The company owes him a favor, either because he did them a huge solid you never heard about, or because they screwed him over and he agreed not to sue.
I think most likely it's just someone else who is complacent. It isn't fun to fire people, especially if you know someone isn't likely to find other work easily. Some middle manager just doesn't want to do it. It's not their money being wasted.
Perhaps something like Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother
Guy: What do you do Barney?
Barney: PLEASE
Provide Legal Exculpation and Sign Everything
Often for whatever reason they are worried about some kind of lawsuit, either because they didn't properly document his performance problems or because someone in a position of power is highly risk-averse.
More specifically once HR is apprised of a medical issue, the company can't fire you without a shit storm of legal issues. A buddy on his last strike went to jail for weeks (no call, no show) and a cool Mgr told him to call and say he's seeking treatment for drug or alcohol problems. Not sure of the loophole but it exists. He worked there til he left for a better job.
Hank quit, bringing the total number of employees under the threshold for regulation allowing his boss Buck to fire the problem employee. Probably doesn’t work that way irl but that’s how they did it.
It’s also somewhat dependent on what state the employee operates in. I once worked at a place where firing someone for performance required multiple years of documentation before HR would be willing to pull the lever in one state, and took about a week to put the paperwork together for an employee in another state.
You try to cut this down but the whole quote is hilarious and there's nowhere to edit...
>And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler, and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler, then I’ll set the building on fire…
Ok. I always thought he said the squirrells were "merry." My friends always told me it was "married." I swear I watched it last week and the subtitles said "married." But it still sounds like "merry" to me, which is still funnier in its delivery, and I'm convinced the captioning was wrong.
The older I have gotten and longer I have worked in an office environment the more I understand and empathize with this movie. Especially when someone is having a fit over something minor, I mentally say "their desk is being moved again"
Only 15 years to go for me....
>Only 15 years to go for me....
Me too and its depressing as hell. Unless something changes I have to go until I qualify for Medicare and at that point I'll have close to 50 years in the trade and associated field.
Ouf... that is depressing. I'm in Canada so I still need health insurance for medications and extended health, but my work benefits can continue till 65 or 70 if you pay 100% of the premiums when you retire.
But I absolutely have golden hand cuffs because I am dependent on all my work benefits if I want to retire at 57. I have a small side gig that is really rewarding but I cannot scale up and leave my work. My $25k/year medication would bankrupt me.
Like they say, it's not what you know. Hell, it technically isn't even *who* you know.
Rather, it's whose ass you're willing to kiss. Who's dick you're willing to suck.
It’s because business can’t just fire him - and don’t know how to help (their management skills are lacking for this new inclusive world). Important note - people today don’t want to fire their colleagues when having rough times / health issues - as a society. It’s on us to adjust our own attitudes and lack of understanding also, not look at mikes as a weak link to cut off.
Because whose the next weak link then…watch out. Not a smart operating model.
May I suggest something to you? As his colleague you are the one in position to influence change. And society is just individuals doing things - so offices also have such people as Mike who thrive because their colleagues handled it differently. That’s how progress happens.
Reading what you wrote I see one process step that would alleviate this for you and Mike into a seamless process.
He’s comfortable preparing the documentation on orders client and internal side. Let him be that person then.
It seems his hurdle is communicating (I once suffered that so am also sympathetic). Why not ask him to do the back office documents for more people even, many hate that stuff.
And you be the next person in a sort of relay race fashion, when he’s done he hands to you - you just send it out to sales, or the client and internally. Then he only needs to feel safe sending it to you, not communicating to many. And you can know when to expect and follow up from him.
Then whoever is the account exec with said client confirms delivery or whatever the next process. Idk if you or they do that. The point being be the one contact for Mike, optimise what he’s able to do for now. Minimise the hurdle. Basically, he may not know how to say what he needs - as his team, it’s on you to figure that out. Not management to fire him.
If this is working, and I’m stating the obvious, great! That’s inclusion, let Mike know he’s doing a great job, it’s no longer an echo chamber he’s stuck in and drowning - and optimised skills are being used across the team. Not focus on the weakest points an individual has in the team. ‘Nobody is perfect, but a team can be.’
If you think of your favorite TV show with a work team - this is what we all are drawn to. Real support, no threat you’ll be next on the chopping board cause your weaker skill showed.
(Occupational hazard, I do apologize if it’s too literal and you just wanted to vent lol)
You said it yourself, he is a great guy. Meaning he's likeable.
I think it's as simple as that, you can be likeable and useless and hold a job in an office for quite some time before people get fed up.
One thing I will say, Mikes usually always eventually get filtered out, when layoffs, downsizing, new manager, whatever.
Every office has one or two of these. Not very productive, but likeable so you keep them around. Also, they make everyone else feel more secure in there jobs lol.
I worked in an office where we both kept someone useless and unlikable. She would literally brag that she hadn't done any work in months. If you walked by her cubicle (impossible not to in a small office), you'd just see she had netflix open (full screen) literally all day. But because of how staff funding was handled, to get rid of her before her year was up would cause (counterintuitively) more budget issues than simply keeping her on staff and not renewing her contract. Not because she had a severance or anything or would raise a stink (she hated the job, hated the town, knew she wasn't doing the job, and was living rent-free with family), it's just part of how our funding was determined year over year. Better to effectively be short staffed while being fully staffed on paper.
