing with them feels like, take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone, and if you don’t – you might find yourself gaining a newfound appreciation for your fellow coworkers after going through today’s list; scroll down to find it below.
#1
I was once hired as an "unpaid" marketing intern in exchange for college credits. The role required me to work 20 hours a week, spread over 4 hours a day. During my first week, the woman who hired me assigned a task that would clearly take 6-8 hours to complete, all within the same day. I politely informed her that while I would do my best, it was unlikely I could finish it within the day's deadline and asked if that would be acceptable.
Her response? A cold, "Excuse me?"
I reiterated my concern, and she abruptly ended the call. Minutes later, I received a WhatsApp message from her stating that I no longer needed to work there. Within the hour, she contacted my professor to inform them they had "let me go." I ended up in tears on a Zoom call with my professor, who was supportive. As a result of the incident, my college blacklisted the company for future internships as they were clearly unprofessional.
Image credits: Repulsive_Tale_8634
#2
That would have to be George. He was at least twice my age. He leaned over my desk and said “if I jumped your bones and raped you, would you tell Jay (owner) and have me fired?” He did this in front of my manager, who said nothing.
Image credits: geniologygal
#3
F*****g Bob from sales. No one can stand him, but we will never, ever see the end of him because he makes us so much money. I'm talking top salesman in the US ten years running in a highly competitive industry. SO MUCH MONEY, but such a jackass.
-Bob is misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, hates democrats, hates all non-christians, hates black people, hates mexicans, hates asians.
-Bob thinks Obama is a muslim terrorist planning to blow up the white house.
-Bob thinks all the girls in the office need to report their dating/sex lives to him. Bob also thinks that girls who date are whores, and girls who don't date are frigid.
-Bob has two adult sons. When his sons start dating an 'undesirable' woman (feminist, asian, jewish, whatever), he bribes the woman to dump them. Bob takes great pleasure in telling us how much money it takes each woman to be convinced.
-Bob wants to set me up with one of his sons. This would be hell.
-Bob chooses to make long, loud sales calls in my office, despite having his own that he rarely uses. He then quizzes me on what sales techniques he used during the call. F**k off, I'm not in sales and I have my own work to do.
-Bob recently tried to shame the new receptionist for not having a good relationship with her son. It's easy to be a parent, easy to make your children love you, etc etc. He wasn't pleased when I pointed out that one of his sons is currently no-contact, and the other is just using him to bankroll his new company.
-Bob thinks he has the defining knowledge on everything, but especially nutrition. He likes to criticize what people weigh, what they bring for lunch, etc. Bob is diabetic and about 75 pounds overweight.
-Bob thinks divorce is a sin. Bob is on his third marriage.
-On the business side, Bob likes to make promises that are impossible to uphold just to sell the product. Then he vanishes and makes the rest of the company deal with these customers with unreasonable expectations.
F*****g Bob. Glad I switched departments and don't have to talk to him as much anymore.
#4
Jim in plumbing when I worked at Lowes.
He tried to sexually assault my gf in the break room in front of me.
Took 4 coworkers and 3 customers to keep me from ending his existence.
The company took his side and I got a very small severance to quit.
Image credits: FattDamon11
#5
Had this one old lady who was obsessed with working hard. I got zero idea why a woman would be so loyal to a corporation that paid her minimum wage.
You'd have a little rest like drink from a bottle of water or just have a brief chat with a colleague and she'd flip out saying you're lazy and get a lecture about how important it is to work hard.
Turns out she ended up getting fired and lost out on all the bonus's the corp gave because they hated her.
She taught me a valuable lesson. Corps never give a c**p about how hard you work. Work hard enough so no one has to pick up your slack but otherwise just work for your money and that's it.
Don't give it your all, just do your job and that's it. Never do extra unless they are willing to pay you more.
Image credits: hefty_melons
#6
Had a coworker who thought "collaboration" meant telling everyone else what to do and then disappearing when actual work started. He was like a magic trick: always vanishing right when you needed him. It was amazing... but not in a good way.
Image credits: mysweaty_ass
#7
My manager at a mall gift shop once invited me to a party at his place. "Who's going to be there?", I asked. "Some friends, maybe 5-10 people, no big thing" he replied. "Sure," I said.
