The lazy ass co-worker phenomenon

At some point in time we have all probably had a lazy-ass co-worker (or two) that somehow managed to collect a paycheck while at the same time doing virtually nothing to have earned it. This phenomenon is so prevalent that lazy co-workers often top the lists of pet peeves that employees have about the workplace.

For me, this particular pet peeve developed through countless years working in the corporate jungle with a bunch of utterly useless sloths. And I’m NOT just talking about the brown-noser guy who arrives at work early only to keep up appearances with the top brass but who then spends the first three hours of work drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, surfing porn on the internet and wandering around the office as if he were doing something productive.

What I’m more specifically referring to are lame, non-contributory, conniving slackers like one of the annoying paycheck collectors that I had the great displeasure of working with earlier in my career. Let’s call this incompetent nasty little blood sausage Gertrude. Some of my fonder and ever so endearing memories (NOT!) of skiving Gertrude include her:

• Spending half a day calling all the cosmetic counters in the surrounding metropolitan area to locate a special kind of sparkly, light diffusing face powder. Poor Gertrude was unable to get the top off her shimmery face spackle and she absolutely, positively without a doubt needed it for some supposed hot date she was having later that night -- therefore any and all work related tasks were forced to come to a screeching halt until said magical cosmetic was located.

• Skipping out of the office one hour after she returned from lunch so that she could spend the next three hours getting her precious hair highlighted. She told her colleagues to call her if they needed help with anything work related ...meaning HER work.

• Hiding stacks of client work orders (that generated revenue) in the bottom of her desk drawer. She justified this by saying she didn’t have time to keep up with menial and unimportant things like filing.

• Leaving work on her so-called ‘lunch hour’ for 5 hours so that she could go to the cosmetic surgeon and have a chemical facial peel. Upon returning to work 45 minutes before the office closed, she spent the remainder of her ‘work day’ eliciting sympathy from her co-workers regarding all the trauma she was forced to endure at the doctor.

• Packing up her desk no less than 15 minutes before the office closed every fricking day so that she could get a head start on rush hour traffic …and f*ck everyone else that might have had to deal with the same!

• Earning herself a month and a half of paid medical leave – and sympathy from all after she left a candle unattended at home and allegedly set her good-for-nothing ass on fire. The timing of this particular incident turned out to be rather interesting considering the fact that some of her previous indiscretions had come to the attention of her superior but after the arse burning incident were somehow quickly forgotten.

By the time I had finally had enough of that complete and utter bullshit, I left not only the company but the country itself. That useless cow Gertrude was still somehow managing to get paid for using the workday to conduct all of her fricking personal business. However, if there is any justice in this world, hopefully Gertrude finally got what she had coming to her and is now earning a living by cleaning toilets at a seedy local truck stop …I’m just saying…

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PS: The past week or so something dodgy seems to be going on with Blogger, hence this repost. I’ve been receiving the usual number of comments from all of my lovelies but the number of page views has been way down. Either this blog is slowing dying or the stats counter is all effed up. Has anyone else experienced this?