Employees expose their "deadweight" coworker making it impossible for their boss not to fire him: 'It is impressive how much it takes to get fired for some people'

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Oct 13, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

More often than not, when someone isn't pulling their weight on the team, you'll find that your team leader is remiss and unlikely to do anything about it. Preferring to let their weight be shouldered rather than attract the attention of the higher powers. See, it stands to reason that, in most organizations, no attention is the best attention; as soon as the powers that be set their sights on your team, it can be impossible to shake it off, with their increasing scrutiny and weight bearing down upon you. Once you learn this lesson once in a role, you'll be hesitant to repeat it—and so, the weight of the slacking team member remains shouldered. The problem is that the manager usually isn't the one shouldering the weight; it instead falls on the shoulders of the other team members, whose experience and proficiency are milked until they fatigue and reach a breaking point.

That's what this team was experiencing when they decided that they had had enough and were going to do something about it by making sure their boss could no longer ignore their coworker's behavior.

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    Cheezburger Image 10415356672
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+
  • 02
    Boss was reluctant to do anything about deadweight coworker because he wasn't "making obvious mistakes." We decided to make it obvious.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 03
    We had this coworker on our team. The best way to describe him is to use a Homer Simpson line: "everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I'm around." Projects given to him usually were: not completed correctly, not entirely completed, or not even worked on at all.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 04
    He violated security protocols, gave out equipment to other departments, and would occasionally disappear for hours. He would always have someone else to blame for his problems: contractors, staff in other departments, but the last straw for the rest of us was when he tried to throw his own team under the bus.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 05
    We all knew he was skating by because we'd fix his mistakes to keep everything else running. And admittedly, it's hard to get fired from a state job. But after blaming us and having to hear about it? That was the last straw. So the rest of us on the team stopped helping him, and we stopped fixing his mistakes. He wasn't making obvious mistakes before. Now they were obvious.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 06
    The mistakes were piling up - and fast. We would collaborate with him only down to the bare minimum. He had no reason to blame us if our contributions to a project were completed and his weren't.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 07
    And then came the kiss of death: he took a week off. With him not around, everything that piled up started getting completed by the rest of us. New tasks were completed on top of that, and on time. Even my boss could not ignore the simple fact that the place ran smoother without him around. After he returned, everything started piling back up again.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 08
    So we came into work a couple weeks ago and it was announced that he had "left the organization." Not one person was surprised. The thing that amazes me about this whole thing is that nobody coordinated it. None of us hatched a plan. We all just individually decided that enough was enough. You wanted obvious? You got it.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 09
    It is impressive how much it takes to get fired for some people. My last two jobs both featured a teammate who essentially collected a paycheck and did nothing in return. At least my manager here had the to do what was needed. It's also amazing that in the end, there's less work to do with him gone because tasks don't need to be done twice anymore.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 10
    RealUltimatePapo • 5h ago Fighting no effort with... no effort Bold, but it's paid off. Nothing like shedding dead weight to make you feel lighter
    via Poolofcheddar
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    • spicewoman 4h ago • It feels so nice to just let the dead weight pull themselves down, doesn't it? I worked at a restaurant where we'd all run our own food to the tables. We were very teamwork oriented, everyone ran whatever food was up in the window for whoever. Then we got a new hire. Who never. EVER.
    via Poolofcheddar
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    Ran food. I don't think I'd ever seen her so much as glance at the food in the window when she walked by, no matter how busy we were or how much food needed to be delivered. For months.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 13
    Welp, one night her food came up, and one by one, with zero discussion, we all looked at it... and then walked away. Over and over. Her food sat there for 20 minutes after it was done, without a single one of the 10ish other servers working that night touching it. She finally came back after her guests had been waiting a full 40 minutes since they'd originally ordered their food, to see why her food hadn't magically appeared at her table yet.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 14
    I don't know if she got the message and quit, or was finally fired after the manager had to go to her table to smooth things over, but that was the last night I saw her working there. Felt so good just looking at that food and walking away (I did feel bad for the people that had to wait for their food, but the manager took care of them).
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 15
    zephen_just_ze... • 4h ago • Once I had a co-worker who was like this. I had explained multiple times to my boot-licking boss what a liability he was, to no avail. I would explain every time he up, but wouldn't press it, because if the company wanted to waste money on him, it wasn't really my business. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 16
    Once, I objected to a new schedule, and my boss's boss said basically that I had all these resources to finish up in time, including said co-worker. Never mind that I wasn't officially a supervisor, or anything.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 17
    For you, when your co- worker started throwing you under the bus, it was on. Likewise, for me, when my co-worker was announced to be one of my monkeys, in my circus, it was on.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 18
    I had heard that you can die from exposure, so it was time for design and code reviews, inviting everybody (e.g. people up the chain of command, and people from other departments, including technical marketing).
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 19
    The incompetence was on full display for all to see, much to my boss's displeasure, but at least the co-worker was gone shortly.
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 20
    • BlueLanternKitty 3h ago • Yesterday, I sat through my fifth meeting in the last 3 months where the bosses complained about "people" not pulling their weight. We all know who it is, so why is the problem not being addressed with that person, instead of yanking the whole staff into it?
    via Poolofcheddar
  • 21
    aliaswyvernspur • 4h ago "Never interfere with an enemy while he's in the process of destroying himself."
    via Poolofcheddar

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terrible coworkers workplace discussion getting fired workplace-stories jobs employee fired job malicious compliance work coworkers workplace coworker workplace malicious compliance employment in the workplace
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