Employee tricks his lackadaisical coworker, Seth, into self-sabotage, exposing that he hasn't been doing his own work and making others do it for him: 'He got lambasted for [messing] up such an important project and was put on temporary leave without pay'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 22, 2025 12:00 PM EDT

If you've ever wondered what happened to those kids from school who didn't pitch in on group projects and were conveniently absent during every after-school study session to work on the project, well, wonder no longer… we've found him. Meet Seth, he's one of those members that you're loath to have on your teams, dragging down the team's productivity with their sheer refusal to get anything done, instead getting others to do their work for them. It's almost like it's an art, a skill that they've mastered to avoid getting any work done. It really makes you wonder why they didn't instead spend that time honing an actual skill and working on their productivity, but clearly, the only thing they've ever worked hard on in their life is getting out of work. 

As they did in our group projects in school, these people thrive on the other members of the group being too afraid of the group's failure. This worker wasn't going to put up with it, though, and when Seth set his sights on becoming a parasite to the worker's productivity, the worker made sure that any work he did was simply setting Seth up for his ultimate moment of failure, exposing him undeniably for not getting any work done.

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  • 01

    "Tricking My Slacker Coworker into Sabotaging Himself "

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  • 02
    I work in an office with a guy I'll call "Seth." Seth is that coworker everyone knows: lazy, always passing his work onto someone else, and somehow always getting away with it. He'll sit around on his phone or go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. He's the kind of guy who will show up late, make some lame excuse about traffic, and then disappear for "lunch" for two hours.
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  • 03
    For the past six months, Seth's favorite target has been me. He'll send emails asking if I can "help out" with a project, but what he really means is, "do all the work while I take the credit." I complained to my boss a couple of times, but somehow Seth always managed to weasel his way out of trouble. The final straw came when he passed off a major report that was due to a client in two days, dumping it on me last minute.
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  • 04
    One day I casually asked him if he was good with Excel, and he admitted he didn't know much about it. Perfect. The next time Seth tried to dump a bunch of spreadsheets on me to organize for his next report, I agreed. But this time, I embedded a series of hidden formulas into the documents. These formulas didn't do anything important, just enough to mess with the numbers if someone didn't know how to check for hidden cells. It took me a little time, but I was careful not to make it too obvious. T
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  • 05
    On the day the report was due, Seth slacked off like usual, assuming I had handled it like always. When the client called, furious because the report was filled with nonsense numbers, Seth panicked. He rushed to fix it, but every time he tried to fix one part of the report, something else would break. He came to me, frantic, and asked for help. I acted confused and said, "Oh, I don't know what happened! Maybe it's a glitch?" I gave him some vague advice and watched as he spent the entire day try
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  • 06
    Our boss found out, and for once, Seth couldn't talk his way out of it. He got lambasted for up such an important project and was put on temporary leave without pay. I guess he'll be doing his own work from now on.
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    WIN ANNAPOLIS, MD #CUSTOMER OBSESSED HUNGRY BRAZOS Proof ALL HANDS 4/24/2019 YOU SMART HUMBLE 80 20
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  • 08
    Medic... Perhaps every time you're asked sh ot your manager an email saying that you're happy to help, but you're asking the manager what other projects he or she wants you to delay to work on your coworkers project.
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  • 09
    Verwilderd1 If he's just a coworker, why even bother agreeing to his "requests" for help? Just tell him to pound sand.
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  • 10
    phdoofus I feel worse for you because you still couldn't just tell him to f off.
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  • 11
    yaypopbo If only he knew how to paste values instead of just regular paste. What an idiot. Good job getting him caught.
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  • 12
    SAW_blade_963 Careful, though. Someone could access the spreadsheet's metadata and see that you're the one that added the nonsense formatting. It's not hard to access in Excel...
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  • 13
    ExcitementRelative33 I keep myself pretty busy and tend to ignore any idiotic requests. Any extra work have to come from my boss with proper support documents. If there's no paper trail, it ain't happening.
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  • 14
    ralphy_256 I feel for your helpdesk tech. I hate "My Excel is broken!" tickets. Users don't want to hear the correct helpdesk response; "Yep, does the same thing in my Excel, so the problem is in the document, not the application. Good luck with that!" Then it's always a fight to get them off the phone. My users (accountants) know more Excel than I do, but I still get this on a weekly basis.
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