Archive

How do incompetent people get and keep jobs?

  • FatHobbit
    A guy at work lied on his resume and in his interview. They hired him about three months ago to use Crystal reports and SQL, but he doesn't know how to use either. If anyone asks for anything he runs it in microsoft access. Which is fine I guess, but how has management not caught on to the fact he lied? This week they promoted him to manager of the report team. (not my team thank god) Lol. He is a big talker and self promoter, which drives me nuts in meetings.

    We have another vendor who does not respond to anyone but the president of our IT deptartment. He constantly lies and always tries to finger point or shift blame. He will find the smallest mistake in a communication and act like he would have acted sooner if it wasn't for your mistake. Example: Someone asked me to have him do something for us about two weeks ago, but they asked for it in system B instead of System A. I knew what she meant, so I sent the correct request. He did not respond, so I emailed him again to check on it. I also responded to the original email (with the miscommunication) and cc'd our VP so he would know what was going on. The VP forwarded the email and asked him to take care of it. He responded, and cc'd every manager on both teams, that he would have done it already but it didn't make sense to do it in system B so he was confused by my request. (and he over uses capitalization, exclamation marks and question marks which really pisses me off.) Every email I have sent him had the correct system in it. It was only today that our vp sent them email that could have confused him.

    We have several other managers here who love, love, love to self promote and talk about how great they are. If there are mistakes made, they are happy to shift blame and try to point fingers at anyone but themselves, and they like to make sure everyone knows when you've fucked up. When we're in meetings I feel like they all want to take a turn talking just so everyone knows they have something to say. On projects, they wait until it's done and then try to make changes so they can say they "fixed" something. Is it me, or does it seem like the people who point fingers, shift blame and play politics get a lot farther? Is it not enough to be competant and do your job?

    /rant
  • sleeper
    We just hired some guy who can barely use a computer. So far I've given him nothing but basic data entry stuff to get his feet wet before we delve into more complicated and arduous tasks, but he cannot even do that. It took me an hour to sit down with him and explain to him how to access the desktop in windows explorer. It literally was me going "Click desktop in the upper right hand corner" and he would click on the actual desktop outside of windows explorer.

    SMH.
  • justincredible
    One of our clients is like this. He's the brand manager of a pretty big brand and is a total dickhead. He throws his weight around as much as possible to show people how important he is. He's fat and was probably picked on a lot as a kid, now he tries to take it out on everyone he encounters in day to day life.
  • justincredible
    sleeper;1274313 wrote:We just hired some guy who can barely use a computer. So far I've given him nothing but basic data entry stuff to get his feet wet before we delve into more complicated and arduous tasks, but he cannot even do that. It took me an hour to sit down with him and explain to him how to access the desktop in windows explorer. It literally was me going "Click desktop in the upper right hand corner" and he would click on the actual desktop outside of windows explorer.

    SMH.
    Sounds like he needs a mac. They are perfect for brain dead users.
  • sleeper
    justincredible;1274320 wrote:Sounds like he needs a mac. They are perfect for brain dead users.
    He needs another job frankly. Once we get over the "hand holding" phase, I have no doubt he won't be here much longer.
  • justincredible
    sleeper;1274325 wrote:He needs another job frankly. Once we get over the "hand holding" phase, I have no doubt he won't be here much longer.
    In all seriousness, I do hate people that need their hands held through every little thing. Even if they are just starting out. Show some initiative and try to learn things on your own.
  • FatHobbit
    justincredible;1274331 wrote:In all seriousness, I do hate people that need their hands held through every little thing. Even if they are just starting out. Show some initiative and try to learn things on your own.
    I don't mind when they are starting, but eventually they need to fly on their own or fall.
  • j_crazy
    justincredible;1274331 wrote:In all seriousness, I do hate people that need their hands held through every little thing. Even if they are just starting out. Show some initiative and try to learn things on your own.

    I got one that's worse.

    So last year i get transferred to another division and they bring in a new hire engineer to take my platform over, and all my major projects stuff goes yo the guy that showed me everything. Well the new guy comes in August (daddy paid for him to go backpacking through Europe for 3 months after he graduated). Shows up in a brand new 535i and has a Rolex (all compliments of daddy) to the heliport to go offshore with me as my final batch of workovers was on the docket. We get out there and I'm putting in like 16 hour days (12 on the work, 2 on reports, 2 on handing shit over). By the 3rd day he just starts knocking off like 4-5 hrs before me so i don't have to handover with him, but I'm typing up like 3 page emails to him to read every morning. The final day we are there hes asking questions that relay to me he hasn't been paying attention to anything I've gone over with him, he hasn't read the emails (even though he's always on his computer), and he hasn't even read the reports I've been putting his name on. So we are finished up, its 5pm, we're not going to go home until the next day, which is my last before i fly to north Dakota. I ask him if he has anymore questions for me while i'm still around. His reply: "where can i get a pair of molded earplugs so i can have a set when i go shooting with my dad?" I lost it. He's since been fired.
  • Tiernan
    Hired a young EE out of Va Tech once and he didn't know what a W2 Form was for and why he had to fill one out. He lasted about 7 mos.
  • O-Trap
    I have a client who we frequently send HTML emails for approval (it's really just a stand-alone HTML file). Any changes that need made come in the form of a word document trying to explain what they want to change. No screenshots into an image file (which would suck, but would be better than the Word doc) or, even better, a PDF of a screenshot with the necessary changed in notations.

