What would you do?

[Voren]

Edit: unfortunately, I had to delete certain more descriptive aspects of the post for fear of corporate reprecautions. I know it is unlikely buy it's also not impossible.

I have been employed at my current job for a couple of years now and currently am in a position where several employees work under me, one in particular is a walking headache.

The biggest issue with this person is his attitude, , he will smugly treat anyone of the same rank (and sometimes superiors) literally as if they were inferior to him to the point of trying to ridiculing them if you let him. Other people and I have put him in his place several times and all he does is stay quiet and not respond. When other people are having a conversation (Video games, books or movies) he will usually chime in uninvented and proceed to show strong distaste for it even when he admits to never having played, read or seen whatever it may be. That has gotten to the point of people saying he "likes to shit all over the things you like".

This man's work performance is, at best, mediocre and his knowledge of regulations, protocols and personnel is terrible. I, along with now many other superiors, spent time trying to correct this in different ways like going over information, pointing out mistakes and how to fix them, etc. But all effort is met with the same response: he will simply deny making the mistake and claim someone changed a procedure. When shown otherwise he will deny fault either way and make negative remarks about his superiors.

There are other issues, which truthfully I do not want to get into because quite frankly it is disgusting and he has been reprimanded for. However,due to the fact he shows up to work and is on time those higher in the food chain refuse to fire him due to lack of personnel regardless of everyone's protests.

If confronted with this situation what would you do?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Firstly, I'd be wary of taking advice from randoms on the net who don't know anything about the situation.

But, if you can't correct him, and you can't get rid of him, there's not much you can do besides put up with him.

 

[Voren]

This is true. However, I'm not planing on taking action based on a stranger's suggestion. At this point I just wanted to hear someone else's perspective rather than same old people and vent a bit I guess

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Well, there's nothing you can do. You said so yourself. Higher ups won't fire him, and if you don't have that power, all you can do is grin and bear it unfortunately. Which is stupid, because I've worked with people before where everyone hates them, but management refuses to fire the person. I actually lost my temper once and straight up yelled at one of my coworkers, in public, telling him to do his job because I was sick of bailing him out. His response was to go to management and complain about me, which got me called into the office. But I didn't get reprimanded, because what I had done was so out of character that they wanted to know my side of the story. So I told them. A few weeks later, he was no longer employed there.

Which I guess doesn't help you much. I mean, I suppose you can do what I did. Lose it. Go off on this guy so bad that management realizes that they have a serious problem on their hands. Of course, this could very easily backfire and you are the one that ends up getting canned, but ask yourself: if this company values someone who is despised by everyone over you and its other employees' opinions, do you really want to keep working for this company?
The other thing is go around and talk to other people. Get everyone on the same page. Get signatures, get witnesses. Get a team to back you up, and then go to the higher ups. Lay out the case, along with all the people who agree with you, and tell them that they need to do something because this guy is like cancer. And if they still won't budge, you might want to consider offering the ultimatum: if he doesn't go, you do.

 

[Tiger King]

Just give him the cold shoulder. Ignore him unless it is required of you to communicate with him due to a work activity.
What do you do for work by the way?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Take it up to HR or the manager if your workplace doesn't got a HR. Also you could maybe keep records of the stuff he's up to especially the stuff he screw up and present it to the HR/ Manager to used it against when it come to those personal meeting. Even then maybe a complaint with alongside the other people who agreed with you to HR/ Manager aswell.

In saying so, if what you say is true, then they will do nothing about it.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

If you can't fire him yourself, because some dumb HR office drones don't appreciate the situation you and your competent colleagues are in, try and start making records of when he is out of line. Also, do what Sniper Team 4 said above. If you have witnesses, get them to sign the record for the particular events they saw. (It's understandable if someone refuses, since even telling the truth can get you into trouble with idiotic or apathetic supervisors.) If you can get the group to agree he isn't a team player, maybe things will change. It's even more important to record, both on you own notes and on a company grievance/ citation, any event where his lack of care and/or knowledge violates safety rules. (Just be careful if nepotism is involved. Uncle Bigshot might be looking out for his little brother's son and doesn't care about loosing one good employee (YOU) to keep his bro happy.)

Doubly so for OSHA violations. If you can get OSHA breathing down the necks of the company higher ups, he will either be gone immediately (if they look at the past mistakes by him) or will have to go through retraining and will have a closer eye on him. Beware, even though you can anonymously report to OSHA directly, this can be a double edged sword, where OSHA or the company might scrutinize everything and everyone and could make everyone go through some patronizing retraining. (Also, don't talk about my OSHA suggestion with anyone you work with, even if you know you can trust them. Loose lips and evesdroppers can cause that info to trickle back to some bad bosses. And I'm sure all of us here know how much a bad boss hates having to follow government regulations, especially when it's a personal visit.) This whole paragraph might be useless to you if his job doesn't have lots of safety responsibilities, though, so just remember it if you're ever in the same position with some other schmuck at a different job.

If he was at least a good employee, but an asshole, there wouldn't be much you could do. Filing a harassment charge might be an option, but good luck getting HR to look into a guy disrupting other employees' non-work related conversations. You just gotta deal with jackoffs like that. Luckily, he sounds like a guy that will disappear as soon as whoever is in charge actually understands what's really going on (or you get some new, punctual people trained up past his skill level).