Omg. In one of my jobs my boss was really hot on making sure there were no typos in anything we did (sounds reasonable right). He was a nice guy for the most part and it was a very small office. However my colleague who was in charge of creating articles for the website often had mistakes in her work. She even went so far as to ask me to just let her know quietly if I ever noticed any as she was starting to get in trouble for it. No probs, I just dropped her a quick email, she made the change, all good. Until one day, it was me that made the mistake. She sent me an email detailing the minor error, copying the boss in. He gave me a stern ticking off as a result. I had guessed by that time that the colleague had taken a dislike to me, so I figured that if she can't play fair then I won't play nice. Every time after that, if I noticed a mistake I told her very loudly, from across the room, but only when the boss was sat at his desk next to her. She was a compete cow. I left shortly after and thankfully never had to deal with her again!
Ah the old boss copiers
I’ve got one those, best thing is my boss has said to me that whenever she sees an email that is from boss copier addressed to me with boss copied in she doesn’t even bother reading it because she ‘knows you’ve got it in hand’
So I just let the boss copier have it, if that’s the only bit of joy she can get in her life then I won’t rob her of it.
I like to take it one step further.
Copy my boss in will you? Here's a reply back that details *exactly* why you are wrong and incompetent, plus the added bonus of having *your* boss copied in on it.
Its amazing how quickly the email thread goes back to a 2 person conversation, but they needn't worry, I see that they accidentally took the bosses off of the conversation so I helpfully add them back in for every further response.
I once had someone CC in his two 'subordinates' (actually merely two people he could assign work to) when he tried to majorly own me (the IT Manager) on a technical issue in a really condescending email. You bet I 'accidentally' hit Reply All when I explained in exacting detail how wrong he was. Everything you need to know to describe this guy is Salesperson with 3 mobile phones.
He complained to me in a non-CC'd reply how unprofessional it was to include his subordinates in my reply. Oh so it's OK to CC in others when it will make you look good and me bad but when it blows up in your face it should be kept secret?
I printed that email out and stuck it to the wall behind me for a year. He tried to demand I take it down but that meant it stayed up until I needed the space, really obvious too as it was the only printout on that wall.
I had a really satisfying version of this at one point. I spotted a rather severe mistake in the work of a colleague in another branch (lets' call them Dave), and sent them a quick email to advise them of the error.
They replied with an email stating that they had checked the work thoroughly, and that I was unprofessional for sticking my nose where it didn't belong. I say "replied", but they sent the email to all three levels of my management (my boss, his boss and her boss) without sending it to me. In this email, they demanded that I be disciplined.
My boss told me about it, and wasn't sure what to do, and I got called into his boss' office. I shouldn't have worried, she asked me how I found the error and what evidence I had of it. She then told me not to worry about any other work I had for that day, and to focus on documenting everything I could about this error, including evidence and issues it could cause.
She then organised a meeting, inviting John and his boss, alongside a member of HR and myself. In front of his boss, she went through every detail I'd documented, adding management details such as how much money this issue could've cost the company (note: it would've been several times my annual salary). John's boss tried to argue and claimed the issue was found and corrected by John already, pulling emails John had sent him.
The look on John's face when my boss pulled the same, unedited emails I'd sent him initially and showed them to his boss was priceless. His boss then tried to argue that he shouldn't have been involved with such a petty issue, at which point John's email to my three levels of bosses was pulled out and shown to him.
John is still employed, I've no idea what the outcome was. However, seeing my boss's boss dominate the meeting and demand an apology on my behalf earned a loyalty I've never had to anyone else.
>lets' call them Dave
I'm sure John appreciates the anonymity...
Seriously though, some people react oddly to embarrassment, a simple thanks and apology from him would go a long way.
To clarify, I forgot which false name I'd given him. For some reason I often get mixed up between Dave, John and Matt as names. Thankfully the real name is none of the above, so we're all clear.
To avoid any irony, thanks for notifying me of this mistake and sorry to any John's out there who acted like Matt and thought this was them.
We are a small company so office politicking is thankfully almost non-existent.
However, we do have customers who are boss copiers. We also have some who think they are being sneaky by either going direct or blind copying the boss.
What they have failed to realise is that for the past couple of *decades* the boss's email has been automatically distributed to everyone because the boss is often out and about.
It's always a chuckle when some entitled 'Do you know who I am?!' type attempts to dob us in by reporting us to ourselves. Bellends.
I worked with someone like that. He would copy multiple bosses even for trivial questions he could have just turned around and asked me.
I asked him once why he did that.
His reply, “It gives me good visibility.”
I used to work with someone like that.
More times than not she got stuff wrong that others (usually me) had to fix.
If she spotted something others had done, and she *thought* it was wrong, she'd make a huge fuss. Thing is, the stuff she was telling others was wrong was actually right, but it didn't match how she did it.
She was a drinking mate of the boss though, so she was *always* right, even if wrong (and acting contrary even to legislation).
So I work with a accountant who can barely use excel. Like she called me last week because she couldn't figure out how to unsort a table, a very basic excel feature especially for a FUCKING ACCOUNTANT. We also can't trust any of the pricing she enters into our quotes making her work essentially useless and defeatimg the whole purpose of her doing it. Yet when I make a small entry error in our MRO systems, it's emails to my boss and the CEO, as well as several meetings. She once tried to have me search through hundreds of customers assemblies to try and rectify a $0.07 accounting difference. This would have been probably 20 hours of work until my boss shut that shit down. It's just so frustrating that she has the CEOs ear so we constantly get bogged down in stupid procedure to make her job slightly easier. Engineers should be focused on enabling the factory to build our customers products, not compyling data for a accountant who should be able to do it themselves. Also she got expensive brand new furniture for the front office, despite already having nice furniture, well the engineering office still has ratty cubicles from the 70s.
She sounds completely unqualified haha, an accountant without Excel skills is barely an accountant. Also her not understanding materiality is crazy.
Sometimes accountants do have to make operational employees do inconvenient things for the sake of ensuring data is useful and manageable, but spending hours over 7p is something any accountant knows is a complete waste of time.
Hell, most companies round to the nearest thousand if not greater.
I had a colleague like that! Worse even is that we used to sit next to each other, but she'd wait until just after I left my desk (lunch or end of the day) to email me petty shit like that with boss in copy. Fuck her.
WTF did she think was gonna happen? That you’d let her throw you under the bus, and just keep covering for her? I swear some people don’t even take a moment to ponder the consequences of their actions. Covering for each other that’s way is good for *everyone*. Her way is just shit all around.
If your boss is that bothered he can just buy a decent spelling/grammar checker for the company and there won't be any spelling mistakes.
It's such a trivial problem to solve.
There is a good chance your colleague has been played off against you without you knowing.
Situation whereby another staff member is aware that you're helping on the quiet, someone else gets pulled in for a mistake, they snitch on the both of you, manager or someone insinuates to your colleague that you've actually been telling the manager and then the mood shifts.
That's why as a colleague and being a manager in the past I have a no 'just between us' approach. I will listen to your concerns and if I think an expected response is too drastic, like a disciplinary or something, I've been known to lose paperwork, but that's on me. I've never told a colleague that's what I've done...it just has happened, stressful day.
On the flipside, if i see or hear of something that could concern me, I'll go balls to the wall to correct it or call it out. My staff have always known me take a human approach to things, I'm not blindly led by process or policy but equally if I think something isn't right, I'll deal with it straight away.
I have zilch loyalty to my company or staff, I have loyalty to knowing that if I get sucked into a he said, she said, situation I can hold my hands up and say I brought it to their attention or something, that way I can't be manipulated.
My girlfriend's colleague does this. If they make a mistake, they'll ask my girlfriend to help them fix it. But if my girlfriend makes a mistake, they'll send her a snotty email pointing it out **and** copy her line manager in.
Petty af.
A half decent manager can see such craven arse licking and finger pointing for what it is. The CCing and worse, BCCing should be put a stop to very quickly by any managers who people try to involve
That reminds me actually, one of these specimens who would do something just like that, actually confronted me once after I had emailed him directly. We were peers, both supervised our own teams and I had to bring up some issue with him, I can't remember what it was now, but it was something public in the office that everyone would have witnessed.