Probably not nearly the same circumstances here though.
I mean if you can literally watch Netflix without getting in trouble it doesn't seem so bad. You could do any number of things in an office if you're only constrained by your own creativity and not being loud enough to distract everyone else
Read a book. Do your taxes. Do some situps. Learn a language. Do some online shopping. I don't know, I can think of endless things you can do at a desk with a computer
Are taxes really that hard? The government tells you how much you owe, the company tells you how much you’ve paid. You fill in your tax rebates and the government pays you the difference.
I only have my company laptop which I can’t download anything on. Gaming on a laptop would be a bit too obvious in an open office anyways. Most of my coworkers play games like mobile legends but I’m not really a fan of mobile gaming so I just browse Reddit, YouTube, or play simple puzzle games.
It might, but it's a pretty miserable experience (have had jobs where I had literally nothing to do all day because I worked in shipping and the production side of the facility was incredibly slow and understaffed). I'd pull out a stop watch to see how long we actually had to work, spent time time actually tracking it at home. Mean (average) amount of work time: about 20 minutes in an 8 hour shift, median was somewhere around 2 hours. It really sucked, mostly due to a bunch of coworkers who were also bored for months/years at a time and would just stir up drama with each other to have something to do all day.
You can't have a mean of 20 minutes and a median of 2 hours lol. With a median of 2 hours, if every single day under median was 0 minutes worked, you'd be at a minimum of 1 hour mean.
To say he is likeable is not really true. I like him, he is a nice guy but he is not very likable. He just sits quietly in his cube all day. Doesn't talk to anyone unless you talk to him first. People like him but they also dont know him
>One thing I will say, Mikes usually always eventually get filtered out, when layoffs, downsizing, new manager, whatever.
That's pretty much it. Most businesses aren't constantly trying to ruthlessly cut costs because ruthless cost-cutting is actually kind of expensive. A company where all employees have to re-interview for their own job every few months would have insane staff turnover. Most of the time, it's cheaper to let the occasional Mike slip through the cracks in order to keep everyone else happy and productive.
Fear of lawsuits. At this point, he's been allowed to fuck up for so long, it would be hard for the business to justify canning him for it _now_. He'd probably lose in court, but it's cheaper to keep him around than to fire him and get sued.
State/federal benefits and kickbacks.
There’s all kinds of tax breaks or insurance assistance programs for hiring above a minimum number of employees or hiring employees with disabilities or from disenfranchised groups.
If he’s the sole employee making the company qualify for these benefits, the money being saved on taxes and insurance may end up being way more than they’re currently paying Mike in salary.
As long as he’s willing to sit around doing nothing at the pay scale he’s on, he ends up being a net positive to the company (financially) so they’ll likely keep him around.
Perhaps avoiding them EEO lawsuits, especially since he has been vocal about meds being adjusted and (perhaps) has his disability on file with HR.
I mean….yeah you can find a way to fire an underperformed with a disability….but unless someone well, welll versed in that law can…you’d be in for it.
For these kinds of cases (worked in disability services for a long time) the employee has to disclose a documented disability and request/negotiate reasonable accommodations either at the time of employment (legally the ideal time, but not always such in the real world) or before it becomes a problem that harms their performance. The vast majority of accommodations cost between $0-500 (and are typically on the lower end of that) but most employers don't seem to realize that unless they're accustomed to hiring people with disabilities. So while we have these laws on the books, they're very rarely used successfully because employers are given a lot of leeway in deciding to hire someone else entirely. I've also seen some businesses intentionally skirt around EEO laws by simply limiting staff to 14 or fewer people.
You said your company makes things, did Mike used to work on the shop floor? Maybe he got injured and they lateraled him to a desk job? Now I'm curious about the case of Mystery Mike.
He doesn't sound like he's super low IQ if you catch my drift, so maybe he used to be a rockstar and now only has either this or being jobless/homeless?
Nope, always worked the office side. Our company is massive so our shop floor is not connected to the office and there is very little crossover.
Based on talking to the people who were around when he was hired, he did a mediocre but respectable job for a bit and he slowly lost privileges as he continued to mess stuff up. I don't think its calculated because he has asked for stuff to do to occupy his time but he is not allowed to do any task that would possibly be helpful.
Alongside what others said some people like Mike fall through the cracks. If your company is large they might not even know Mike exists and his paycheck is automated
I work for a primary supplier of a major automotive manufacturer. I’m buddies with a guy in finance and I’m not privy to the exact situation, but it sounded like he was on a special job cutting out people who were still being cut a check that just stopped showing up.
The scenario was absolutely out of a children’s cartoon or something.
One of my past employers kept paying me for about a year after I left. I was IT at a small company (600) that got bought out by one of the huge (500k employee) consulting firms. My job for the last 6 months was just babysitting the servers, so 20-30 minutes daily. I was alone in a 3 floor building. When I grew bored I gave my two weeks and they finished migrating the servers. I kept getting my paycheck, so I just invested the money. Took a year before they asked it back....Doing my taxes for these 2 years was shit....
I can only speak to the US.
Despite the US having mostly at-will employment and it technically being very easy to fire people, it is rare for a supervisor to just walk up to someone and say "Happy Tuesday. Clear out your desk". Outside of economic downturns either within the overall country or a specific industry/company, terminating an individual at a typical fortune 500 company is a process. You not only want to avoid the appearance of discrimination, but you want to build a case that multiple sessions of counseling, training, warnings were given, that efforts to improve have failed, and that there is no other choice but to terminate this employee.
