15 Co-Workers Who Prove Job Security Isn’t Related to Job Performance

Many of us at least once looked at a co-worker and wondered, “How are you still here?”. Here are 15 people who still manage to keep their jobs, despite their questionable performance.

1. Nurse, really!

When I worked in the nursing home laundry room, my co-worker literally refused to do the job she was hired for — she actually told the supervisor she wasn’t going to do it. Not just that, but she didn’t do anything else, either.

She spent more time on the porch than in the laundry room. She drove her friends home while she was on the clock. She refused to pick up the soiled laundry more than once or twice per shift, even though she was supposed to pick it up four or five times. People would tell me that they didn’t see her for hours at a time, and quite often questioned whether she was actually there or not.

She was also working in the nursing home kitchen and would leave the laundry room to go work in the kitchen, because they paid her more to work in the kitchen. Even after she was told (multiple times) to change into clean scrubs before going in the kitchen, she would still wear the scrubs she had on while working in the laundry room, then go into the kitchen to prepare food.

This woman got the same evaluation score that I got and the same raise that I got, even though I was doing 99% of the work. © rosesforthemonsters / Reddit

2. Field fights

Hired a friend of the COO to be a field engineer. He gets in a fight with a customer and we lose the customer. He gets promoted to product management.

We have a (different) customer meeting, and he tells the customer they aren’t the smartest for how they want to use our product. We lose another customer.

He gets promoted to director of QA. Another company hires him away to become CTO, and they go out of business. © islandsimian / Reddit

3. A $300 million miscalculation

Worked for a company that tested soil samples for mining companies. Each test had to be given 0.002 (within .0001) of a gram of a white substance (can’t remember what it was called).

So the company wins a massive contract and there is a lot of work to be done, too much for the lab, so they start falling behind. The manager/accountant tells everyone that to speed things up, you are to put 0.02 (within 0.005) of a gram instead. But the results all come back wrong, and the mining company wastes $300m mining for copper that wasn’t there, and successfully sues us.

300 people lost their job, which was 50% of the companies work force. The manager who made the bad call didn’t lose his job, as he denied he told everyone to make the gram change, even though there were about 30 witnesses who said he told them directly. © Captain_Coco_Koala / Pexels

4. Sleeping on duty

Sleeping on the job. Sleeping within half an hour of arrival, mid-morning nap until lunch, afternoon napping. Sleeping through closing time and left sitting to wake up hours after everyone leaves (people drive by and report the car is still in the parking lot two-three hours after closing.)

False documentation that things were done that weren’t, because of sleeping. Missing documentation of things that were done, but forgot about, because of sleeping. Promises to customers with no delivery because they fall asleep after the conversation. © moot17 / Reddit

5. No privacy

[edited] My boss has zero boundaries. He shows up to employees’ homes if he can’t reach their phone or email. Once, he even called an employee who was on maternity leave just because he couldn’t create a simple presentation.

Yesterday, though, he really crossed the line when he made me call a co-worker on her way to her mother’s funeral, and another time he went to a guy’s hospital room. It was insane and HR just ignored him. © remberzz / Reddit

6. Sick Frank

Frank. No one knew how Frank kept his job. Frank and I were both in tech support — fairly low level, but at least it was internal tech support rather than customers.

Frank took either Monday or Friday off, every single week. He’d call in sick. Sometimes he’d take both. We didn’t have anywhere near that much PTO or sick days, but he never got in trouble for it. Not clear if they were all paid days off or if they just gave him unpaid PTO after a while — but we assumed paid since nothing was ever mentioned, and he never stopped calling in sick.

You’d think it was nepotism or cronyism keeping him employed, but we never saw any evidence of that, and honestly he’d probably have a cushier job if that was the case. Baffling. © Niloc0 / Reddit

7. The contract

I worked in retail under a manager who always made us feel like she had our backs. She talked about raises and new job titles. One day, she handed us contracts. Official-looking with everything she’d promised. We gladly signed.

When we had a meeting with the owner, we mentioned it to him. His face turned to a puzzled expression. He didn’t have a clue what we were talking about, told us it was all complete lies. The raises we were promised weren’t coming.

We didn’t have copies of the contracts, so we had nothing to back us up. She quit out of shame about a week later. © Artie-Fufkin / Reddit

8. Gone

He literally disappeared overseas for six months, then reappeared as if nothing happened.