Arrive at his place. No cars out front, it's quiet. Lights are on though. I ring the doorbell and Manager answers and lets me in. "Where is everyone?" I ask as I enter, as I notice there's hardly anyone else there. Except for one couple, both dressed to the 9's.
At this point you might be thinking it was some sex thing, but no, it was worse.
They pitched me Amway.
I got a job at Wal-Mart a week later.
Image credits: PrettyBigChief
#8
I worked for a very wealthy attorney whose son was convicted of being a serial r***st. The whole family treated people terribly, everyone around them was there to be used and discarded.
The fact that the son was actually convicted and publicly shamed happened only because the severity of his crimes was so egregious that the courts couldn't ignore it and the family couldn't overcome the victims' statements the way they ran over everyone else. The son's defense in court was a window into the way this family treated everyone - the victims were at fault, because they were trying to get something from him. My boss viewed everything that way, he saw his employees as money sucking expenses and instantly discounted any work they did as unimportant, unskilled, worthless. Worst boss ever.
Image credits: AdWonderful5920
#9
An egotistical manager who drowned himself in far too much aftershave. Lied about everything, claimed to forget conversations, what was said during conversations or make something up entirely. Flipped between the worst micromanager (that didn't have a clue what was going on the majority of the time) or disappearing for the majority of shift, which was preferable tbh.
Image credits: IJustWantedThis
#10
Ugh, there was this one dude who was a total micromanager. like, he’d hover over your shoulder, question every tiny thing, and then take credit for the work when it was done. worst part? he never did anything himself, just barked orders. working with him was a nightmare and made every day feel like a year.
Image credits: petitesof_x
#11
F*****g. Andy.
This guy's head was acoustically tuned to maximize volume. He would eat frosted mini wheats out of the box allllll day. **CRUNCH** **CRUNCH** **CRUNCHCRUNCHcrunchcrunch**
He had the literal worst takes I have ever heard. Not like, political stuff. Just objectively wrong things. Provably wrong. It was infuriating because our cubicles pointed directly at each other, so I had unfettered access to the flow of stupid.
I eventually popped and quit after two years, and didn't have a job lined up or anything because he actively made my life terrible for 8 hours a day.
Image credits: TheShrinkingGiant
#12
I had a boss who tried to overrule my bonus structure within the first month of her employment. She stole a presentation I created and presented it as her own. She asked me to finish my degree and the company would pay for it from our scholarship fund… which turned into her lying to our president and me screaming at both of them (I was a single mom with thousands of debt because of them). She once told me that she could make me chauffeur her children around if she wanted to, because she was above me. She asked the president to fire me after I transferred out of her department.
Now, reader, you might assume she was evil (she was) and malicious (indeed)… but she was also as dumb as a box of rocks. This woman couldn’t tell accounting from hieroglyphics if her life depended on it.
When I finally quit that job, she requested an exit interview to which I ever so politely declined and wished her ill.
Image credits: Independent-Salt8377
#13
A douchebag named Brandon. We were life guards and we have a local swim team use our outdoor pool for practice every week night. 12 is masters and by 8pm you have the 5th graders.
We have a 50 meter pool which requires 5 tarps to cover it overnight. We have a deal with the coaches that their students will help swim the tarps across and help us clean up outside before we close down for the night.
One night, the last tarp was stuck on the pool cover reel. One of the 5th graders was trying his damnest to get it unstuck. Brandon allegedly kept telling the kid to let go so he could use his scissors to cut the stuck portion. The 5th graders wasn't listening or maybe didn't hear. Next thing I hear from the other side of the 50 meter pool is Brandon shouting at this 5th grader and calling him the n word with a HARD r. A fight broke out because his parents went over and immediately started to whip his a*s.
After pulling them a part, I sent Brandon to my office (I was the aquatics director at the time), and sat with the parents, the child, and the coaches and it boiled down to "fire the racist or lose our business". I told them I'd resolve the issue and they'd hear back from me before the masters session began the next day at 12.