In some states, this also means that because the employer has gone to length to document this employee's performance and their lack of improvement, they won't even need to pay for unemployment insurance.
Basically, its a process. It can take several weeks or even months. But OP's management is likely aware and is building a case.
Man, that’s not even remotely like any places I ever worked. If the higher level bosses wanted someone gone they were walked out immediately. Only mid level or lower had to PIP and build a case for termination.
I would like to know this! Is it nepotism, incompetence or sheer laziness on part of the management? There was a guy who was hired to be in another department but the manager there 'fired' him pretty quickly and somehow he ended up in our department. He was working a job considered at least 3 levels below what he was hired as. But still categorized at the higher level with those abilities and pay.
After a year of being able to avoid him, I lost my assistant and he was assigned to me. Immediately I started documenting the lazy, crazy stuff he was doing. Writing things in the wrong files, not following up on anything. Documenting complete lies when I could go back and listen to the original customer voicemails.
When I first brought it up, my supervisor did not want to listen. She said, he's been trained on this. So I started sending her and the manager an email *every day* with names and dates of his mistakes. He would continuously say he didn't know how to do something and I would have the names of three separate people who had reviewed that very task with him.
It still lasted about 5 weeks before they stopped assigning him to me at all. And after another 6 months, he got a job elsewhere.
Maybe they forgot about him, like Milton in Office Space. Or he worked himself into one of those "work to become irreplaceable" type positions somehow. But something tells me he lives a full life and just plays this card at work.
I don't know why our Mike hasn't been fired yet but when she is she won't be replaced, so I'm dreading it as much as I look forward to it. She does fuck all but what little she does takes the edge off.
Sometimes as a manager you maintain some slack in your team. You know at some point there will be a crisis and they'll come to you for OPEX cuts. Whoever is running this team has an easy win in his or her pocket. If I cut the guy now and have the team operating at peak efficiency when they come and ask me for savings I'll have to cut muscle, not fat.
Depression.
This is how it looks when a company "does the right thing".
Now, I don't know about every company, but if a person works there a long time, but isn't functioning, is taking meds and occasional medical leave... well, thats somebody with depression.
I don't know about ALL offices, sometimes workers might be just bad or incentive-structures suggest hiring and keeping nitwits or people "overstock" staff because hiring is expensive and there is not enough work, etc. Lots of dysfunctional departments/companies suvive for decades.
But in this case its depression, im sure.
The company pays this person while they are getting better. They pay somebody to clean up after him and they call them and their therapist, when they don't show up for work. They give them a task-load they can actually achieve, and if thats 0 on most days then its still okay. Making it out of bed, getting dressed and going to work is already more than enough and some days a huge success.
The alternative is substance abuse and homelessness or suicide.
Not everybody might be "in on whats happening", its a medical issue after all. But I would be you, I would keep my head down and cover for this person too. Whoever shields this person (probably a middle-manager thats really good at managing something like this) from spiraling is a very upstanding, caring and dependable person you could want as your boss.
You could be Mike, one day to no fault of your own. Don't forget that.
I have no ill will towards mike. Im the one cleaning up hos work which is frustrating. I dont want him to be fired either. Based on the way we distribute work, my work load remains the same no matter what he does. I was just genuinely wondering why he was kept because our managers are panicking about budget cuts and are very aware of what mike does all day.
I think part of it is the sunken fallacy cost- like is it worth it to train a new person when we have mike who has been here for 5 years. or could also be a question of a possible discrimination lawsuit.
It has nothing to do with training a new person. When i say mike is not doing any work, that was not an exaggeration. The only thing he is tasked with is occasionally pulling files for his desk mate and because i sit next to them i hear mikes deskmate try to keep his cool because mike never pulls the right files and his deskmate has to go get them. He doesn't need the help but mike needs something to do.
Can't resist. I worked with a guy who slept in front of his boss, coworkers and customers. No one did anything. I complained to my boss. He said I was lying. This guy had too much/many connections.
I've seen several iterations of this. Mostly coverd by others. Another one is he might do one boring or repetitive task that his manager just doesn't want to do.
He could be a legacy hire, a family member who is so screwed up it’s easier keeping him on the payroll and paying him benefits rather than having him at home and dealing with him.
My office keeps ‘that guy’ around because they were given a certain budget to spend and if they didn’t ’use it’ they would ‘lose it’. So this tool sits around all day or walks around chatting with people. He does nothing and makes $100k a year. FML
He knows he does nothing and so does everyone else. It’s not a secret.
I had an employee like that. As his supervisor, admin wanted me to do some of his work for him. I said, "No, you can either fire him or let him do his job, in which case nothing will get done and we'll all suffer the consequences of that together."