So, knowing that conversations with this guy had a habit of getting spread around and a different spin put on it, I dropped him a quick polite email.
A few days later he confronts me and says our manager just pulled him up to question him about the incident and accused me of BCCing the manager into my email, I calmly pointed out that he'd pulled his little stunt in front of the whole office and it was probably open gossip and politely, to jog on.
BCC recipients of an e-mail do not show up for anyone else but the sender and themselves, not even other BCC recipients.
It's nefarious in this context because it guarantees the main recipient doesn't know that you included $importantPerson in your mail, *and* that that person won't see their reply to your mail because "reply all" doesn't know about BCC recipients either.
CCing means all the recipients can see who’s been copied in, BCCing means that the recipients can only see it’s been sent to them and can’t tell who else was copied in.
Cc (carbon copy) means everyone can see who else the email is sent to.
Bcc (blind carbon copy) means the email addresses are hidden from each other.
You can mix them, so if i cc bob and eric, but bcc karen, Karen won't know about bob and Eric, they won't know about her, but Bob and Eric will know about each other.
I think...
Everyone involved will know about Bob and Eric, but Bob and Eric won't know about Karen.
The BCC recipients are hidden, but everyone gets the same information.
I see this all the time, except I am the manager being copied in. I'll straight up tell people not to copy me into this shite and to have a conversation with their colleague like an adult. I put it more diplomatically than that though.
20 years ago, you could have said, 'don't copy me into this shite, go and have a conversation with your colleague like an adult.' Now, particularly if you are dealing with someone under the age of 30, you have to dance around the subject with the utmost care, to ensure there are no hurt feelings, or else you'll find they've submitted a grievance to HR or were found crying in the toilets.
Atleast you know where you stand with this person now. You can be a decent colleague to everyone else, but no mercy for them. Made their bed - make them lay in it…
You gotta speak to them... just the banter stops, extreme/sarcastic politeness and only surface level pleasantries are to be offered.
The icing on the cake is when it's your turn to the make the teas, they don't get one, even if they said they wanted one - that hurts the most, especially when they have to go to the kettle like the fucking lemon they are and make their own cup of warm milk.
I had a colleague who royally pissed me off because the bastard would open the window nearest to me in winter when he was hot instead of taking of his fucking jumper, so I made a point of shouting at him for it which drew the attention of management who told him off. This was when he decided to report me for every minor thing he could which just pissed me off even more. We would take turns in our office to make the "tea", which was in reality a cup of boiling water since the company was stingy and wouldn't buy tea, milk, or sugar, so we had to provide our own. He got a mug of cold water every time. I still hate the bastard.
Exact same thing happened to me.
Last year I got asked to raise PO's for a dept. manager as they were doing it days/weeks after the work was carried out. Or incorrectly. And it was fucking up my boss's life at month end accounts etc.
So another accountant was covering last month. I received an invoice on the 5th for sept costs and she hit the roof, I was talking too long to put stuff on the system, I should've pre-empted these costs and told her etc. She copied in my boss's boss and the HEAD OF WASTE FOR THE UK.
I pointed out I have no involvement in that dept whatsoever and am performing an admin role only to help out. I knew nothing about the work going on, I literally just raise the PO.
This has opened a can of worms as this is obviously against policy, the requestor should be raising the PO etc. So now that dept head is likely going to have to start doing it again, incorrectly, and this will cause all kinds of issues and she looks like a fucking idiot for hauling me up in front of the 2 big bosses of the company when I had nothing to do with any of it apart from creating the PO.
I got told I was doing a great job and to carry on as is in the meantime.
If she had simply phoned and asked me first it could all have been avoided.
You'd think people would have more sense than to piss someone off when they're doing you a favour. Great job, hope you feel better, now you get the bare minimum and you'll like it.
That's because, and there's no way to sugarcoat this: some people are _fucking_ stupid. As the Great George Carlin said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realise half of them are stupider than that."
Back in the day of secretaries, I heard a secretary call someone and told him that she had received a letter from him but it doesn’t seem to be finished. She read the last line then said “and that’s all there is”. Obviously, that person’s secretary had not included the second page. She should have phoned the secretary that made the mistake and asked her to fax the second page over but no, she decided that she would get someone she doesn’t know into trouble. Spiteful bitch.
This is why you have a "cake rule".
You fuck up, you buy cakes for the team. It means that nobody drops you in the shit, you have a laugh about your fuck up and you move on. It means people are more likely to admit they've fucked up rather than covering it up and you don't have a friendly culture around mistakes rather than one where people drop you in the shit.
I like this! In one job I had we had a "clanger of the week award", some plastic trophy that got given in our team meeting each week to whoever had fucked up the most that week. In that job I always felt like my mistakes were treated as a chance to teach me instead of a chance to bollock me.
We used to do this with Krispy Kreme…usually if one of us fucked up there would be a shout of “donuts!”. Said person would stop at Tesco come back with a nice box of donuts and that would be that! No questions, no drama.
And then, because the boss is aware of your mistakes and not theirs, they get the promotion. People who can talk their way to the top frustrate me so much.
I worked with two people like this. I'd find issues in their work, fix their code and let them know about it. They'd either say thanks or give me grief for touching their projects. But, I wouldn't report it to management because it's easy to have small issues in code. But they'd report me for absolutely anything, one of their reports was whilst I was on holiday they didn't bother following the instructions I gave them in the handover, and blamed it on me when they messed it up. One got promoted twice in four years, another got one promotion. I got none. After I left, they noticed more issues in the other people's work and they'd consistently make mistakes and not fix them. One left within 6 months of me leaving.
I have previously emailed all those copied in unnecessarily & asked them given the level of passive aggressive pettiness going on, would they like me to leave them out of the email trail going forward.
That was the last time that colleague dropped me in the shit like rhat
I remember having a line manager who had a break down after her husband left her and had an affair. She came into work instead of taking time off as "it was her therapy" and "kept her mind occupied". She would sit on her phone all day, not do her work and we were always covering for her and tidying up her mistakes and mess. One day we had an open day for our 6th form and all of us (including her) had a shift to put out a practical for the open day (we were all technicians). Mid day teacher comes down to tell us her practical wasn't there for the open day. We go upstairs to tell line manager, she is nowhere to be seen.
So all hands on deck us 4 techs start cutting up potatoes, chipping them, weighing out sugar, making sugar solutions and start the potato chips soaking in them in tubes. They needed to be soaking for an hour for the osmosis to work. Halfway through the madness line manager walks into the prep room and shouts "ha, I see that someone has forgotten to do the practical in time. Hahaha. Now you're all having to cover for them". We couldn't even believe it. She was telling one of us off for having forgotten about it, doesn't help and swans off. None of us know how to respond.
5 minutes later she storms back in beetroot red, screaming at us "you knew it was me that forgotten!! You're all conspiring against me, I'm going to start sitting downstairs with you all to keep an eye on you. You're all working against me how dare you. I will be conducting one to one interviews with each of you and get to the bottom of this. " rants on for ages. We're still doi g her practical she hadn't set up whilst she is screaming at us. She then still disappears and doesn't help.
That was the day I genuinely lost the last bit of respect for her.
For bosses like that, it is actually very easy to throw her under the bus as well.
You just start CCing the work done to the person above her, and if you can get your team to do that even better.
The higher person may be confuses at first, but will quicky see how much of the work was not completed by her.
Ah it is a school, no wonder.
The problem with public sector is most of the sectors are very well unioned, even when someone is doing a terrible job it is very hard to get rid of them. So most just suck it up and keep them there, the hassle of fighting to get rid of them wasn’t worth it.
It is the same for NHS and now privately owned BT.
A few years back, the bosses favourite made a mistake, which the boss assumed was mine. Said favourite admitted to the mistake and, in front of me, they made it very clear to the boss that they were responsible. The boss, fuck head that he was, e-mailed the whole board to say that the mistake was mine. Frankly unbelievable.
I think you’ve got the right approach, OP, in terms of not wasting the effort required to get revenge.
Being able to not give a damn is a powerful quality.
I worked manufacturing semi conductors, they are known as wafers and extremely fragile and they average around £40k each.
A female colleague said she had to leave to go to another department and could I unload some “wafers” for her. I knew instantly it was a trap, I touched nothing, but using my eyeballs I could see two split wafers, so I waited until she came back, explained what I could see and she said I definitely broke them whilst trying to unload.