    It's like they're trying to make it as difficult as possible.
  • Raw Dawgin' it
    sleeper;1274313 wrote:We just hired some guy who can barely use a computer. So far I've given him nothing but basic data entry stuff to get his feet wet before we delve into more complicated and arduous tasks, but he cannot even do that. It took me an hour to sit down with him and explain to him how to access the desktop in windows explorer. It literally was me going "Click desktop in the upper right hand corner" and he would click on the actual desktop outside of windows explorer.

    SMH.
    I didn't know you worked with Justin.
  • justincredible
    j_crazy;1274356 wrote:I got one that's worse.

    So last year i get transferred to another division and they bring in a new hire engineer to take my platform over, and all my major projects stuff goes yo the guy that showed me everything. Well the new guy comes in August (daddy paid for him to go backpacking through Europe for 3 months after he graduated). Shows up in a brand new 535i and has a Rolex (all compliments of daddy) to the heliport to go offshore with me as my final batch of workovers was on the docket. We get out there and I'm putting in like 16 hour days (12 on the work, 2 on reports, 2 on handing shit over). By the 3rd day he just starts knocking off like 4-5 hrs before me so i don't have to handover with him, but I'm typing up like 3 page emails to him to read every morning. The final day we are there hes asking questions that relay to me he hasn't been paying attention to anything I've gone over with him, he hasn't read the emails (even though he's always on his computer), and he hasn't even read the reports I've been putting his name on. So we are finished up, its 5pm, we're not going to go home until the next day, which is my last before i fly to north Dakota. I ask him if he has anymore questions for me while i'm still around. His reply: "where can i get a pair of molded earplugs so i can have a set when i go shooting with my dad?" I lost it. He's since been fired.
    Sounds like a Marietta grad. ;)
  • j_crazy
    LSU and proud.
  • Heretic
    j_crazy;1274388 wrote:LSU and proud.
    SEC! SEC! SEC!
  • Fab4Runner
    My boss is literally one of the dumbest individuals I have ever encountered. He actually owns the business and I wonder every single day how he has managed to keep this place open for 10+ years. My only answer is the help and guidance offered by corporate plus the people here in the office doing basically everything.
  • sleeper
    justincredible;1274331 wrote:In all seriousness, I do hate people that need their hands held through every little thing. Even if they are just starting out. Show some initiative and try to learn things on your own.
    Exactly. I mean, my job is pretty complicated(in all honesty I don't understand everything about my job either), but not knowing how to use a computer is quite possibly the hardest thing to teach someone to do. I mean when you can't even type numbers into an excel spreadsheet, what the hell are you doing in finance? It's one thing if you don't know how to do a vlookup or pivot table, but come on this is simply placing data from one sheet into another. He's been here a week and has accomplished work that I can do in 1 hour.
  • sleeper
    FatHobbit;1274332 wrote:I don't mind when they are starting, but eventually they need to fly on their own or fall.
    This. Reps.
  • sleeper
    Tiernan;1274358 wrote:Hired a young EE out of Va Tech once and he didn't know what a W2 Form was for and why he had to fill one out. He lasted about 7 mos.
    Don't hire VTECH grads. Problem solved.
  • O-Trap
    Tiernan;1274358 wrote:Hired a young EE out of Va Tech once and he didn't know what a W2 Form was for and why he had to fill one out. He lasted about 7 mos.
    7 months???

    Dear lord ... how?
  • Heretic
    sleeper;1274419 wrote:Exactly. I mean, my job is pretty complicated(in all honesty I don't understand everything about my job either), but not knowing how to use a computer is quite possibly the hardest thing to teach someone to do. I mean when you can't even type numbers into an excel spreadsheet, what the hell are you doing in finance? It's one thing if you don't know how to do a vlookup or pivot table, but come on this is simply placing data from one sheet into another. He's been here a week and has accomplished work that I can do in 1 hour.
    Is this a younger person? I mean, where I work, there are a couple 50+ types who aren't the most computer literate and had to be taught how to do what they had to do when their stuff finally got upgraded from hand-written to PC; but that's at least semi-understandable. The guy had gotten into social internet stuff due to family and is good with doing what needs done; while the woman would be better if her dumb ass didn't click links on obviously spam email notifications ("hmm...a bank I'm not affiliated with says I need to click on this to check on a security breach...OKAY!!!!") to give herself viruses. And I'm friends with an older guy who used to work for Xerox and decided it was time to retire a couple years earlier than planned because everything was going computer and he didn't want to have to deal with the change.

    But for someone younger to enter a job market like that with no computer knowledge is just bizarre. And laughable.
  • sleeper
    I don't know his age but he's probably late 30's. I'm guessing we hired him because he's a minority.
  • sleeper
    He won't last 3 months. I mean he's a nice guy and everything but its absolutely inexcusable to hire this guy when there are so many out there that are intelligent and computer savvy. Next week, I'm going to ask my boss to train this guy in a task just so that others can start seeing the frustration I'm dealing with.
  • Heretic
    sleeper;1274434 wrote:I don't know his age but he's probably late 30's. I'm guessing we hired him because he's a minority.
    Yeah. Mind-boggling. I'm late 30s and the Internet was still kind of a novelty when I was college, so I pretty much taught myself how to get around a computer for anything I might need to know for my job. To be clueless on that stuff is ridiculous.
  • Glory Days
    I cant stand when bosses wont take responsibility for anything. They want to be bosses but dont want to make the decisions. I have had several situations where we were told we were doing something wrong. So a few of us asked how the situation should be handled in the future. Answer "use your best judgement"....so you won't tell us how you want it done, but expect us to know how you want it done....great.
  • dontcare
    How do incompetent people get and keep jobs?

    Hire into a Union.