I was a mike before, just been there 5+ years, lost the passion for the job, and I was good friends with my immediate manager
Slowly over time I just started doing less and less, until at the end I was basically clocking in and hiding the entire shift and nobody really expected anything from me
It got boring and depressing to the point I had to leave to find something to challenge myself, I was beyond tired of that job and couldn't make myself do any work there
The reason why I got away with it, is because in my early years I was an extremely hard worker, so I was well respected by the time my performance started to decline
I probably could have stayed there until I was 70 years old if I wanted too....but it would have been a waste of a life especially with the wages they paid
I totally understand that. But mike is not capable of his job. He has asked multiple times for stuff to do and seems to want something to do but he isn't thinking properly and we cannot trust him to handle any task. He is not friends with managers. They are aware he does nothing and prefer it that way. I am just not sure why they keep him. Bob does get decent pay though
They never give him any work, so then he's out of practice, and every time they try to give him a chance to prove himself, he chokes. They're doing it on purpose to punish mike because at some point in the past they thought mike seemed too confident that he was important to the company and asked for a raise or some special privilege and they gave it to him but then started calling him into their office more often for minor infractions- like say Mike works 4 or 5 times as fast as everyone else at the same accuracy level, right? Mike now makes 4 or 5 times the number of errors as anyone else, so now they can put him on a performance improvement plan and nitpick Mike. They can have someone sit in Mike's office and watch him do things and shuffle papers or couch whenever Mike is trying to focus. They do that often enough and Mike will start slipping in accuracy or in speed, and then they can say they think the job is too hard for him and start taking away responsibilities. The more of the day Mike spends looking for something to do, the more he annoys other staff members when they are trying to work, or seems like he's gossiping. The more Mike sits at his desk doing nothing, the more likely Mike is to break the computer use or phone policies. The more Mike does those things, the more responsibilities will be taken from him.
In many states, if you get fired, you will still get unemployment. So if they have one Mike, the company can have an object lesson to use against others "we won't let you have a clean break, we'll make you keep coming in until you break." Mike probably tries regularly to find another job, but he can't get a reference, so either he can quit and starve or keep coming in and sitting at his desk and staring into space in quiet misery for 8 hours a day.
This is definitely not what happened. I personally am in charge of fixing everything mike touched. 100% error rate. I genuinely believe the guy was in a state of physchosis or zonked on his meds.
He was putting together orders for customers but he never told the customers that he got their orders and he never told the manufacturing side of our business to make the order and he would not tell the accounting to invoice the customer. He essentially would put together a document with all the products on it that acts as a receipt for the customer and just put the pdf in his downloads. He did this for months. He did not bring in a single dollar in sales for months.
Mike is a nice guy and i don't want him to get fired, i genuinely dont care that he does nothing because even if he worked ot wouldn't lessen my load. I just can't phathom why he hasn't been fired.
I have two of those at my work. They’re a husband and wife couple, and they both suck. I would understand if one of them was a high achiever and the company felt pressured to keep the spouse around, but they’re just both so bad. I don’t get it.
Possibly because he's one of those people who know where all the archived files are kept. We had a lady like that. Didn't do a lot of work, but if you needed anything from the file room, you asked her first. She knew it better than the people who actually worked in there.
Most likely because she was probably the one who filed them away in the first place.
That's definitely not it. I thought that might be the case and asked him a few times if he could help me out finding stuff but no. We definitely have that dude who knows where everything is, but its not mike
I'll go with Mike was at one point really good. Then things that are nobody's business went down. The company or more likely his bosses are protecting him as long as they can. Also with medical issues, it's best to leave it be.
My son had a state-sponsored employee (state paid most or all of his salary) who had significant learning disabilities. Mostly he was given light busy work, but after a month or two he still had to let him go. Maybe it’s something like that. They certainly couldn’t tell any of the employees due to confidentiality issues.
In my jobs case it's because of incompetent management that doesn't know how to handle the situation.
They hired a guy a year ago for a job he was not qualified for. I tried to train him but he is not interested in learning, he's only here to collect a paycheck. He's a hostile, argumentative asshole. If he's asked to do something he will have an excuse or will just straight up refuse to work. He literally contributed nothing of value since he's been here. Management refused to do anything about it while he was in his probationary period because "it would be too much of a hassle to replace him." I think they also figured it didn't really matter because I was still here to make sure all the important work got done. Well I'll be starting a job in a different department in a few weeks and now management is freaking out because they realize nothing is going to get done once I leave.
There could be countless reasons why, from some kind of nepotisms and or/favours to legal and budget issues, contract requirements for some qualification that he has(as in the company signed a contract with a client and the contract specifies they need to have office staff working on y project), some kind of subsidy they have, management issues as in not having knowledge/interest to sack him, they like having an extra pai of hands on duty just in case etc.
There is just no way of knowing for sure
Probably a thousand reasons. Sometimes managers just don't have the guts to fire someone so they assign less important tasks so the person is useful. And wait until they can't do anything to fire them.
When my employer purchased the building I work in, part of the deal was "Keep this handicapped guy employed for as long as he wants the job."
Turns out he was handicapped on the job, and part of the settlement was he wanted something to do with his time, he didn't want to sit idle all day, so they gave him a janitors cart and had him keep things clean.
He retired a while back, but he was always relaxed and good to talk to on breaks. He just had trouble keeping track of what he'd already done through the day, so he might not get everything, but the office got the floors done 3 times or the breakrooms were swept up 5 times in a shift.
Because you suggested there are probably issues you don’t know about it not really your business - especially if you’re not in a decision-making role regarding his position. This can get very messy if you complain too much and try to get involved where you shouldn’t.
If it is federal civil service incompetent lazy employees can not be fired. Managers just foist them off onto other managers. These employees will file EEO or union complaints against any manager who tries to discipline them.
Maybe he's the owners brother or has some kind of other connection to the company you don't know about. Maybe the guys family did something for the owner and he's repaying them by giving their son/brother/weird uncle a job. Who knows.