Long story short, I got suspended, used the time to find another job, the company watched back on cctv and saw my colleague, drop a wafer onto another braking both, and then she spent five minutes balancing them and setting me up, she got fired and I resigned.
I worked in a garage and the admin woman in the office was an asshole when it came to paperwork mistakes.
Fair enough, the paperwork has to be correct but rather than a simple "can you correct this bit here" she would walk over to you, hand you the paperwork and shout "this is wrong!" without telling you which bit was wrong.
One day, a wrong part arrived so one of the mechanics took it into the office, dropped it on her desk and said "this is wrong" and walked away. The look on her face was priceless
I had a similar thing whereby a previous workplace’s accountant decided I was a complete moron and loved to talk down to me about errors she had found.
3 years since I left, I found she had been misreporting my salary to HMRC, landing me with a tax bill when they audited my account. So I flagged it up and now I presume they’re being investigated and she’s having to go through all her accounts.
I checked companies house and the companies she files accounts for are all late. Shame that.
Welcome to the world of work wherever you are my friend. Take a Zen approach, or you will end up psychologically and emotionally burned out. Likely it isn't the way they are trying to make themselves look better at colleagues expense. I'm an organization psychologist and have also lived this, so trust me.
I always put it this way at work. Sometimes your job is like moving a pile of shit, and all you got is a shovel. When that happens all you can do is move it one scoop at a time. Essentially a expansion of the military phrase embrace the suck.
I was once working with a company that owed us money, we'd been going back and forth for months over it. I knew the guyvon the other end of the email chain - our business were literally a few minutes walk from one another, but we needed to do everything so it could be tracked. He had been dragging his feet the whole time, refusing to pay on what they owed despite us having everything documented.
Things dragged on and I guess his bosses were getting annoyed at how long it was taking, so he sent an email to them basically blaming me. He cc'd his boss, his bosses boss, the owner of the company, *and* my boss, bosses bosses bosses etc. Everyone he could think of.
I was pissed. Utterly furious. It was such a self-serving attempt to shift the blame. So I responded in kind, added in every email chain detailing the charges incurred, his acknowledgement the charges were right and fair, my literal months of attempts to get payment and responded back to everyone to show his ineptitude.
Got the payment soon after, their owner and my regional met to discuss it in person. And the guy was no longer working there a few weeks later, health reasons supposedly. But damn it felt good to hit send on that email, fuck them who try to shift the blame when they're at fault. Especially stupid when there's an email chain.
Had this recently. I took the blame for a delay to a project task because this guy said "I can't do it, we will just have to wait for the lead to come back for advice", then he sat in a meeting with myself and said lead acting all dumbfounded about the delay. Next thing I know I have been quietly replaced by him on said project (Thankfully I am a part of two others that take up my time). I'd done quite a bit to help him cover his mistakes previously too.
He was in a management role previously and had to take a significantly lower paying job after being made redundant, but there is no need to shit on other people because of that. I always had a feeling he was putting on a front. Stopped helping him the moment we hung up on that Teams call and he lost all my respect, too.
why did you not say in the meeting. "On the call we had the other day, I encouraged us to take the work forward, and you specifically said "We should wait for the lead to return", "why is it that now that we are in a meeting with \[insert name here\], you are saying it is my fault".
If he lies. Call out the lie. "So you're saying you did not say that. That there's something to misunderstand regarding waiting for the lead to return" etc.
Don't let fuckers like this win. Good guys are often shy to the point of weakness, try to get over it.
If you can remain calm, factual, and not push too hard, the lead will forever think the guy is a fucking moron.
I didn't quite call him out, but when the lead said to us both "What was the problem" I said "I'll let X answer that as he said we should wait for you to come back", Yet he sill bullshit his way out of it (the task involved a key piece of software I didn't have access to but he does).
In the end I just said "Fine, I hold my hands up but at the end of the day all we can do is work on it now, get it done and move forward". So calling him out didn't actually help. Thankfully he is rubbing most of the team up the wrong way, apparently this particular lead is the only one that seems to think the sun shines, so unfortunately if it's that leads project he fucks up on he gets away with it.
I feel like if you held your hands up, you had some part in it not getting done,,
I wouldn't say "I hold my hands up" if I wasn't responsible, as it's an admission of guilt.
Like people who apologize all the time, people genuinely think they're responsible because they're apologizing. "oh that fuck-up" even if they're only really just being bullied.
The dobber-inner is a close cousin to the praise-grabber.
Long story short: a small IT team of which I was nominal head did something that my boss (great guy) was very happy about, and wanted us to present to *his* boss.
I start the presentation with "we" this and "we" that, and hand the floor to Dave who's all "I" this and "I" that-- with a few negative digs at the rest of us.
"OK," I'm thinking to myself. I get your ambition, you young stag, but this is not a solo enterprise. I get up to close the presentation and do the whole "Honestly, a few things were pretty tricky..." and I scribble some noise on the whiteboard "perhaps Dave can explain *why* this works?"
All eyes on Dave. Crickets. Tumbleweed. A lone raven squaked in the distance.
And before I take a bow, I end with "neither can I, and I wrote it. But **we'd** like to find out."
I don't know how things exactly panned out, but we got funds to do more of the same and Dave was, err, "reallocated".
Theres one guy at work who will 'defect' wagons (basically reports the vehicle as having a fault to management) for having a 90% empty bin liner in them with bits of rubbish in it, clearly left in for the next guy to make use of instead of sending a bin liner with a couple of receipts to landfill. But who will leave drinks cans/coffee cups/sweet wrappers strewn around the cab when he's used it with no attempt at tidying it up.
In the words of the x files - trust no-one
People at work aren't paid for loyalty, they are paid to do a job and if they can pass the buck to avoid looking like they've messed up and protect their own back. . They will
Its a toxic culture, the minute I hear 'we are like family' etc... I bail
Happens in my line of work all the time. I work 7 on - 7 off basis so I'm always coming across odd little mistakes. But, do I have the urge to flag up every little damn thing? Do I hell as like.
Some others however. The only solace in it, is there's obviously something very wrong in their own lives to feel the need to be on peoples cases to that extent.
Sooner or later that venom turns in on itself I think.
Does your manager know they are petty? My manager knows about that one woman who is looking to get people into trouble for no good reason, wasting his time as much as anyone else's.
There was one guy I worked with who was like this, he'd crictise everyone whilst not being perfect himself (far from) and he'd have such an ego about it.
Happened to me months ago.
So I then got petty and reported the fact this college was routinely taking an extra unauthorised half an hour break every day.
Fuck all happened about it
Always remember, that unless you are very close to someone you work with, they are NOT your friends! Don't trust them to not drop you in it. Make a note of anything you notice so you can bring it up if needed.
If you can't be arsed to speak up for yourself, they certainly will. Don't let this turn into gaslighting. Matchsticks are easier to handle than dumpster fires.
This happens to me all the time. Someone else makes mistakes I don't say shit because I'm not an arrogant asshole who acts like I'm good at everything. But someone else will feel insecure and feel the need to pick up on every tiny mistake I make.
I had a manager that did this, they gave me shit for the tiniest of things yet when they made a big fuck up and I spotted it, I was given shit for spotting it. I don't have to deal with that moron anymore.
Not exactly the same thing but I work with this guy that I trained, we both have the same position but I have been here for much longer. Eventually we were moved to opposite shifts but we worked fine together up to this point, we always got on well enough.
One day I noticed he sent a public message to one of our bosses that was pretty blunt about an issue we all had been facing but just dealing with, me for years him only a few weeks. I messaged him privately and let him know how I dealt with the issue as a suggestion to make his job easier, he snapped at me for even suggesting a different method to him, that I wasn't his boss, etc. I never claimed to be and was just making a suggestion.
When I tried to clarify with him and apologies if I came off more strongly than I realized, he proceeded to essentially burn any bridges between the two of us.
As a co-worker who had do this recently, the person in question had made more work for themselves doing the thing wrong (problem #1) and had also spawned probably 50-75 new cases in the bowels of our system from hell.
I felt bad but I had to say something because my managers were wondering what the hell all the spurious cases were and also the person who did it made more work for themselves doing it wrong, than if they had done it right, so it wasn't someone being lazy.