I go to security to watch the footage and have it saved for later use, I go into my office to talk to Brandon and he is eating my stash of pretzels and has his feet on my desk, leaning back in my chair. I tell him to give me back my chair and sit in the seats provided, and he looks at me and says "so are you gonna fire me? The n****r and his s****y parents obviously have it out for me..." And then some other racist and aggressive s**t that I'm not recalling exactly. He was always going to be fired, but after he said that, I went up front to grab security and have him forcefully escorted off the property.
He was fired, within the hour I called the team back and told them he had been fired effective immediately and that word has been passed to all other facilities to not hire him with documented proof as to why. Skip to a few months later and I'm about to enlist in the Navy and my boss gives me the go ahead to hire my replacement before I leave and to find someone new to replace Brandon. I had my new hires, trained them up myself, and left the place in good standing.
I come back a year later and everything went to s**t. Apparently everyone I hired was immediately let go, and they rehired Brandon and some college kid with a financial degree to run the aquatics department. The facility I was at decided to let Brandon work before the masters team showed up so no one would be aware he was still active. He got caught and that swim team pulled out and our facility lost the majority of it's income. There's more that happened with Brandon, but he is by far the biggest a*****e I have ever worked with.
#14
The backstabber whose job is mostly to talk about other colleagues' mistakes except for her own.
Image credits: iamKathrynn
#15
My cousin.
I worked at Pizza Hut and she was hired after I was. I hadn't seen her often and didn't know her well (not real close with most of my family, much as I love them) so I didn't know enough to warn my boss.
She is the most petty, narcissistic, angry, confrontational, evil little b***h I have ever met in my life. Nothing is ever her fault, she's always the victim. Will straight up lie to your face ABOUT THINGS YOU WERE THERE FOR.
She'd throw fits in front of customers, throw things, scream, curse, etc.
...she didn't last very long, and her boyfriend was trespassed from the property for getting in the manager's face and threatening him.
I'd like to note that manager was one of the kindest ,most badass men I've ever met and he could definitely have wiped the floor with the asshat if he had just a bit less patience.
#16
Coworker who trauma dumped to gain sympathy and pity. Everyday was a new excruciating story about her horrible abusive childhood, beatings from her boyfriends, house fires, family member dying from d***s/gun violence. A lot of her life was tragic but a lot of it was her making herself responsible for some terrible people.
After every tragedy, there would always happen to be a Gofund me or an office collection to help pay for funeral/repair/god knows costs. I don't think she was actually grifting on purpose but she probably realized early on in her life if she talked about tragedy in grisely detail, she'd get some type of handout. I think she only managed this for so long because we worked at a non-profit with a very high turnover rate. She had the perfect sympathetic audience that wasnt around long enough to call her on her s**t.
Image credits: Yellow_Vespa_Is_Back
#17
We work for a lot of wealthy customers.
We started working for a client last year who thought they were wealthy.
Hands down the biggest d**k head ive met in my life.
Still owes us nearly 20 grand.
Total prick. Driving round in financed cars, likes to act like money is irrelevant and it doesn't matter if its just wasted. Then doesn't pay bills.
Looking forward to the day he loses his high paid job and his financed world comes crashing down.
Image credits: RulerOfThePixel
#18
A manager who told me (a gay guy) that I should enjoy being touched up by one of the women after reporting inappropriate behaviour. This went on until a different female member of staff said they didn't like seeing it.
The manager apologised to the woman inappropriately touching me about having to "do this and have this conversation". It stopped but nothing came of it at that point.
The woman in question also spent most of the time telling other members of staff that she'd be able to turn me and that was also dismissed in my complaint.
A few months down the line, this manager failed my probation. A few months after that the manager was sacked and the woman touching me up left aburuptly. HR offered me my job back.
#19
We called her Pizza Thumbs. She was morbidly obese, and didn't like showering, so she didn't. The smell that came from her and her cubicle was disturbing, sour milk mixed with old body odor, it turns my stomach thinking about it. Coworkers would purposefully take wide detours away from her desk to avoid the smell. She was mean and kind of an a*****e, but wanted attention, so she would sneeze, as loud as she possibly could, about 4 or 5 times in a row. It was disturbing and we were pretty sure sneezes 2-5 were fake, for the attention. One day in a meeting, she was picking the scabs on her arms...and eating them. I thought my coworker was going to vomit on the conference table. We would get food often at work for the whole office, and the unwritten rule was, if you weren't in line before her, you weren't eating. Not because she would take it all, which she would also do, but because she would lick her fingers and then continue to touch the food, hence the name Pizza Thumbs. Tear apart slices, lick thumbs, continue to touch more slices with said licked thumbs, and leave those contaminated slices for everyone else. I'm pretty sure we threw a party when she got transferred to another location.