It was a very small company, and I kept getting asked by management where he was and if I’d heard from him. © Knittingtaco / Reddit

9. Not-so-emergency services

911 operator. One of those jobs where there is very little margin of error, and people who call are very distressed. Worked with a guy who took the job far too lightly. I used to hate sitting near him because I knew he’d mess up, and I didn’t want to be in his path.

He would eat apples on the phone, which was very loud and obnoxious to anybody listening, and very disrespectful. We were told never to tell somebody to “calm down” but to be careful with your language when it came to caller control.

Like instead of “calm down,” you might say, “I understand you’re very upset right now, but I need to ask you a few important questions so I can get you some help, okay?”
He’d just loudly go, “Ma’am, calm down! Calm down, okay?!”

However, the biggest sin of all (and one he got spoken to about) was that when you went on your break, you had to log off your phone, otherwise calls will come through to an empty desk. Guess who didn’t do that? And a serious call came through to nobody. I left after a short while, knowing the job wasn’t for me. He was still there. I hope he improved or got fired. ©lazarus870 / Reddit

10. Kids in the kitchen

I used to work at a submarine sandwich restaurant. At first, my colleague was fine. Had a tougher personality, but she took great pride in her job.

Then she would bring her kids to work and let them play in the kitchen while we were working and while we were closing. Not only is that a health hazard, but also there are knives and slicers in that kitchen, and we’re talking about a 4-year-old.

She got fired at one point for leaving in the middle of the shift or something, but turns out she just got transferred, then transferred back to our store about a month later. © Count-Spatula2023 / Reddit

11. Out of office... and country

I’m a teacher. Years ago, the French teacher at our school called in sick, from France (I live in New Jersey). He didn’t realize they had caller ID.

It was so hard to find French teachers at the time around here that he wasn’t even disciplined, let alone fired. © Ldwieg / Reddit

12. The office is missing.

I worked with this guy who swiped lunches from fellow colleagues. Then other daily office supplies. We noticed, of course, but nobody had the heart to confront him and despite his sticky fingers, he’s good at his job.

Once, we walked into the office and found the fridge had vanished, chairs from the conference room, and some ceiling tiles from the bathroom were missing. The CCTV footage wasn’t very clear, but the guy in the footage resembled his build. HR sent out some emails, but no real action was taken.

So the floor staff adopted a new rule to never leave anything unattended. His office haul continues to grow weekly, and he’s not only still employed— he’s also in line for a promotion.

13. The online shopper

My co-worker barely does anything all day. Everyone sees it too. Even the boss. Yet she’s still employed, and it’s baffling. She will sit and text and browse on her phone for at least half the day’s worth of time, so like over an 8-hour period she probably spends 4 on her phone.

She also sits at her desk and talks to her mom and children on FaceTime, which is disruptive to the rest of us. When you ask her to do anything 9 times out of 10 she’ll cop an attitude. And of course after spending most of the day doing nothing, she complains she’s so behind.

The new girl took pity on her complaining and took work from her, but then later on when she walked past her desk and saw her shopping on the work computer — what a slap in the face. So yeah, it’s extremely hard for me to understand how she’s still employed. I just don’t get it. © Dangerous-Argument10 / Reddit

14. Un-fireable

Have to deal with this one guy at work, who has kept his job for 2 years, despite being written up around 5 times, 3 of which were for refusing to do his job, and 2 for being caught sleeping on the job.

Not only does he get away with it, he openly brags about being “un-fireable.” © Open-Resist-4740 / Reddit

15. Sleepy healthcare worker

I recently got hired into a healthcare role, and every new hire is required to attend 6 full days of orientation. They do this in groups, so all my new co-workers were in the orientation with me.

There’s one woman in the group who, and I am not exaggerating, has slept through every single day of orientation. She shows up late every morning, and is always late returning from lunch. When she isn’t asleep, she just wanders out of the room for 30 minutes at a time.

I have ADHD, and I know it can be hard for some people to focus, but this orientation material is critical to our ability to perform our jobs. Again, we work in healthcare. People’s wellbeing is literally in our hands, and it’s our obligation to take that seriously. © Tasty-Somewhere2369 / Reddit

We can’t live without the office drama. Here are more office antics that left us amazed.