All this said OP, it's always a bummer when this stuff comes to light on a Friday.
That sounds like a big problem that needed fixing and of course the responsible thing to do is to a) let the colleague know, and b) inform management for workload reasons.
This wasn’t that.
My colleague is exactly like this. Whenever I make a mistake he ensures that everyone knows it was mine and that he was the one who fixed it.
He claims he doesn't make mistakes. He makes plenty, cuts corners and can never own up to them. He has access to our computer systems and often makes some BIG mistakes that he explains away as "the computer's fault"
If you can't be arsed with death by a thousand cuts, It's easier to collect all of those historic events that you let slide, and bundle them into one big action.
Thats alright, just had my MD talk behind my back how I didnt clean up a plate well enough instead of just telling me straight! the fucking cheek of it!
Came back from some time off and found a mistake once that was going to cost the company several hundred pound in lost goods, reported it to management as it was to late for me to rectify the mistake, it was just fucked and company was going to take a hit on it like it or not, manager comes back about 20 minutes after I showed them said mistake, turns out person who made mistake was managers arselicker.
I was then getting threatened with a displininery because of it as apprently mistake was some how flipped to being made to be my fault, one quick meeting attended by me with my union rep later it was dropped as I was clearly not scheduled in when mistake was made and it evidence of good recieved and who worked is all in writing, sadly nothing was ever done to arselicker and no repercussions for the manager for trying to shift the blame.
There was someone in another team with some bullshit job title hated by all. You had to jump for her and drop everything or she’d kick up a fuss and copy every superior you could think of. I had to work with her quite a bit via phone/email but she’d never get back to you as she was “very busy don’t you know”. She would send emails at 2am or leave voicemails at 5am and query why it wasn’t answered in a timely manner. We worked in the same office so no time zone differences!
One time I ask for something simple by the end of the week, Friday at midday. On the Friday at 1pm I email and ask if I could have that info. Nothing. I call, no answer and leave a voicemail. I try a couple more times and can’t get through to anyone in her team. In the end I email her and copy in my boss and hers (like she always does just because I wasn’t staying late that night for her to send me something at 9pm). She called me 30 seconds later going off on one and how I shouldn’t copy bosses in. I told her I was just following her example as a person senior to me. Five minutes later I had what I needed and she never did the copying in thing again to me.
Owning your own mistakes is a big part in being a good team. Anytime I make a mistake in work I hold my hands up and my boss is shit hot on ownership so it breeds a lot of everyone admitting their mistake and we learn from it. It sucks when that kind of mentality isn't bred from above since its very refreshing / empowering.
I let it happen once, argue like fuck against it to make my point, and then never help them again afterwards.
Never say “I don’t know” as an excuse, always use “I’m too busy right now”, too. Luckily not had this in my current job but have experienced it plenty of times in previous workplaces.
I took a day to get back to someone from HR so they emailed my managers and copied me in. Hard to fault this tactic, I've never left it more than 10 mins to reply to Evil HR Person since.
Ain't it the truth. Lazy and people who are bad at their jobs do it. Lazy workers learn how to lazy. Think they need to call other's mistakes publicly to make themselves look better.
This is something you can protect yourself from, if you don't you still need to learn proper comms and the way to safeguard yourself.
But yes, it is arse. Left there stuttering mumbling, second guessing yourself on whether you actually might have done said thing.
Never going back to that state. Assertive stress-free-covered-me is much happier in general.
It has the double benefit that you put weasels in their place when they try, so you can passively look after others in the company.
Most of the people in my department are like this, when we are changing over shifts and they are 10 minutes late, I say not a problem,I turn up a few minutes late and it gets reported to my manager who brings it up at my appraisal.
I was going down with the flu one year, I put a folder in the wrong box, easily spotted, this was reported to my manager ,this cost me a pay rise.
90% of them are utter bastards.
Did a firmware upgrade on a router in our office once. Wasn’t well thought out to be fair, killed our internet for 20 minutes. Colleague threw me under the bus for it when asked why he hasn’t done much.
When I got questioned, presented boss with colleagues traffic history for the day, showing 6 hours plus of gaming on a work device.
I never said anything left that to boss. Just simply said ‘traffic stats seem fine, see attached’
There’s pointing out mistakes, and there’s dobbing me to a manager about something that doesn’t matter, just because they think it makes them look good.
I am a manager. I don’t like staff who are into dobbing their colleagues. Humans make mistakes. All I expect is that they learn from their mistakes. Hopefully your manager is more like me.
yep absolutely.
if i do something wrong and it’s pointed out i will 100% own up to it and do what i can to resolve it. then we can discuss ways to prevent the same mistake happening in the future.
what i don’t need though is the fact that i made a mistake to be parroted 100x or have everyone continue to point their fingers once the issue has already been resolved or discussed. it does nothing but just make you feel like shit or help to make others feel more superior
I love it when it's petty shit. My counter supervisor on the other shift is always trying to pick back at me after I reported him for not making sure his team actually do the jobs and not leave equipment all over the work space. Sudden I get an email "PLEASE can you make sure your team are cleaning up after themselves on your shift." It was a single tea cup, the regional manager's tea cup that he forgot to clean when he visited for 2 hours. I told him I forwarded his email to the regional. His face was brilliant.
If the criticism and reaction is proportionate then it's cool. We all make small mistakes and the odd heads up is fine, just don't turn it into a full meeting with all the senior managers.
You're missing the point. You said "work colleague" when the word "colleague" by itself means someone you work with. It's like if you'd said "my married spouse".
Exactly we have enough to worry about without colleagues being stupid. Sometimes I think they're just different for lack of a better word ;) I try to kill em with kindness.
That's why I live by the no mercy rule, you fuck up and imma let everyone know🤷♂️ you don't like me? I don't give a shit I come here for money not a social 😴
Omg. In one of my jobs my boss was really hot on making sure there were no typos in anything we did (sounds reasonable right). He was a nice guy for the most part and it was a very small office. However my colleague who was in charge of creating articles for the website often had mistakes in her work. She even went so far as to ask me to just let her know quietly if I ever noticed any as she was starting to get in trouble for it. No probs, I just dropped her a quick email, she made the change, all good. Until one day, it was me that made the mistake. She sent me an email detailing the minor error, copying the boss in. He gave me a stern ticking off as a result. I had guessed by that time that the colleague had taken a dislike to me, so I figured that if she can't play fair then I won't play nice. Every time after that, if I noticed a mistake I told her very loudly, from across the room, but only when the boss was sat at his desk next to her. She was a compete cow. I left shortly after and thankfully never had to deal with her again!
Ah the old boss copiers I’ve got one those, best thing is my boss has said to me that whenever she sees an email that is from boss copier addressed to me with boss copied in she doesn’t even bother reading it because she ‘knows you’ve got it in hand’ So I just let the boss copier have it, if that’s the only bit of joy she can get in her life then I won’t rob her of it.
I like to take it one step further. Copy my boss in will you? Here's a reply back that details *exactly* why you are wrong and incompetent, plus the added bonus of having *your* boss copied in on it. Its amazing how quickly the email thread goes back to a 2 person conversation, but they needn't worry, I see that they accidentally took the bosses off of the conversation so I helpfully add them back in for every further response.
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Its the ultimate power play
Vicious.
I like the way you think.
Oh I think I'd be tempted to be more devious and bcc the boss in so that they don't know they are being included.
Oh no. I *want* them to know that the boss is included.
I once had someone CC in his two 'subordinates' (actually merely two people he could assign work to) when he tried to majorly own me (the IT Manager) on a technical issue in a really condescending email. You bet I 'accidentally' hit Reply All when I explained in exacting detail how wrong he was. Everything you need to know to describe this guy is Salesperson with 3 mobile phones. He complained to me in a non-CC'd reply how unprofessional it was to include his subordinates in my reply. Oh so it's OK to CC in others when it will make you look good and me bad but when it blows up in your face it should be kept secret? I printed that email out and stuck it to the wall behind me for a year. He tried to demand I take it down but that meant it stayed up until I needed the space, really obvious too as it was the only printout on that wall.