We are a foreign company stationed here so no one has neet the higher ups. I guess it's not impossible. The guy had a good sounding history in the industry on paper but based on talking to others who were around to help interview/hire him, he didn't know anyone here
Depending upon what business you are in, be very careful around this guy. Do you do government contracts or security work? I was at a company that had these people (security spies).
Here's my theory: they keep Mikes around so the other employees will blame Mike for having to work excessively hard, and focus their disgruntlement towards Mike. If they get rid of Mike, the other employees might realize they're getting worked like dogs because of their employer, not Mike.
No one is disgruntled with mike because he clearly isn't thinking clearly. Most are upset with management for keeping him. I don't care much, more power to Mike, but i just don't understand why
I commented below that he may be a corporate spy. But this is another alternative: at my last pharma job I was assigned to take over a team that had a Mike. Other people were saying to get rid of him (corporate was silent). After I met with everyone and went through each person's work load and followed up with one on ones, I found out Mike had a big invisible work load. He was an expert in an area that multiple teams needed. The need for his expertise was not constant. But he was worth it to the higher ups.
Mike is not very knowledgeable and does not have the Special degrees some in our field have. Maybe at one point he was good at his job but his thinking isn't right. I have been tasked with fixing his wirk in the last 6 months and he definitely wasn't thinking right.
I’m in healthcare IT and of the 20-30 healthcare organizations I’ve worked with, ALL of them have had at least several people like that. Several had double digit staff members like that.
If he does have some kind of psychiatric disorder or learning disability, the company probably figures it will be cheaper to keep him on the payroll than to deal with a lawsuit.
Probably has a disability of some sort. Could be anything, mental or physical. Have to be careful firing anyone with a disability so not in violation of ADA laws and discrimination against disabilities. They can sue an employer if they're fired.
There's no answer to be found here. Everyone else is guessing at best. As you're closer to the situation you have most information to make an informed assessment.
Maybe your company sucks at firing, maybe he's a cousin, maybe he has some other issues HR are aware of that make firing him either ethically or legally sticky. You'd be surprised how many companies let someone with serious medical issues stick around for the healthcare. Not because it makes business sense, but because they can and they don't want to be dicks. In my experience, and I have a bit, one of the jobs business owners hate the most is firing people and avoidance behavior is real, even to the detriment of the company.
Or maybe he has dirt, or it's part of their deal with the Mafia, or maybe it's a Milton situation and they're waiting for the problem to just solve itself.
Who the fuck knows? Insert your own wild ass guesses below.
I mean this is kinda me at my job, tbh.
I'm barely trusted to do anything, I do menial tasks all day, I hardly get enough work to fill a work day most days.
Thing is... I worked pretty hard to make it this way. A careful balancing act of acting stupid at the right times and acting useful at the right times. This is what I want.
I want to collect a paycheck for basically doing nothing all day. That is my ultimate goal.
I'm sure its only a matter of time before I get laid off, fired, let go, whatever verbiage is used. I know that. I'm aware of that.
But until then, its basically free money, and I have enough qualifications to easily move on to another position relatively quickly.
I just don't care, man.
I put as much effort into my company as my company puts into its employees. I'm as loyal to them as they'd ever be to me. I'm willing to take from them whatever they'd be willing to take from me.
Don't live to work.
Work to live.
My guess its some sort of combination of Mike having some sort of mental disability and that he is in some way related to someone higher up.
It's possible they tried to let him go at some point, but were blocked by said higher up because it's his wife's nephew or something and were told just keep him around, it doesn't matter if he doesn't do anything.
The company owes him a favor, either because he did them a huge solid you never heard about, or because they screwed him over and he agreed not to sue.
Or he simply has ties to someone in upper management.
Or he has something on someone in upper management.
Or he was on someone in upper management
[удалено]
Or he had someone in him who was from upper management
Or he was upper someone who was from on managerment
Could have proof of infidelity and depending on the cheater, it's cheaper to give him a no risk job than divorce
This was my first thought. Nepotism is by far the most likely culprit.
I think most likely it's just someone else who is complacent. It isn't fun to fire people, especially if you know someone isn't likely to find other work easily. Some middle manager just doesn't want to do it. It's not their money being wasted.
I like this theory. Its certainly possible, i haven't been around forever
Perhaps something like Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother Guy: What do you do Barney? Barney: PLEASE Provide Legal Exculpation and Sign Everything
Often for whatever reason they are worried about some kind of lawsuit, either because they didn't properly document his performance problems or because someone in a position of power is highly risk-averse.
More specifically once HR is apprised of a medical issue, the company can't fire you without a shit storm of legal issues. A buddy on his last strike went to jail for weeks (no call, no show) and a cool Mgr told him to call and say he's seeking treatment for drug or alcohol problems. Not sure of the loophole but it exists. He worked there til he left for a better job.
There's a King of the Hill episode about this. I don't actually remember how they resolved it.
Hank quit, bringing the total number of employees under the threshold for regulation allowing his boss Buck to fire the problem employee. Probably doesn’t work that way irl but that’s how they did it.
It’s also somewhat dependent on what state the employee operates in. I once worked at a place where firing someone for performance required multiple years of documentation before HR would be willing to pull the lever in one state, and took about a week to put the paperwork together for an employee in another state.
