Tales from the Office Space: Complain about your coworkers

[aurelius]

Company posts a job. Requirements: Willing to work nights/weekends/all hours of the day, 60/70+ hours per week and lawyer admitted to the bar in at least 1 state. Guy applies, interviews, works job for 4 months. Slow week so someone asks him to do some grunt work instead of management work and he responds "I'm only a paralegal, I can't do the grunt work". Apparently no one bothered to read his resume and discover that he only said he attended 3 semesters of law school (and did not disclose being a lawyer).

They moved him to sales in a Dilbertesq "The only thing a salesman needs is giant balls and the ability lie by omission" move.

He does sales training, start working in sales and then says he's leaving the country for 3 weeks of vacation and someone needs to cover his tasks.

He is still employed.

But I thought private industry was the last bastion of competency and efficiency.

[aurelius]

I recently spoke with a friend who's an accountant. He's 26 and about to become a partner in his firm. He mentioned they won't fire anybody because it's so hard to hire anyone. They've got people who show up three hours late unannounced or skip work entirely on a regular basis, go to client meetings dressed unprofessionally, cuss in front of customers, etc.

I worked in a factory last summer, admittedly a very different sort of work environment, and it was even worse. People would randomly leave work in the middle of the day, tell the boss in no uncertain terms what they thought of him, very openly smoke blunts or do dabs during breaks. Even the foreman. And we were so desperate for people that the boss would call employees who quit and ask them to come back to work.

Civil Engineer here. Super hard to hire. We tolerate low performers and some of the behavior above. It is really our only option. Getting people to work overtime to hit a project deadline (that they lolly gagged on in the first place), attend training, invest in their career in any way they are not directly compensated for ...

[DoctorWho]

@5hout, you and @DCR should start your own practice together. I'll take 1% as idea man.

Only if @DoctorWho is in as well.

@5hout, I wish that I had connections in this area and could help but I unfortunately don’t. I reached out to one contact today that I thought might be of use, but found out otherwise. That said, I may not be fully understanding potential targets - feel free to pm me if you want to educate me a bit more, and I’ll query you there.

Thanks for the shout-out. I switched to a smaller firm in part to be able to take equity in startups and to pursue some side projects.

Let's just say that I have data to prove that getting involved in business with me is not wise. But still hoping.