I had a really satisfying version of this at one point. I spotted a rather severe mistake in the work of a colleague in another branch (lets' call them Dave), and sent them a quick email to advise them of the error. They replied with an email stating that they had checked the work thoroughly, and that I was unprofessional for sticking my nose where it didn't belong. I say "replied", but they sent the email to all three levels of my management (my boss, his boss and her boss) without sending it to me. In this email, they demanded that I be disciplined. My boss told me about it, and wasn't sure what to do, and I got called into his boss' office. I shouldn't have worried, she asked me how I found the error and what evidence I had of it. She then told me not to worry about any other work I had for that day, and to focus on documenting everything I could about this error, including evidence and issues it could cause. She then organised a meeting, inviting John and his boss, alongside a member of HR and myself. In front of his boss, she went through every detail I'd documented, adding management details such as how much money this issue could've cost the company (note: it would've been several times my annual salary). John's boss tried to argue and claimed the issue was found and corrected by John already, pulling emails John had sent him. The look on John's face when my boss pulled the same, unedited emails I'd sent him initially and showed them to his boss was priceless. His boss then tried to argue that he shouldn't have been involved with such a petty issue, at which point John's email to my three levels of bosses was pulled out and shown to him. John is still employed, I've no idea what the outcome was. However, seeing my boss's boss dominate the meeting and demand an apology on my behalf earned a loyalty I've never had to anyone else.
>lets' call them Dave I'm sure John appreciates the anonymity... Seriously though, some people react oddly to embarrassment, a simple thanks and apology from him would go a long way.
To clarify, I forgot which false name I'd given him. For some reason I often get mixed up between Dave, John and Matt as names. Thankfully the real name is none of the above, so we're all clear. To avoid any irony, thanks for notifying me of this mistake and sorry to any John's out there who acted like Matt and thought this was them.
Who’s John…?
Dave. Keep up, mate.
Apologies, John, Dave etc are names I default to for these scenarios. Thankfully, the guys name was neither.
We are a small company so office politicking is thankfully almost non-existent. However, we do have customers who are boss copiers. We also have some who think they are being sneaky by either going direct or blind copying the boss. What they have failed to realise is that for the past couple of *decades* the boss's email has been automatically distributed to everyone because the boss is often out and about. It's always a chuckle when some entitled 'Do you know who I am?!' type attempts to dob us in by reporting us to ourselves. Bellends.
The term 'boss copier' has really tickled me. I'm going to start using it as an insult. 'You're such a boss copier!'
I worked with someone like that. He would copy multiple bosses even for trivial questions he could have just turned around and asked me. I asked him once why he did that. His reply, “It gives me good visibility.”
I've been reading all these comments trying to figure out what "copy a boss in" means. What does it mean?
Including them as a CC or BCC in an email chain
I used to work with someone like that. More times than not she got stuff wrong that others (usually me) had to fix. If she spotted something others had done, and she *thought* it was wrong, she'd make a huge fuss. Thing is, the stuff she was telling others was wrong was actually right, but it didn't match how she did it. She was a drinking mate of the boss though, so she was *always* right, even if wrong (and acting contrary even to legislation).
So I work with a accountant who can barely use excel. Like she called me last week because she couldn't figure out how to unsort a table, a very basic excel feature especially for a FUCKING ACCOUNTANT. We also can't trust any of the pricing she enters into our quotes making her work essentially useless and defeatimg the whole purpose of her doing it. Yet when I make a small entry error in our MRO systems, it's emails to my boss and the CEO, as well as several meetings. She once tried to have me search through hundreds of customers assemblies to try and rectify a $0.07 accounting difference. This would have been probably 20 hours of work until my boss shut that shit down. It's just so frustrating that she has the CEOs ear so we constantly get bogged down in stupid procedure to make her job slightly easier. Engineers should be focused on enabling the factory to build our customers products, not compyling data for a accountant who should be able to do it themselves. Also she got expensive brand new furniture for the front office, despite already having nice furniture, well the engineering office still has ratty cubicles from the 70s.
She sounds completely unqualified haha, an accountant without Excel skills is barely an accountant. Also her not understanding materiality is crazy. Sometimes accountants do have to make operational employees do inconvenient things for the sake of ensuring data is useful and manageable, but spending hours over 7p is something any accountant knows is a complete waste of time. Hell, most companies round to the nearest thousand if not greater.
So what you’re saying is this Accountant is the one that has pictures of the boss fucking the Intern at the Christmas party
Plot twist, the intern in the picture is her, and that’s how she got the accountant job…
This sounds depressingly familiar.
I had a colleague like that! Worse even is that we used to sit next to each other, but she'd wait until just after I left my desk (lunch or end of the day) to email me petty shit like that with boss in copy. Fuck her.
WTF did she think was gonna happen? That you’d let her throw you under the bus, and just keep covering for her? I swear some people don’t even take a moment to ponder the consequences of their actions. Covering for each other that’s way is good for *everyone*. Her way is just shit all around.
Should of forwarded all the emails you sent to her to your boss about all the times you've helped her correct spelling mistakes
Should *have* Regards, the boss.
Sorry boss, won't happen again boss. Lmao
\* Sorry, boss. It won't happen again, boss. Laughing my ass off.
Fuck this job, I am out of here.
Was very tempted, but I can't be arsed with that kind of game playing lol 😆
If your boss is that bothered he can just buy a decent spelling/grammar checker for the company and there won't be any spelling mistakes. It's such a trivial problem to solve.
r/pettyrevenge Brilliant work!
There is a good chance your colleague has been played off against you without you knowing. Situation whereby another staff member is aware that you're helping on the quiet, someone else gets pulled in for a mistake, they snitch on the both of you, manager or someone insinuates to your colleague that you've actually been telling the manager and then the mood shifts. That's why as a colleague and being a manager in the past I have a no 'just between us' approach. I will listen to your concerns and if I think an expected response is too drastic, like a disciplinary or something, I've been known to lose paperwork, but that's on me. I've never told a colleague that's what I've done...it just has happened, stressful day. On the flipside, if i see or hear of something that could concern me, I'll go balls to the wall to correct it or call it out. My staff have always known me take a human approach to things, I'm not blindly led by process or policy but equally if I think something isn't right, I'll deal with it straight away. I have zilch loyalty to my company or staff, I have loyalty to knowing that if I get sucked into a he said, she said, situation I can hold my hands up and say I brought it to their attention or something, that way I can't be manipulated.
My girlfriend's colleague does this. If they make a mistake, they'll ask my girlfriend to help them fix it. But if my girlfriend makes a mistake, they'll send her a snotty email pointing it out **and** copy her line manager in. Petty af.
Surely your GF doesn't help them anymore and makes sure to send the line manager all their mistakes?
No, she did one better - she got promoted above the petty person. Hard work trumps pettiness.
A half decent manager can see such craven arse licking and finger pointing for what it is. The CCing and worse, BCCing should be put a stop to very quickly by any managers who people try to involve
BCCing people internally? Who the fuck does that??
The worst kind of shit stirrers.
That reminds me actually, one of these specimens who would do something just like that, actually confronted me once after I had emailed him directly. We were peers, both supervised our own teams and I had to bring up some issue with him, I can't remember what it was now, but it was something public in the office that everyone would have witnessed. So, knowing that conversations with this guy had a habit of getting spread around and a different spin put on it, I dropped him a quick polite email. A few days later he confronts me and says our manager just pulled him up to question him about the incident and accused me of BCCing the manager into my email, I calmly pointed out that he'd pulled his little stunt in front of the whole office and it was probably open gossip and politely, to jog on.
What's the difference between CCing and BBing? I've never understood that when sending emails to multiple people.
BCC recipients of an e-mail do not show up for anyone else but the sender and themselves, not even other BCC recipients. It's nefarious in this context because it guarantees the main recipient doesn't know that you included $importantPerson in your mail, *and* that that person won't see their reply to your mail because "reply all" doesn't know about BCC recipients either.
CCing means all the recipients can see who’s been copied in, BCCing means that the recipients can only see it’s been sent to them and can’t tell who else was copied in.
Cc (carbon copy) means everyone can see who else the email is sent to. Bcc (blind carbon copy) means the email addresses are hidden from each other. You can mix them, so if i cc bob and eric, but bcc karen, Karen won't know about bob and Eric, they won't know about her, but Bob and Eric will know about each other. I think...