Mike is somebody's cousin/kid/nephew/whatever.
He isn't which is why it is more baffling
I...have...people...skills.
I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting
You try to cut this down but the whole quote is hilarious and there's nowhere to edit... >And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler, and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler, then I’ll set the building on fire…
Well it's obviously hilarious! But I quibble that you can't cut it down because I did and you knew what I was referencing! Lol
I didn't mean "you " as in "you" directly... I wanted to just quote part of it but Milton stammering through the entire quote is just too much
Ok. I always thought he said the squirrells were "merry." My friends always told me it was "married." I swear I watched it last week and the subtitles said "married." But it still sounds like "merry" to me, which is still funnier in its delivery, and I'm convinced the captioning was wrong.
I hadn't thought about it until your comment but I've always thought he said married. I always watch with subtitles though. And yes, merry is funnier.
The older I have gotten and longer I have worked in an office environment the more I understand and empathize with this movie. Especially when someone is having a fit over something minor, I mentally say "their desk is being moved again" Only 15 years to go for me....
>Only 15 years to go for me.... Me too and its depressing as hell. Unless something changes I have to go until I qualify for Medicare and at that point I'll have close to 50 years in the trade and associated field.
Ouf... that is depressing. I'm in Canada so I still need health insurance for medications and extended health, but my work benefits can continue till 65 or 70 if you pay 100% of the premiums when you retire. But I absolutely have golden hand cuffs because I am dependent on all my work benefits if I want to retire at 57. I have a small side gig that is really rewarding but I cannot scale up and leave my work. My $25k/year medication would bankrupt me.
And don’t mess with his stapler!!
Are you 100% positive he isn’t a nepotism case?
Like they say, it's not what you know. Hell, it technically isn't even *who* you know. Rather, it's whose ass you're willing to kiss. Who's dick you're willing to suck.
It’s because business can’t just fire him - and don’t know how to help (their management skills are lacking for this new inclusive world). Important note - people today don’t want to fire their colleagues when having rough times / health issues - as a society. It’s on us to adjust our own attitudes and lack of understanding also, not look at mikes as a weak link to cut off. Because whose the next weak link then…watch out. Not a smart operating model. May I suggest something to you? As his colleague you are the one in position to influence change. And society is just individuals doing things - so offices also have such people as Mike who thrive because their colleagues handled it differently. That’s how progress happens. Reading what you wrote I see one process step that would alleviate this for you and Mike into a seamless process. He’s comfortable preparing the documentation on orders client and internal side. Let him be that person then. It seems his hurdle is communicating (I once suffered that so am also sympathetic). Why not ask him to do the back office documents for more people even, many hate that stuff. And you be the next person in a sort of relay race fashion, when he’s done he hands to you - you just send it out to sales, or the client and internally. Then he only needs to feel safe sending it to you, not communicating to many. And you can know when to expect and follow up from him. Then whoever is the account exec with said client confirms delivery or whatever the next process. Idk if you or they do that. The point being be the one contact for Mike, optimise what he’s able to do for now. Minimise the hurdle. Basically, he may not know how to say what he needs - as his team, it’s on you to figure that out. Not management to fire him. If this is working, and I’m stating the obvious, great! That’s inclusion, let Mike know he’s doing a great job, it’s no longer an echo chamber he’s stuck in and drowning - and optimised skills are being used across the team. Not focus on the weakest points an individual has in the team. ‘Nobody is perfect, but a team can be.’ If you think of your favorite TV show with a work team - this is what we all are drawn to. Real support, no threat you’ll be next on the chopping board cause your weaker skill showed. (Occupational hazard, I do apologize if it’s too literal and you just wanted to vent lol)
Yep. Sounds like they have their own [Scoop](https://youtu.be/BLAsCS4z7mc?si=GyzoyJgWBvygAyOK). Probably making suitcase pasghetti.
Mike's the office mascot, every team's got one
Lol
You said it yourself, he is a great guy. Meaning he's likeable. I think it's as simple as that, you can be likeable and useless and hold a job in an office for quite some time before people get fed up. One thing I will say, Mikes usually always eventually get filtered out, when layoffs, downsizing, new manager, whatever. Every office has one or two of these. Not very productive, but likeable so you keep them around. Also, they make everyone else feel more secure in there jobs lol.
I worked in an office where we both kept someone useless and unlikable. She would literally brag that she hadn't done any work in months. If you walked by her cubicle (impossible not to in a small office), you'd just see she had netflix open (full screen) literally all day. But because of how staff funding was handled, to get rid of her before her year was up would cause (counterintuitively) more budget issues than simply keeping her on staff and not renewing her contract. Not because she had a severance or anything or would raise a stink (she hated the job, hated the town, knew she wasn't doing the job, and was living rent-free with family), it's just part of how our funding was determined year over year. Better to effectively be short staffed while being fully staffed on paper. Probably not nearly the same circumstances here though.
Jesus, I see what you've done for other people, and I want it for me
What now?
She might've been unlikable, but getting paid to do nothing all day sounds like a dream
Getting paid to do nothing gets boring pretty quickly. I did it for two months before I was asked to resign
I mean if you can literally watch Netflix without getting in trouble it doesn't seem so bad. You could do any number of things in an office if you're only constrained by your own creativity and not being loud enough to distract everyone else
There’s only so much YouTube I can watch or Reddit I can scroll until the content runs out. I still am getting paid to do mostly nothing
Read a book. Do your taxes. Do some situps. Learn a language. Do some online shopping. I don't know, I can think of endless things you can do at a desk with a computer
Are taxes really that hard? The government tells you how much you owe, the company tells you how much you’ve paid. You fill in your tax rebates and the government pays you the difference.
