Arse...
Not his real name, but definitely his real nature. When I first started my current job I inherited him as the sole person under my charge, though he is at least 20 years older than me and I had no management experience. It all started off well enough, but as time passed I realised why I was managing him - no-one else wanted him. He worked part-time, earned about £10K a year while doing serial degree courses he never finished, and lived with his parents though he must have been approaching 50.

So I work in the public sector. Arse had been there longer than anyone else in the office and was the biggest jobsworth I've ever known. In this sector, an employee who knows the exact limits of what they can legally get away with has a huge advantage over those higher up the line; the opposite to most places, I know. This definitely applied in his case. To him everyone in the office was divided into people he liked and those he didn't. Membership of the latter list could be gained by simply being friendly with / sitting near to someone else already on it. He also suffered delusions that people were making threats to him in the office despite the fact that this couldn't have happened without someone else overhearing - didn't stop him complaining about people but he always stopped just short of putting in an official complaint. Still, he got a lot of people bollocked for something they didn't do.

His exploits included:
1) Driving both my predecessor and one other person out of their jobs by a long-standing and persistent campaign including him accusing them of bullying. This was all to do with his own delusions.
2) He was the reception for the office among other things, and frequently refused to acknowledge visitors coming to meet with people he didn't like.
3) He would frequently corner people he didn't like in the lift, when there were no witnesses, and seriously intimidate them, telling them "I fucking hate you" and suchlike. Once when challenged on this point he insisted that he didn't remember what he'd said.
4) He was on a one-year contract and always insisted he'd leave when it expired, then simply didn't. Unfortunately the rules of the institution meant he could say this as many times as he wanted but it didn't mean a thing as long as he didn't put anything in writing. As a result, he was "about to leave" for about 4 years and therefore his problematic behaviours were tolerated as it was easier to let him leave than to sort him out - though he then didn't leave.
5) When he decided I was persona non grata after about 2 years, he refused to do anything other than the minimum duties he could get away with on the grounds that "it's not on my job description". When I finally managed to get hold of a copy of said JD, it transpired that there was a clause which said "and any duties commesurate with the post" so he couldn't use that one anymore.
6) He'd stalked at least 3 members of staff to their houses (always blonde females) having illegaly obtained their addresses from documents he was processing on thier behalf.

Finally we got rid of him after a repeated series of increasingly urgent meetings with our top bosses. They essentially had to make the post redundant at the end of his contract. Ironically it was his refusal to either go full time or perform any additional responsibilities than those on his job description that sealed his fate. I wish I'd got to write his reference... Anyway, now I have several persons in my staff, all of whom are fantastic and utterly professional, so it all worked out OK in the end. Tara Arse, may your, erm, arse never darken our door again (in fact, since we passed his ID and photo to the security in our building with specific instructions to deny him access, particularly as he is exactly the kind of person who might turn up one day with a shotgun, I doubt it will...)
(rampants, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 15:27, Reply)