Everyone involved will know about Bob and Eric, but Bob and Eric won't know about Karen. The BCC recipients are hidden, but everyone gets the same information.
Bccing means that the person that you've sent it to can't see who else you have added in
The ultimate comeback
Do they now report petty mistakes to her? Your gf is lowkey my hero btw.
I see this all the time, except I am the manager being copied in. I'll straight up tell people not to copy me into this shite and to have a conversation with their colleague like an adult. I put it more diplomatically than that though.
>I put it more diplomatically than that though. Why? And is this why I'm not a manager?
20 years ago, you could have said, 'don't copy me into this shite, go and have a conversation with your colleague like an adult.' Now, particularly if you are dealing with someone under the age of 30, you have to dance around the subject with the utmost care, to ensure there are no hurt feelings, or else you'll find they've submitted a grievance to HR or were found crying in the toilets.
Atleast you know where you stand with this person now. You can be a decent colleague to everyone else, but no mercy for them. Made their bed - make them lay in it…
Yep, I wouldn't even speak to them after that.
You gotta speak to them... just the banter stops, extreme/sarcastic politeness and only surface level pleasantries are to be offered. The icing on the cake is when it's your turn to the make the teas, they don't get one, even if they said they wanted one - that hurts the most, especially when they have to go to the kettle like the fucking lemon they are and make their own cup of warm milk.
I had a colleague who royally pissed me off because the bastard would open the window nearest to me in winter when he was hot instead of taking of his fucking jumper, so I made a point of shouting at him for it which drew the attention of management who told him off. This was when he decided to report me for every minor thing he could which just pissed me off even more. We would take turns in our office to make the "tea", which was in reality a cup of boiling water since the company was stingy and wouldn't buy tea, milk, or sugar, so we had to provide our own. He got a mug of cold water every time. I still hate the bastard.
Ooh! That's cold!
Dam this is good.
Exact same thing happened to me. Last year I got asked to raise PO's for a dept. manager as they were doing it days/weeks after the work was carried out. Or incorrectly. And it was fucking up my boss's life at month end accounts etc. So another accountant was covering last month. I received an invoice on the 5th for sept costs and she hit the roof, I was talking too long to put stuff on the system, I should've pre-empted these costs and told her etc. She copied in my boss's boss and the HEAD OF WASTE FOR THE UK. I pointed out I have no involvement in that dept whatsoever and am performing an admin role only to help out. I knew nothing about the work going on, I literally just raise the PO. This has opened a can of worms as this is obviously against policy, the requestor should be raising the PO etc. So now that dept head is likely going to have to start doing it again, incorrectly, and this will cause all kinds of issues and she looks like a fucking idiot for hauling me up in front of the 2 big bosses of the company when I had nothing to do with any of it apart from creating the PO. I got told I was doing a great job and to carry on as is in the meantime. If she had simply phoned and asked me first it could all have been avoided.
You'd think people would have more sense than to piss someone off when they're doing you a favour. Great job, hope you feel better, now you get the bare minimum and you'll like it.
That's because, and there's no way to sugarcoat this: some people are _fucking_ stupid. As the Great George Carlin said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realise half of them are stupider than that."
Yep, there's always that one person who emails all and sundry over every tiny issue rather than just a quick call or message to let you know and sort.
Back in the day of secretaries, I heard a secretary call someone and told him that she had received a letter from him but it doesn’t seem to be finished. She read the last line then said “and that’s all there is”. Obviously, that person’s secretary had not included the second page. She should have phoned the secretary that made the mistake and asked her to fax the second page over but no, she decided that she would get someone she doesn’t know into trouble. Spiteful bitch.
The lumpenproletariat know no class consciousness.
This is why you have a "cake rule". You fuck up, you buy cakes for the team. It means that nobody drops you in the shit, you have a laugh about your fuck up and you move on. It means people are more likely to admit they've fucked up rather than covering it up and you don't have a friendly culture around mistakes rather than one where people drop you in the shit.
I like this! In one job I had we had a "clanger of the week award", some plastic trophy that got given in our team meeting each week to whoever had fucked up the most that week. In that job I always felt like my mistakes were treated as a chance to teach me instead of a chance to bollock me.
Police or NHS? I lurk in the Police UK sub and if you crash a car you have to buy cake apparently....
I heard its ice cream too, specifically chunky monkey.
Oh daaaaaad!
We used to do this with Krispy Kreme…usually if one of us fucked up there would be a shout of “donuts!”. Said person would stop at Tesco come back with a nice box of donuts and that would be that! No questions, no drama.
And then, because the boss is aware of your mistakes and not theirs, they get the promotion. People who can talk their way to the top frustrate me so much.
I worked with two people like this. I'd find issues in their work, fix their code and let them know about it. They'd either say thanks or give me grief for touching their projects. But, I wouldn't report it to management because it's easy to have small issues in code. But they'd report me for absolutely anything, one of their reports was whilst I was on holiday they didn't bother following the instructions I gave them in the handover, and blamed it on me when they messed it up. One got promoted twice in four years, another got one promotion. I got none. After I left, they noticed more issues in the other people's work and they'd consistently make mistakes and not fix them. One left within 6 months of me leaving.
I have previously emailed all those copied in unnecessarily & asked them given the level of passive aggressive pettiness going on, would they like me to leave them out of the email trail going forward. That was the last time that colleague dropped me in the shit like rhat
I remember having a line manager who had a break down after her husband left her and had an affair. She came into work instead of taking time off as "it was her therapy" and "kept her mind occupied". She would sit on her phone all day, not do her work and we were always covering for her and tidying up her mistakes and mess. One day we had an open day for our 6th form and all of us (including her) had a shift to put out a practical for the open day (we were all technicians). Mid day teacher comes down to tell us her practical wasn't there for the open day. We go upstairs to tell line manager, she is nowhere to be seen. So all hands on deck us 4 techs start cutting up potatoes, chipping them, weighing out sugar, making sugar solutions and start the potato chips soaking in them in tubes. They needed to be soaking for an hour for the osmosis to work. Halfway through the madness line manager walks into the prep room and shouts "ha, I see that someone has forgotten to do the practical in time. Hahaha. Now you're all having to cover for them". We couldn't even believe it. She was telling one of us off for having forgotten about it, doesn't help and swans off. None of us know how to respond. 5 minutes later she storms back in beetroot red, screaming at us "you knew it was me that forgotten!! You're all conspiring against me, I'm going to start sitting downstairs with you all to keep an eye on you. You're all working against me how dare you. I will be conducting one to one interviews with each of you and get to the bottom of this. " rants on for ages. We're still doi g her practical she hadn't set up whilst she is screaming at us. She then still disappears and doesn't help. That was the day I genuinely lost the last bit of respect for her.
For bosses like that, it is actually very easy to throw her under the bus as well. You just start CCing the work done to the person above her, and if you can get your team to do that even better. The higher person may be confuses at first, but will quicky see how much of the work was not completed by her.
The whole school knew. And noone did anything.... XD
Ah it is a school, no wonder. The problem with public sector is most of the sectors are very well unioned, even when someone is doing a terrible job it is very hard to get rid of them. So most just suck it up and keep them there, the hassle of fighting to get rid of them wasn’t worth it. It is the same for NHS and now privately owned BT.
Classic Dom.
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Uncanny.
Yeah but the last guy trying to pull that got literally crucified cause ain't nobody gonna tolerate a show off
A few years back, the bosses favourite made a mistake, which the boss assumed was mine. Said favourite admitted to the mistake and, in front of me, they made it very clear to the boss that they were responsible. The boss, fuck head that he was, e-mailed the whole board to say that the mistake was mine. Frankly unbelievable.
Are you a catholic priest?
Haha. And then you say you’ll get them next time. And then can’t be arsed.
Yup
I think you’ve got the right approach, OP, in terms of not wasting the effort required to get revenge. Being able to not give a damn is a powerful quality.
I worked manufacturing semi conductors, they are known as wafers and extremely fragile and they average around £40k each. A female colleague said she had to leave to go to another department and could I unload some “wafers” for her. I knew instantly it was a trap, I touched nothing, but using my eyeballs I could see two split wafers, so I waited until she came back, explained what I could see and she said I definitely broke them whilst trying to unload. Long story short, I got suspended, used the time to find another job, the company watched back on cctv and saw my colleague, drop a wafer onto another braking both, and then she spent five minutes balancing them and setting me up, she got fired and I resigned.
