useless employees..

edward_scissorhands

edward_scissorhands

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have you ever had an employee that was so useless that you often times give them Busy Work just to keep them occupied? You then let the competent employees do the real work. It's great because usually the useless incompetent workers are too stupid to realize they are doing Busy Work, LOL.

you could just give them nothing to do but then they would feel trivialized and find a way to "help", that usually means messing something up..
 
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The closest thing I've ever had to an employee was a sort-of-intern. I was training them to handle part of the photo-related workload I have and I considered hiring them, but finding people who can concentrate for more than 5 minutes on the task at hand instead of chit-chatting and staring at a tiny screen to check their silly social media profiles is difficult.
 
edward_scissorhands said:
have you ever had an employee that was so useless that you often times give them Busy Work just keep them occupied? You then let the competent employees do the real work. Works out great because usually the useless incompetent workers are too stupid to realize they are doing Busy Work, LOL.

you could just give them nothing to do but then they would feel trivialized and find a way to "help", that usually means messing something up..
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Wouldn't last very long. If you have to give them Busy Work, show them the door...
 
kickthat said:
Wouldn't last very long. If you have to give them Busy Work, show them the door...
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what if you're not the main boss and the main boss likes them and disagrees that they are incompetent. what if the person is a relative of your boss, what if its your relative etc. There are incompetent workers in every company and you dont always have the liberty to fire people at will. what if the company has a union and long drawn out procedures for letting someone go. what if the employee has been with the company long enough to receive Severance pay and your company is having cash flow problems? what if the employee is aware of sec violations your company was involved in..
 
Ha, fair points. Firstly from the general tone of your original post I assumed you were talking from the point of being the person in ultimate charge!

I get that there are likely to be some issues and that workers have rights. However, if someone is so utterly useless that you can't trust them to do the job that are being paid to do, if I were in charge, I would do whatever I could to start the process of letting them go. Rather that than have an expensive paperweight.

Granted though, it could be difficult under some circumstances.
 
kickthat said:
Ha, fair points. Firstly from the general tone of your original post I assumed you were talking from the point of being the person in ultimate charge!

I get that there are likely to be some issues and that workers have rights. However, if someone is so utterly useless that you can't trust them to do the job that are being paid to do, if I were in charge, I would do whatever I could to start the process of letting them go. Rather that than have an expensive paperweight.

Granted though, it could be difficult under some circumstances.
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expensive paper weight.. lol i like that.

how can they be so stupid to not realize that they are doing Busy Work?
 
Cause they're incompetent ;)
Or maybe they know but don't care.
The other possible way around the issue without just firing them would be training, or retraining. Perhaps they don't do the job well because they need more education on how to do it.
 
kickthat said:
Cause they're incompetent ;)
Or maybe they know but don't care.
The other possible way around the issue without just firing them would be training, or retraining. Perhaps they don't do the job well because they need more education on how to do it.
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idk about that even little kids know when the teacher gives them busy work. maybe they are just mindless zombies who cant think for themselves. once you explain it to them, then they understand.
some ppl are just stupid bro
 
I don't know. I have worked as an employee at a company where other employees basically did no work if they thought they could get away with it. They'd be quite happy doing busy work, even if they knew that's what it was, because it's generally easier than doing the actual work. Lazy, rather than stupid.
 
Maybe they are happy doing work like that to help the hours tick by. Not everyone is ambitious. Most people seem to just live for the weekend or paycheck to paycheck. I highly doubt those types give a fk as long as you pay them.
 
michaelr1988 said:
Maybe they are happy doing work like that to help the hours tick by. Not everyone is ambitious. Most people seem to just live for the weekend or paycheck to paycheck. I highly doubt those types give a fk as long as you pay them.
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they are happy doing Busy Work?

so their boss knows they are too stupid to do anything right and they are ok with basically being seen as a useless idiot?

lol, ok. oh yeah and when the company finally does apply occams razor, out the door they go. then they go to get a job somewhere else...

interviewer: "so explain to me a little bit about what you were in charge of at xyz company "

drone#268452: " oh, i usually made sure that my bosses office was clean and i proofread all his emails for mistakes. Also i kept things full like the printer and other things"

interviewer: "Wow, that must have really kept you busy, eye roll." "we'll call you.."
 
edward_scissorhands said:
have you ever had an employee that was so useless that you often times give them Busy Work just to keep them occupied?
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When I started my current gig, I had a totally useless employee doing this for whole two years before I could get rid of him. Always snuck out at least 30 minutes early and often was gone 2 hours early. His wife was BFFs with my business partner's wife so I could get rid of him right away, even as I was being the grim reaper getting rid of people who were just showing up to collect a paycheck.
 
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kickthat said:
Wouldn't last very long. If you have to give them Busy Work, show them the door...
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There's value for someone doing the "not that difficult stuff that you can train someone off the streets in an hour to do" kind of stuff well and without complaint, since not everyone can be super efficient geniuses. I think founder of Mitsubishi said something like "Those of you who think, you must out think the competition. Those of you that can work, you must out work the competition. Those of you can can't do either, you must quietly leave the company."
 
Been there - twice. The first guy was a temporary employee so I had to deal with him for 90 days to show he was incompetent in order to get rid of him. Every day I had to make a to do list for him and he would check the things off as he did them. He shouldn't have needed that type of guidance because we were a company regulated by the FDA so everything was proceduralized.. he just needed to read the damn documents.
The second one was at another job and she insisted that we ran a bait and switch on her she wanted to be a developer and I needed a business analyst. She took the job and complained the whole time about every last thing. Again everything was in procedures so when she complained I said go ahead and re write the procedure and we can adjust it -you know continuous improvement. Once I challenged her to actually demonstrate that she had all these skills she claimed, she clammed up pretty quick.
I feel your pain - it sucks.
 
toml3030 said:
There's value for someone doing the "not that difficult stuff that you can train someone off the streets in an hour to do" kind of stuff well and without complaint, since not everyone can be super efficient geniuses. I think founder of Mitsubishi said something like "Those of you who think, you must out think the competition. Those of you that can work, you must out work the competition. Those of you can can't do either, you must quietly leave the company."
Click to expand...

It depends how you define 'busy work' that the OP describes. I took it to mean literally work designed to keep someone busy - as in work that basically doesn't exist, but you're giving to someone for the sake of just giving them something to do. In which case, it's pointless work.

I agree that there is value in someone who can do easy stuff that does need doing.
 
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