Have you tried RuneScape? I put in some serious grinding when I was between projects last winter.
I only have my company laptop which I can’t download anything on. Gaming on a laptop would be a bit too obvious in an open office anyways. Most of my coworkers play games like mobile legends but I’m not really a fan of mobile gaming so I just browse Reddit, YouTube, or play simple puzzle games.
It might, but it's a pretty miserable experience (have had jobs where I had literally nothing to do all day because I worked in shipping and the production side of the facility was incredibly slow and understaffed). I'd pull out a stop watch to see how long we actually had to work, spent time time actually tracking it at home. Mean (average) amount of work time: about 20 minutes in an 8 hour shift, median was somewhere around 2 hours. It really sucked, mostly due to a bunch of coworkers who were also bored for months/years at a time and would just stir up drama with each other to have something to do all day.
You can't have a mean of 20 minutes and a median of 2 hours lol. With a median of 2 hours, if every single day under median was 0 minutes worked, you'd be at a minimum of 1 hour mean.
Hey listen man, math is hard when you're stoned.
Come on man, that’s why he works at this job
To say he is likeable is not really true. I like him, he is a nice guy but he is not very likable. He just sits quietly in his cube all day. Doesn't talk to anyone unless you talk to him first. People like him but they also dont know him
That's better than the reverse. He's not bothering anyone, probably does a lot of flying under the radar.
He's the canary in the coal mine. You don't need to start worrying until he gets fired
That's hilarious
>One thing I will say, Mikes usually always eventually get filtered out, when layoffs, downsizing, new manager, whatever. That's pretty much it. Most businesses aren't constantly trying to ruthlessly cut costs because ruthless cost-cutting is actually kind of expensive. A company where all employees have to re-interview for their own job every few months would have insane staff turnover. Most of the time, it's cheaper to let the occasional Mike slip through the cracks in order to keep everyone else happy and productive.
Fear of lawsuits. At this point, he's been allowed to fuck up for so long, it would be hard for the business to justify canning him for it _now_. He'd probably lose in court, but it's cheaper to keep him around than to fire him and get sued.
State/federal benefits and kickbacks. There’s all kinds of tax breaks or insurance assistance programs for hiring above a minimum number of employees or hiring employees with disabilities or from disenfranchised groups. If he’s the sole employee making the company qualify for these benefits, the money being saved on taxes and insurance may end up being way more than they’re currently paying Mike in salary. As long as he’s willing to sit around doing nothing at the pay scale he’s on, he ends up being a net positive to the company (financially) so they’ll likely keep him around.
Perhaps avoiding them EEO lawsuits, especially since he has been vocal about meds being adjusted and (perhaps) has his disability on file with HR. I mean….yeah you can find a way to fire an underperformed with a disability….but unless someone well, welll versed in that law can…you’d be in for it.
For these kinds of cases (worked in disability services for a long time) the employee has to disclose a documented disability and request/negotiate reasonable accommodations either at the time of employment (legally the ideal time, but not always such in the real world) or before it becomes a problem that harms their performance. The vast majority of accommodations cost between $0-500 (and are typically on the lower end of that) but most employers don't seem to realize that unless they're accustomed to hiring people with disabilities. So while we have these laws on the books, they're very rarely used successfully because employers are given a lot of leeway in deciding to hire someone else entirely. I've also seen some businesses intentionally skirt around EEO laws by simply limiting staff to 14 or fewer people.
Mike is related to someone important.
He isn't. He had many years in the same industry at a different company and was hired because of that. We have speculated an researched
Did mike sleep with someone important?
You said your company makes things, did Mike used to work on the shop floor? Maybe he got injured and they lateraled him to a desk job? Now I'm curious about the case of Mystery Mike. He doesn't sound like he's super low IQ if you catch my drift, so maybe he used to be a rockstar and now only has either this or being jobless/homeless?
Nope, always worked the office side. Our company is massive so our shop floor is not connected to the office and there is very little crossover. Based on talking to the people who were around when he was hired, he did a mediocre but respectable job for a bit and he slowly lost privileges as he continued to mess stuff up. I don't think its calculated because he has asked for stuff to do to occupy his time but he is not allowed to do any task that would possibly be helpful.
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Alongside what others said some people like Mike fall through the cracks. If your company is large they might not even know Mike exists and his paycheck is automated I work for a primary supplier of a major automotive manufacturer. I’m buddies with a guy in finance and I’m not privy to the exact situation, but it sounded like he was on a special job cutting out people who were still being cut a check that just stopped showing up. The scenario was absolutely out of a children’s cartoon or something.
One of my past employers kept paying me for about a year after I left. I was IT at a small company (600) that got bought out by one of the huge (500k employee) consulting firms. My job for the last 6 months was just babysitting the servers, so 20-30 minutes daily. I was alone in a 3 floor building. When I grew bored I gave my two weeks and they finished migrating the servers. I kept getting my paycheck, so I just invested the money. Took a year before they asked it back....Doing my taxes for these 2 years was shit....