#20
I worked with a guy in a call centre who every 30 minutes at least would fart like a trooper, and I don't just mean like a normal fart, I mean like a tank had just crashed through the wall of the office fart.
Image credits: Funny_Ingenuity_2070
#21
I'm a teacher. The first district I worked in was a mess, and my coworkers and I were pretty miserable in general. Part of the problem was that we had to share classrooms. For instance, I taught one period per day in another teacher's main room, while the other two periods (block schedule) were in my main room.
The teacher whose room I had to use once a day was a control freak and what I would classify as a "high-conflict individual". Everyone who had to share a room with her ended up complaining to administration because she would confront you *during class* and *in front of students*. And it was always over stupid s**t. For instance, she accused one teacher's class of stealing her pens. She once got angry with me because she thought my students were moving her textbooks...? They weren't; she was just paranoid.
I'm so glad I got out of there years ago, but I still feel for whichever poor teacher has to share a room with that woman.
#22
Someone who's both a compulsive liar and a one-upper. Whenever someone is talking about a positive or negative situation they are in, whether in professional or personal life, he will always try to muster up the most obviously made up story just to show that his life is better or worse depending on the situation.
Image credits: Majoub619
#23
My current employer.. she’s a very nice lady and caring as well. Problem is she has untreated ADHD and will not take her meds because she’s “fighting it.” She gets really loud when she’s excited. I’ve had to shut her office door. She is very scattered and disorganized. I have sat with her countless times to show her the folders I’ve created on her laptop in order for her to locate clients and remember what they need. I’ll be in the middle of a task and have to drop what I’m doing to start another task of “equal importance.” She spits food out on her keyboard. We have an 80 pound office dog she can’t handle which I take out and work with.. love that dog but just another interruption. Problem is I’m paid very well and she’s very generous with the bonuses. I’m not going anywhere.
#24
I worked for a miser of man in his restaurant for 2 whole days. He was so stingy he wouldn't even let employees charge their phones. My breaking point was while I was washing my hands (which you should do anytime you touch a dirty plate before going back in the dining room) he **grabbed** my wrist, turned off the water and yelled, "YOU WASH TOO MUCH!" I left about 20 minutes later and never looked back.
#25
At the community gym I managed, my boss hired an office assistant for himself (but it was really for me, to do his job).
She was a smoker who wreaked. I don’t have a problem with smokers. I have one problem with that if she works in a gym with students and senior citizens, and she just stinks like an ash tray.
But wait! There’s more!! She contacted HR because one day, after four years of me coming in ten minutes early, I go in at my start time. Worse yet, I had the audacity to text her that my car was parked in by a delivery truck. She knew I would not be ten minutes early.
She made a big stink (aside from the olfactory type), and gym members heads turned to watch her berate me for being late.
It was still two minutes before my shift.
I went to the HR meeting, which was basically “why can’t we just get along?”, and it was fine for a week. She and I not speaking to one another was fine.
Then, the pandemic shut down our business.
I never saw her again.
The end.
Image credits: Realistic-Most-5751
#26
When I was in my first year at college I took a job at Kinko's (and I always feel like I have to apologize for having worked there so sorry) and I worked with two guys named Tom and Ed. Tom and Ed were thirty and around forty-five respectively and working the kind of job as a career that I was working to have some pocket money (they had both been with the company for years but had never been promoted). Both of them were hellbent on trying to be life coaches to me despite the fact that neither of them had any business life coaching anyone.
Some stories about Ed and Tom:
Ed wasn't too bad but he was way too damn horny and genuinely didn't understand why I, as a nineteen year old, had no interest in trying to bang the kind of middle-aged alcoholic trash that he slept around with when, you know, I could bang hot college girls instead. he regularly accused me of being gay because of this.