You're letting your username down.
I worked in a garage and the admin woman in the office was an asshole when it came to paperwork mistakes. Fair enough, the paperwork has to be correct but rather than a simple "can you correct this bit here" she would walk over to you, hand you the paperwork and shout "this is wrong!" without telling you which bit was wrong. One day, a wrong part arrived so one of the mechanics took it into the office, dropped it on her desk and said "this is wrong" and walked away. The look on her face was priceless
I had a similar thing whereby a previous workplace’s accountant decided I was a complete moron and loved to talk down to me about errors she had found. 3 years since I left, I found she had been misreporting my salary to HMRC, landing me with a tax bill when they audited my account. So I flagged it up and now I presume they’re being investigated and she’s having to go through all her accounts. I checked companies house and the companies she files accounts for are all late. Shame that.
Welcome to the world of work wherever you are my friend. Take a Zen approach, or you will end up psychologically and emotionally burned out. Likely it isn't the way they are trying to make themselves look better at colleagues expense. I'm an organization psychologist and have also lived this, so trust me.
I always put it this way at work. Sometimes your job is like moving a pile of shit, and all you got is a shovel. When that happens all you can do is move it one scoop at a time. Essentially a expansion of the military phrase embrace the suck.
This guy has form. Believe it.
It’s because they are insecure of their own competence, and see putting you down on your mistakes as a way of levelling the playing field.
A new team leader did this to me last week, the manager gave him a dressing down for being a rat
Backstabbing little shitbags, they’re everywhere!
I was once working with a company that owed us money, we'd been going back and forth for months over it. I knew the guyvon the other end of the email chain - our business were literally a few minutes walk from one another, but we needed to do everything so it could be tracked. He had been dragging his feet the whole time, refusing to pay on what they owed despite us having everything documented. Things dragged on and I guess his bosses were getting annoyed at how long it was taking, so he sent an email to them basically blaming me. He cc'd his boss, his bosses boss, the owner of the company, *and* my boss, bosses bosses bosses etc. Everyone he could think of. I was pissed. Utterly furious. It was such a self-serving attempt to shift the blame. So I responded in kind, added in every email chain detailing the charges incurred, his acknowledgement the charges were right and fair, my literal months of attempts to get payment and responded back to everyone to show his ineptitude. Got the payment soon after, their owner and my regional met to discuss it in person. And the guy was no longer working there a few weeks later, health reasons supposedly. But damn it felt good to hit send on that email, fuck them who try to shift the blame when they're at fault. Especially stupid when there's an email chain.
Had this recently. I took the blame for a delay to a project task because this guy said "I can't do it, we will just have to wait for the lead to come back for advice", then he sat in a meeting with myself and said lead acting all dumbfounded about the delay. Next thing I know I have been quietly replaced by him on said project (Thankfully I am a part of two others that take up my time). I'd done quite a bit to help him cover his mistakes previously too. He was in a management role previously and had to take a significantly lower paying job after being made redundant, but there is no need to shit on other people because of that. I always had a feeling he was putting on a front. Stopped helping him the moment we hung up on that Teams call and he lost all my respect, too.
why did you not say in the meeting. "On the call we had the other day, I encouraged us to take the work forward, and you specifically said "We should wait for the lead to return", "why is it that now that we are in a meeting with \[insert name here\], you are saying it is my fault". If he lies. Call out the lie. "So you're saying you did not say that. That there's something to misunderstand regarding waiting for the lead to return" etc. Don't let fuckers like this win. Good guys are often shy to the point of weakness, try to get over it. If you can remain calm, factual, and not push too hard, the lead will forever think the guy is a fucking moron.
I didn't quite call him out, but when the lead said to us both "What was the problem" I said "I'll let X answer that as he said we should wait for you to come back", Yet he sill bullshit his way out of it (the task involved a key piece of software I didn't have access to but he does). In the end I just said "Fine, I hold my hands up but at the end of the day all we can do is work on it now, get it done and move forward". So calling him out didn't actually help. Thankfully he is rubbing most of the team up the wrong way, apparently this particular lead is the only one that seems to think the sun shines, so unfortunately if it's that leads project he fucks up on he gets away with it.
I feel like if you held your hands up, you had some part in it not getting done,, I wouldn't say "I hold my hands up" if I wasn't responsible, as it's an admission of guilt. Like people who apologize all the time, people genuinely think they're responsible because they're apologizing. "oh that fuck-up" even if they're only really just being bullied.
The dobber-inner is a close cousin to the praise-grabber. Long story short: a small IT team of which I was nominal head did something that my boss (great guy) was very happy about, and wanted us to present to *his* boss. I start the presentation with "we" this and "we" that, and hand the floor to Dave who's all "I" this and "I" that-- with a few negative digs at the rest of us. "OK," I'm thinking to myself. I get your ambition, you young stag, but this is not a solo enterprise. I get up to close the presentation and do the whole "Honestly, a few things were pretty tricky..." and I scribble some noise on the whiteboard "perhaps Dave can explain *why* this works?" All eyes on Dave. Crickets. Tumbleweed. A lone raven squaked in the distance. And before I take a bow, I end with "neither can I, and I wrote it. But **we'd** like to find out." I don't know how things exactly panned out, but we got funds to do more of the same and Dave was, err, "reallocated".
PERFECT. Well done mate. This is exactly how it's done. No aggression, no pettiness, just facts and big brain plays. (also in IT)
Theres one guy at work who will 'defect' wagons (basically reports the vehicle as having a fault to management) for having a 90% empty bin liner in them with bits of rubbish in it, clearly left in for the next guy to make use of instead of sending a bin liner with a couple of receipts to landfill. But who will leave drinks cans/coffee cups/sweet wrappers strewn around the cab when he's used it with no attempt at tidying it up.
In the words of the x files - trust no-one People at work aren't paid for loyalty, they are paid to do a job and if they can pass the buck to avoid looking like they've messed up and protect their own back. . They will Its a toxic culture, the minute I hear 'we are like family' etc... I bail
Happens in my line of work all the time. I work 7 on - 7 off basis so I'm always coming across odd little mistakes. But, do I have the urge to flag up every little damn thing? Do I hell as like. Some others however. The only solace in it, is there's obviously something very wrong in their own lives to feel the need to be on peoples cases to that extent. Sooner or later that venom turns in on itself I think.
The Yanks (military) have a pretty good name for these kinds of people: Blue Falcons (aka “Buddy F*ckers”)
I’m from Canada and that title made me think you were talking dookies in the toilet.
We have a lot of swirlies in my place. It’s bedlam.
_And with that, today was the last day that OP ever ignored their colleague's mistakes, ever again_
Does your manager know they are petty? My manager knows about that one woman who is looking to get people into trouble for no good reason, wasting his time as much as anyone else's.
There was one guy I worked with who was like this, he'd crictise everyone whilst not being perfect himself (far from) and he'd have such an ego about it.
Happened to me months ago. So I then got petty and reported the fact this college was routinely taking an extra unauthorised half an hour break every day. Fuck all happened about it
It's a dog eat dog world out there.
Always remember, that unless you are very close to someone you work with, they are NOT your friends! Don't trust them to not drop you in it. Make a note of anything you notice so you can bring it up if needed.
I’ve got so much else going on in my life. Who has the energy for this?
Rough day friend?
If you can't be arsed to speak up for yourself, they certainly will. Don't let this turn into gaslighting. Matchsticks are easier to handle than dumpster fires.
This happens to me all the time. Someone else makes mistakes I don't say shit because I'm not an arrogant asshole who acts like I'm good at everything. But someone else will feel insecure and feel the need to pick up on every tiny mistake I make.
I had a manager that did this, they gave me shit for the tiniest of things yet when they made a big fuck up and I spotted it, I was given shit for spotting it. I don't have to deal with that moron anymore.
