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People Are Sharing 24 Red Flags That Show That A Coworker Is Useless Or Out Of Their Depth
When you work closely with other people, aka your colleagues, you inevitably see what they’re up to on a daily basis. You develop this procrastination radar, which basically combines the experiences from your own moments of slacking to that of your coworkers. With a single glimpse or an eavesdrop, you can determine whether the day for your teammate is a productive one or not.
So when someone asked on Reddit “In your line of work, what red flags identify a colleague as being useless/out of their depth?” people had a bunch of stories to share. Sometimes it’s the new coworker lacking skill so badly you wonder how the hell they made it here, other times it’s a person who can’t take criticism or no for an answer. Sometimes it’s a colleague that’s always so silent that you wonder if they’re secretly binge watching The Office at their desk instead of doing their assignments.
Oh boy, the stories are endless. Below we collected some of the most interesting ones!
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#1
Worked in a psych hospital. People who think that it is hierarchy, with patients being the lowest, are the biggest red flag. It is a collective effort to help people who are experiencing the worst time in their life.
You don’t get to taunt and bully patients by threatening to take away the few privileges they are allowed, just because it makes you feel powerful. There is nearly always a conflict free way to handle a situation.
In 7 years, I never had to restrain a patient. And many other coworkers didn’t either, because we respected and worked with the patients and their disorders. Those coworkers who didn’t and “had” to restrain all the time, did so because they had an us vs. them mentality, and felt the patients were less than them. And the patients knew it, and acted out accordingly to the hostility they perceived.
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#2
People that brag about how long they work and/or stay in the office.
That's cool buddy. You worked 12 hours and were about as productive as me and I worked my usual 7.
#3
I am a lab tech. When I get someone fresh out of school to train, their intelligence isn't a factor in my overall judgement. It's their work ethic. Are they willing to work past the frustration and tedium of a complicated situation? I'll take persistence over genius any day of the week.
#4
At one company, we had a guy who, when stuck, sat on it quietly, didn't ask for help, didn't make it known he was stuck, just waited until someone came along {some time later} to ask how it was going.
This. Don't ever do this.
#5
I’m a retired Immigration Services Officer. My job was to adjudicate visa petitions, and I also did fraud work. My job was similar to that of a judge. I needed to be impartial, look at evidence, request more evidence if needed, and approve or deny a visa (the fraud stuff was a bit more complex). If an officer has an obvious bias, they are worthless. Sure, we’re all human and have our own personal views, but those need to be dropped at the door. It doesn’t matter what our politics are, where our family is from, what our personal experiences might be, if we have an agenda, we can’t do our jobs effectively.
#6
RN here. I know I might offend some other nurses on here, but if you come into work and your hair is not put up, that's just telling me that you don't intend on doing any dirty work. I have pretty, long black hair and I pull it all the way up so it won't fall on my patient when I'm dressing their wound or get in my face when I'm doing chest compressions. You float on my unit with your hair down, I'm already judging you
#7
When you're training somebody and come across something new to them. If you explain the law/procedure and they say, "yeah I know that". Then why the hell did you do it that way if you knew? It's ok if you didn't know because I hadn't taught you that yet. Because now I can't trust them to be honest about their capabilities. So I have to check everything that person does because I can't be sure if they actually understand it.
#8
I once watched a graphic designer measuring her screen with a ruler.
She did not even have the zoom set to 100%.
Edit: she was not using Photoshop, it was Illustrator. She just did not know that there is a window that tells an object's size when selected, and she was measuring a single object.
She yelled at me when I showed her.
#9
Social worker - I can tell who's going to burn out within weeks of their starting at the agency. Huge red flag if they start taking paperwork home on the weekends to "catch up". You never catch up. If I gave you a week full of 50 hour days you wouldn't catch up. You do the best you can, prioritize correctly and leave work at work when the week is done. The second you start taking work home for the weekend you're going to burn out, and it happens quickly.
#10
Security: people who brag about how they're all tough, best at [insert martial art here], will tackle the first person who looks at them the wrong way, and generally put out an air of aggressiveness. Nobody wants that. In security, you want level-headed people who don't go off like a rocket at the drop of a pin. Worst of all, in my experience, the rawr-I'm-so-tough-people are usually the ones who cause the most problems and/or the first to be absolutely useless when an emergency happens.
#12
Unwillingness to be wrong. If you get called out for being wrong and don’t agree, have the civil discussion and defend your position, if you can’t defend it without getting upset, you, in fact, are wrong. You just learned something new - be grateful.
#13
Line cook here. Its pretty obvious the second someone picks up a knife. Or anyone who brags about going to culinary school alot is generally a bad cook.
:edit if you cut yourself just bandage it up and put a glove on and get to it. Unless you're missing a finger, that's different, lol.
#16
I barista at a cafe that serves food. We recently had a new hire and I knew she wasn't going to last long when she struck up a conversation with one of the customers at the counter with a line of about 5 people behind them. You can definitely be friendly, but there is too much stuff to do to make time for a full on chat about life and stuff. She ended up being fired the following week.
#17
Illustrator here. People who get offended at specific technical criticism (wrong perspective, bad anatomy, etc) and/or justify it with "That's my style".
#18
Not acknowledging incidents/mistakes. If we find out about it in any way other than by your mouth and your incident report, it's grounds for firing. Bonus points if we find out you damaged a client or our property and didn't report it.
#19
if they suck up excessively to people, it means they are bad but are trying to use their social skills to keep their job
#20
I’m always suspicious of other filmmakers who don’t watch movies. Hope that doesn’t sound pretentious, I understand people are busy and don’t always have free time to go to the movie theater for 2 hours and pay 10.99 for a ticket, but being educated about current trends in the industry seems like an obvious part of the job.
#21
As a developer, an entry level person started working for the company. I'm a mid dev, but sit near her so I was helping her get going. First job outside school, I understand that a large codebase is overwhelming.
I place her in the file and even method and we step through the front end to back end code. I give her an idea of where I see the issue is. I ask if she has any questions. Of course no was the answer. A day goes by, and she is still in the same exact function with the same look on her face. Do you have any questions? No.
TL DR: If you're lost, please ask questions. People can't guess what doesn't make sense to you.
#22
In any line of work, I feel like any individual who isn't willing to cooperate with others is a huge red flag to any goal orientated job or company.
#23
When other teachers only scream at their classes while only giving their students worksheets.
#24
Constantly calling out and never picking up extra jobs, half assing their job, refusing to communicate properly to avoid fault (it doesn't work that way), complaining about clients as soon as they leave or while they're STILL RIGHT THERE.
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