Tom was a f*****g nightmare. Tom would disagree with me on anything I ever took a stance on just because he was so convinced that I knew nothing about the world and needed to be corrected on all my beliefs.
Tom used to tell me he was a die-hard liberal until I told him I was against the Iraq war (this was 2003-2004) at which point he started yelling at me about how I was a traitor and needed to be put up against a wall and shot.
I didn't like to drink due to a bad experience with Vodka when I was fourteen. This pissed off Ed, who was convinced I was wasting my youth, but Tom somehow became convinced that my disinterest in alcohol was because I didn't know how to drink, by which I mean he actually thought I didn't understand that drinking alcohol leads to a state of drunkenness. He decided to "teach" me how to drink during the holiday party at a nearby bar by downing four pints of Guinness and getting so wasted he was sent home without pay the next day for showing up hungover.
This took place in Hawaii, where Tom had lived his entire life except for a brief stint in Arizona in his early twenties. I had lived on the mainland my entire life and yet Tom was convinced that he knew more about the mainland than me. He even tried to tell me once that Dallas is in the middle of the desert and tried to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about when I disagreed with him despite the fact that he had never been to Dallas and I had lived there for seven years.
Tom's definition of a good movie was that it had to change your life, by which I mean it had to change his life because when I tried to tell him about the movies that had changed my life he ridiculed me for my answers. In his book this meant there were only eight or nine good movies ever made and was a baffling array from the iconic (Casablanca) to the cult (Richard Linklater's Slacker) to the obscure (Miami Blues starring Alec Baldwin anyone?).
Any time I expressed an opinion on a movie Tom disagreed with it was because I was brainwashed by the critics who liked the movie and didn't know how to think for myself.
For awhile I was reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Tom constantly told me that if I engaged in such nerdy habits that no girl would ever want to date me. Some time later I told Tom that he knew nothing about nerd culture and he got really pissed off and started telling me about all the hours he'd spent playing D&D with his friends.
Tom was convinced that natural blondes had gone extinct and that any time you saw a girl with blonde hair she had dyed it to try to dupe men (Tom was an MRA before MRAs were a thing). The fact that most of my family was blonde got me nowhere with him.
I know I have a lot more Tom and Ed stories but this is all I can recall at the moment. I'll post more if this gets any traction.
Image credits: kittyy_lover
#27
I don't know about the quality of her character, but I did work with a girl who ditched me at work to cash her check on the clock with her girlfriend. And I then had to handle a massive dinner rush entirely by myself for more than an hour. I was working at a subway with both a drive thru and a front entrance and I had non-stop customers the entire time she was gone. I ended up having to comp everyone a free drink and ask them to wait while I worked through each person because there were so many. I made good tips that night, but that girl was my enemy until they fired her.
#28
I once worked with a woman who smoked. A lot. And she smoked horrible smelling cigarettes. You could smell her in the elevator hours after she had left... blärgh.
Image credits: love-boobs-in-dm
#29
I had two people throw me under the bus for things I clearly didnt do. Luckily management didnt believe them and asked for my side of the story. They wanted my job because it "paid more" but in hindsight i was severly underpaid and overworked. I promptly asked to work out of a different location. The added 10 minute commute did so much for my mental health to not be around those people. I dont work there anymore but i know they still work in the same industry as me.
Anytime we hire someone new at my current office I pray that it's not them.
#30
At 21 I worked for a very weak male project manager who would turn to jelly the moment a women was involved. He was often very distracted and once when he didn't lock his computer I saw most of his work time was spent on a messed up custody battle with his (ex?)wife.
He was also quite the coward so he'd send me as a sacrificial lamb to very contentious situations to see how much I'd get beaten up before he got involved. He is the most pathetic manager I have ever worked for and when we had meeting showdowns when female managers would try and pin their team's non-performance on me - not only did he do nothing he rebuked me when I defended myself expecting me to take it as junior staff and make his life easier.
It all came to a head when after many of these situations I told him I would never ever assume responsibility for something I didn't do which he didn't like. This was after I'd repeatedly protected him with clients when he'd gone AWOL so I pushed for a transfer to get away from him.
I hate weak managers and I will never work for someone that takes the title and the money and doesn't step up and do the job.