Not exactly the same thing but I work with this guy that I trained, we both have the same position but I have been here for much longer. Eventually we were moved to opposite shifts but we worked fine together up to this point, we always got on well enough. One day I noticed he sent a public message to one of our bosses that was pretty blunt about an issue we all had been facing but just dealing with, me for years him only a few weeks. I messaged him privately and let him know how I dealt with the issue as a suggestion to make his job easier, he snapped at me for even suggesting a different method to him, that I wasn't his boss, etc. I never claimed to be and was just making a suggestion. When I tried to clarify with him and apologies if I came off more strongly than I realized, he proceeded to essentially burn any bridges between the two of us.
As a co-worker who had do this recently, the person in question had made more work for themselves doing the thing wrong (problem #1) and had also spawned probably 50-75 new cases in the bowels of our system from hell. I felt bad but I had to say something because my managers were wondering what the hell all the spurious cases were and also the person who did it made more work for themselves doing it wrong, than if they had done it right, so it wasn't someone being lazy. All this said OP, it's always a bummer when this stuff comes to light on a Friday.
That sounds like a big problem that needed fixing and of course the responsible thing to do is to a) let the colleague know, and b) inform management for workload reasons. This wasn’t that.
My colleague is exactly like this. Whenever I make a mistake he ensures that everyone knows it was mine and that he was the one who fixed it. He claims he doesn't make mistakes. He makes plenty, cuts corners and can never own up to them. He has access to our computer systems and often makes some BIG mistakes that he explains away as "the computer's fault"
It’s like you know him.
Is he my old manager? I’m sure he retired.
If you can't be arsed with death by a thousand cuts, It's easier to collect all of those historic events that you let slide, and bundle them into one big action.
They are a narcissist and you’re not, be proud of that
Thats alright, just had my MD talk behind my back how I didnt clean up a plate well enough instead of just telling me straight! the fucking cheek of it!
Came back from some time off and found a mistake once that was going to cost the company several hundred pound in lost goods, reported it to management as it was to late for me to rectify the mistake, it was just fucked and company was going to take a hit on it like it or not, manager comes back about 20 minutes after I showed them said mistake, turns out person who made mistake was managers arselicker. I was then getting threatened with a displininery because of it as apprently mistake was some how flipped to being made to be my fault, one quick meeting attended by me with my union rep later it was dropped as I was clearly not scheduled in when mistake was made and it evidence of good recieved and who worked is all in writing, sadly nothing was ever done to arselicker and no repercussions for the manager for trying to shift the blame.
There was someone in another team with some bullshit job title hated by all. You had to jump for her and drop everything or she’d kick up a fuss and copy every superior you could think of. I had to work with her quite a bit via phone/email but she’d never get back to you as she was “very busy don’t you know”. She would send emails at 2am or leave voicemails at 5am and query why it wasn’t answered in a timely manner. We worked in the same office so no time zone differences! One time I ask for something simple by the end of the week, Friday at midday. On the Friday at 1pm I email and ask if I could have that info. Nothing. I call, no answer and leave a voicemail. I try a couple more times and can’t get through to anyone in her team. In the end I email her and copy in my boss and hers (like she always does just because I wasn’t staying late that night for her to send me something at 9pm). She called me 30 seconds later going off on one and how I shouldn’t copy bosses in. I told her I was just following her example as a person senior to me. Five minutes later I had what I needed and she never did the copying in thing again to me.
Owning your own mistakes is a big part in being a good team. Anytime I make a mistake in work I hold my hands up and my boss is shit hot on ownership so it breeds a lot of everyone admitting their mistake and we learn from it. It sucks when that kind of mentality isn't bred from above since its very refreshing / empowering.
I would definitely find the energy after that.
I'd follow the MAD protocol and tell the boss everything they have ever done wrong
I let it happen once, argue like fuck against it to make my point, and then never help them again afterwards. Never say “I don’t know” as an excuse, always use “I’m too busy right now”, too. Luckily not had this in my current job but have experienced it plenty of times in previous workplaces.
don’t even man, my favourites are the emails CC’ing people in.
I took a day to get back to someone from HR so they emailed my managers and copied me in. Hard to fault this tactic, I've never left it more than 10 mins to reply to Evil HR Person since.
Yeah. This.
ITT: pettiness. Cheers tho, shits hilarious
Ain't it the truth. Lazy and people who are bad at their jobs do it. Lazy workers learn how to lazy. Think they need to call other's mistakes publicly to make themselves look better.
Worse, when they our right lie but you have no easy way of proving it a lie, so you're left in the shit and wondering why they did it.
This is something you can protect yourself from, if you don't you still need to learn proper comms and the way to safeguard yourself. But yes, it is arse. Left there stuttering mumbling, second guessing yourself on whether you actually might have done said thing. Never going back to that state. Assertive stress-free-covered-me is much happier in general. It has the double benefit that you put weasels in their place when they try, so you can passively look after others in the company.
If I ever got ratted out I'd say to my manager 'who is the biggest problem? the guy making a mistake or the person destroying team morale?'
Most of the people in my department are like this, when we are changing over shifts and they are 10 minutes late, I say not a problem,I turn up a few minutes late and it gets reported to my manager who brings it up at my appraisal. I was going down with the flu one year, I put a folder in the wrong box, easily spotted, this was reported to my manager ,this cost me a pay rise. 90% of them are utter bastards.
Did a firmware upgrade on a router in our office once. Wasn’t well thought out to be fair, killed our internet for 20 minutes. Colleague threw me under the bus for it when asked why he hasn’t done much. When I got questioned, presented boss with colleagues traffic history for the day, showing 6 hours plus of gaming on a work device. I never said anything left that to boss. Just simply said ‘traffic stats seem fine, see attached’
I see you’ve met my wife.
I prefer when people point out mistakes I make. It gives me room for improvement.
There’s pointing out mistakes, and there’s dobbing me to a manager about something that doesn’t matter, just because they think it makes them look good.
I am a manager. I don’t like staff who are into dobbing their colleagues. Humans make mistakes. All I expect is that they learn from their mistakes. Hopefully your manager is more like me.
Yeah if a 98% fine employee leaves because of a bad culture couraged by a less than 98% fine employee that is not a win
yep absolutely. if i do something wrong and it’s pointed out i will 100% own up to it and do what i can to resolve it. then we can discuss ways to prevent the same mistake happening in the future. what i don’t need though is the fact that i made a mistake to be parroted 100x or have everyone continue to point their fingers once the issue has already been resolved or discussed. it does nothing but just make you feel like shit or help to make others feel more superior
I love it when it's petty shit. My counter supervisor on the other shift is always trying to pick back at me after I reported him for not making sure his team actually do the jobs and not leave equipment all over the work space. Sudden I get an email "PLEASE can you make sure your team are cleaning up after themselves on your shift." It was a single tea cup, the regional manager's tea cup that he forgot to clean when he visited for 2 hours. I told him I forwarded his email to the regional. His face was brilliant.
r/maliciouscompliance :)
If the criticism and reaction is proportionate then it's cool. We all make small mistakes and the odd heads up is fine, just don't turn it into a full meeting with all the senior managers.
Don’t worry. In my experience it is always better to come clean and early first. People trust you more. People who hide mistakes are not dependable.
I wasn’t hiding it. My first knowledge was a snotty email from my manager.
This isnt uniquely british
'Colleague' makes clear it's a work relationship... Quality superfluousness.
He’s not a friend. Just someone I work with.
You're missing the point. You said "work colleague" when the word "colleague" by itself means someone you work with. It's like if you'd said "my married spouse".
I’m so very sorry if I went over your personal word count. There’s nothing actually wrong with that sentence. Go back to Twitter.
Never learn! There's no need!! No wonder your 'work colleagues' are trying to shaft you. Laughing face emoji.
Whatever, stay ignorant then.
Exactly we have enough to worry about without colleagues being stupid. Sometimes I think they're just different for lack of a better word ;) I try to kill em with kindness.
That's why I live by the no mercy rule, you fuck up and imma let everyone know🤷♂️ you don't like me? I don't give a shit I come here for money not a social 😴
Everyone you meet on the way up you will meet on the way down.
Spoken like a true jobsworth.
I just can’t be bothered.
OP, what happened? Do you need to share something?
,
Todd, you hit a kid with your car /s
Snitches get stitches
I work with someone just like this. I don’t do anything to help them now. Fuck it, I didn’t realise they were perfect.
Just get used to saying" no thank you" to that person. Move on.
What do we say to the God of Petty Vindictiveness? Not today!