Reply to: Having to work with a Numpty

[digerido]

Was the numpty a con or perm ?

Dare I drag this back up

He was a perm working for a 3rd party company so he had two sets of managers to impress...

[badgerpig]

I once worked with a coke head wideboy who blagged his way into a job he had no idea of doing, out of nearly 30 ongoing pieces of work he took ownership of 2 easy cherries and ducked and dived the rest, he got away with it for several months till the workload was documented and reported on a weekly basis, he infected half the office with chicken pox and left shortly after deleting all the teams shared inbox folders and archives

[alreadypacked]

Yeah, but ours was funnier, and people got ours.

[shaunbhoy]

Hi, advice needed...

Just recently I had to walk away from a contract due to working with a colleague who was shocking at his work, mistakes were constantly being made and due to being in a small team I was being put in the spotlight as well. I tried to assist him on every occasion and took him for coffee's to understand where he was struggling but he was on the defensive 24 7 to such an extent I didn't trust him.

Has it happened to any one here?

I can really relate to your predicament. I work in a small team and we have a rather domineering yet wholly incompetent manager. He insists on micromanaging us and vets everything we do. Our remit is to provide bona fide statistics relating to the variability of climactic variables, and to look for definitive trends that can be extrapolated to produce realistic and substantive data. However, this muppet insists on "recalculating" all of our work in order to try and substantiate his own rather crude understanding of the patterns, and the result is an unmitigated pot pourri of intangible gobbledygook that supports no real valid conclusions whatsoever. It has dragged us all down to his rather pedestrian and simple level.
He also insists upon calling us all "dude", and turns up for work wearing suits that would not look out of place on circus clowns. He is obsessed with the notion that we are all on the point of catching swine flu, but the truth of it is that we are all just pig-sick of having to work with him. Not sure how much more of it we can stomach, but some of the wilder elements of the "team" are considering taking out a contract on the opinionated little turd.
You have my deepest sympathies,

Dinsdale
Chief Stats Analyst
The Sasgurumatics Collective
BullTulip Towers
London

[weemster]

Was the numpty a con or perm ?

[chef]

posted 08:01

I've had such a hard few weeks. I've had this show-off, smart-arse contractor round my arse, getting on my wick.....

posted 12:15

Hi,
I need some advice.

Recently I hired a contractor to work on our project. From day 1 he turned out ..

Gentlemen, please keep up at the back, posted at 06:29
http://forums.contractoruk.com/gener...-got-away.html

[thunderlizard]

Hi,
I need some advice.

Recently I hired a contractor to work on our project. From day 1 he turned out to be a smug so&so: acting like he knew what was best but mysteriously never actually getting the software to work. That was when he wasn't skiving off on one of his numerous coffee-breaks. Unfortunately I couldn't get rid of him because of contract terms.

Then I hit upon a genius idea. I made him team up with a right annoying numpty for a while, and he quit in a huff.

So the question is, now he's breached the contract, do I just sue him for what he's invoiced so far on grounds of non-delivery, or should I make up some resulting damages and sue him for them too? Kerchinng!

[xoggoth]

It is worse when a chap like that is supposed to be your supervisor. At an aircraft testing place one did not have a clue about some of the basics of aircraft simulators.

[HairyArsedBloke]

Sort of scanned all that and all I got is something about having a team of botty boys. Is that legal?

battybwoy

All the development staff here are numpties. I should sack everyone.

[sasguru]

Indeed a tricky situation.

In my earlier days, I also worked with some guy who wasnt up to the job. But he was a great schmoozer. I of course helped him out and covered for him when it came to renewal time they decided they only needed one contractor. Well it wasnt me who got the gig, it was him. When I left he also threatened to leave and negotiated his rate up another 30%. In hindsight I shouldnt have helped him.

Now it's different. I am now the boss and recently promoted have team of 25, both contractors and permanent. I have undertaken a review of all my resource, and effectively I have teamed individuals together in a 'batting buddy' kind of way. I have one strong business individual assigned with one strong technical individual. Paired in this way, they are both responsible for delivery on a task/project.

Now an individual has been bought to my attention by two customers (one of whom is my bosses/boss - who wanted the individual sacked - being american we can do this immediately). I decided to review the individuals work for the client and got his batting buddy to do the same. The batting buddy on my instruction then reviewed the chaps work and recommended changes, I reviewed the batting buddies recommendations.

In this case, the individual who is being coached has decided not to take the recommendations or make the changes as he feels he is working in the best way for his skillset, I disagree, his buddy disagrees and the customer still isnt happy.

In this case, he has now been exposed, given the opportunity to change and been provided help.

You can guess what's going to happen next!

Sort of scanned all that and all I got is something about having a team of botty boys. Is that legal?

[bobhope]

Indeed a tricky situation.



You can guess what's going to happen next!

You're going to punch him / start a fight :-) ? Or are you mellowed now?

[bobhope]

Don't make friends whatever you do. The best way to avoid being a target is to be totally aloof. Never socialise turn up to work, don't talk to people unless it is a specific technical point, and be ever so slightly snotty in a discussion, that is not raise your voice but just talk over opponent, you know like politicians do.

Lifted straight from "How to make friends and influence people" ??

[BlasterBates]

Don't make friends whatever you do. The best way to avoid being a target is to be totally aloof. Never socialise turn up to work, don't talk to people unless it is a specific technical point, and be ever so slightly snotty in a discussion, that is not raise your voice but just talk over opponent, you know like politicians do.

[digerido]

Jesus what I have started? I can't quite understand how the situation was taken out of context. Now burned I'll live and learn.

Actually I've now been burned twice in as many weeks.

Classic site...

[BrilloPad]

I've had such a hard few weeks. I've had this show-off, smart-arse contractor round my arse, getting on my wick.

He never did read our in-house standards and so produced silly code inappropriate to our systems.

Then he started getting REALLY patronising. He kept making me go with him to the coffee shop - and pay, cheeky sod - where he'd lecture me on "At Previous ClientCo we did things this way" and all that tedious crap. And he did this in work time so he was charging for it! I tried explaining we do things here they way we do for good reasons, but he wouldn't listen, he just kept going on about how he knew best.

It didn't help that he was an Australian with poor English. Apostrophe's in every plural; calling everyone "Maaaate" and "She'll be right". He had some daft Strine nickname for himself which he even spelt wrong. He got on everyone's tits.

Just to show me up, the cheeky bugger actually went to our boss and said I was holding him back and could he have a transfer! Our boss also thought he was a tit and agreed just to get rid of him, but the big boss said we had work to do and this contractor should get on with what he was brought in to do and that if he found it too hard the boss should sack him. Especially if the contractor started making me change my way of working.

Eventually this prima donna realised he was out of his depth and walked out. Phew!

You know, I bet he's out there bitching about how bad WE were!

Numpty.

This would probably be true : except that the OP is a sockpuppet.