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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Poolofcheddar on 2024-10-10 16:04:21+00:00.

We had this coworker on our team. The best way to describe him is to use a Homer Simpson line: “everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I’m around.” Projects given to him usually were: not completed correctly, not entirely completed, or not even worked on at all. 

He violated security protocols, gave out equipment to other departments, and would occasionally disappear for hours. He would always have someone else to blame for his problems: contractors, staff in other departments, but the last straw for the rest of us was when he tried to throw his own team under the bus.

We all knew he was skating by because we’d fix his mistakes to keep everything else running. And admittedly, it’s hard to get fired from a state job. But after blaming us and having to hear about it? That was the last straw.

So the rest of us on the team stopped helping him, and we stopped fixing his mistakes. He wasn’t making obvious mistakes before. Now they were obvious.

The mistakes were piling up - and fast. We would collaborate with him only down to the bare minimum. He had no reason to blame us if our contributions to a project were completed and his weren’t. 

And then came the kiss of death: he took a week off. With him not around, everything that piled up started getting completed by the rest of us. New tasks were completed on top of that, and on time. Even my boss could not ignore the simple fact that the place ran smoother without him around. After he returned, everything started piling back up again.

So we came into work a couple weeks ago and it was announced that he had “left the organization.” Not one person was surprised. The thing that amazes me about this whole thing is that nobody coordinated it. None of us hatched a plan. We all just individually decided that enough was enough. You wanted obvious? You got it. 

It is impressive how much it takes to get fired for some people. My last two jobs both featured a teammate who essentially collected a paycheck and did nothing in return. At least my manager here had the balls to do what was needed. It’s also amazing that in the end, there’s less work to do with him gone because tasks don’t need to be done twice anymore.