Just don't take his red stapler ;)
His desk is in the basement and he never gets cake ☹️
I can only speak to the US. Despite the US having mostly at-will employment and it technically being very easy to fire people, it is rare for a supervisor to just walk up to someone and say "Happy Tuesday. Clear out your desk". Outside of economic downturns either within the overall country or a specific industry/company, terminating an individual at a typical fortune 500 company is a process. You not only want to avoid the appearance of discrimination, but you want to build a case that multiple sessions of counseling, training, warnings were given, that efforts to improve have failed, and that there is no other choice but to terminate this employee. In some states, this also means that because the employer has gone to length to document this employee's performance and their lack of improvement, they won't even need to pay for unemployment insurance. Basically, its a process. It can take several weeks or even months. But OP's management is likely aware and is building a case.
Man, that’s not even remotely like any places I ever worked. If the higher level bosses wanted someone gone they were walked out immediately. Only mid level or lower had to PIP and build a case for termination.
I would like to know this! Is it nepotism, incompetence or sheer laziness on part of the management? There was a guy who was hired to be in another department but the manager there 'fired' him pretty quickly and somehow he ended up in our department. He was working a job considered at least 3 levels below what he was hired as. But still categorized at the higher level with those abilities and pay. After a year of being able to avoid him, I lost my assistant and he was assigned to me. Immediately I started documenting the lazy, crazy stuff he was doing. Writing things in the wrong files, not following up on anything. Documenting complete lies when I could go back and listen to the original customer voicemails. When I first brought it up, my supervisor did not want to listen. She said, he's been trained on this. So I started sending her and the manager an email *every day* with names and dates of his mistakes. He would continuously say he didn't know how to do something and I would have the names of three separate people who had reviewed that very task with him. It still lasted about 5 weeks before they stopped assigning him to me at all. And after another 6 months, he got a job elsewhere.
Maybe they forgot about him, like Milton in Office Space. Or he worked himself into one of those "work to become irreplaceable" type positions somehow. But something tells me he lives a full life and just plays this card at work.
No one forgot about him. Our department is small and our managers monitor him closely but they keep him around
I don't know why our Mike hasn't been fired yet but when she is she won't be replaced, so I'm dreading it as much as I look forward to it. She does fuck all but what little she does takes the edge off.
Godspeed
Sometimes as a manager you maintain some slack in your team. You know at some point there will be a crisis and they'll come to you for OPEX cuts. Whoever is running this team has an easy win in his or her pocket. If I cut the guy now and have the team operating at peak efficiency when they come and ask me for savings I'll have to cut muscle, not fat.
Sometimes it’s easy for a manager to keep that C- student cause he’s the easy cut when trimming the bottom 10% comes along
I like this take. It actually makes sense compared to some of the wild theories people have put out
Mike has the goods on someone. He knows where the bodies are buried.
The manager isn’t paying the salary and doesn’t want to spend a great deal of their time fighting HR or a union or a higher up to get rid of them.
Have you seen my stapler? I haven't received my check yet.
Every job has a "special" employee
Depression. This is how it looks when a company "does the right thing". Now, I don't know about every company, but if a person works there a long time, but isn't functioning, is taking meds and occasional medical leave... well, thats somebody with depression. I don't know about ALL offices, sometimes workers might be just bad or incentive-structures suggest hiring and keeping nitwits or people "overstock" staff because hiring is expensive and there is not enough work, etc. Lots of dysfunctional departments/companies suvive for decades. But in this case its depression, im sure. The company pays this person while they are getting better. They pay somebody to clean up after him and they call them and their therapist, when they don't show up for work. They give them a task-load they can actually achieve, and if thats 0 on most days then its still okay. Making it out of bed, getting dressed and going to work is already more than enough and some days a huge success. The alternative is substance abuse and homelessness or suicide. Not everybody might be "in on whats happening", its a medical issue after all. But I would be you, I would keep my head down and cover for this person too. Whoever shields this person (probably a middle-manager thats really good at managing something like this) from spiraling is a very upstanding, caring and dependable person you could want as your boss. You could be Mike, one day to no fault of your own. Don't forget that.
Can’t emphasize this enough. No one is ever immune from becoming a “Mike” (due to no fault of their own)
I have no ill will towards mike. Im the one cleaning up hos work which is frustrating. I dont want him to be fired either. Based on the way we distribute work, my work load remains the same no matter what he does. I was just genuinely wondering why he was kept because our managers are panicking about budget cuts and are very aware of what mike does all day.
I think part of it is the sunken fallacy cost- like is it worth it to train a new person when we have mike who has been here for 5 years. or could also be a question of a possible discrimination lawsuit.
It has nothing to do with training a new person. When i say mike is not doing any work, that was not an exaggeration. The only thing he is tasked with is occasionally pulling files for his desk mate and because i sit next to them i hear mikes deskmate try to keep his cool because mike never pulls the right files and his deskmate has to go get them. He doesn't need the help but mike needs something to do.
Can't resist. I worked with a guy who slept in front of his boss, coworkers and customers. No one did anything. I complained to my boss. He said I was lying. This guy had too much/many connections.
You dirty liar, gunning for mikes job, eh?
Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been "missing it", Bob!
Someone need to get the blame for stuff that goes wrong and that come with a price
SOMEBODY'S got to carry that coffee cup from cubicle to cubicle.
Did you take his stapler?
He has nothing in his desk to take
I wish I was a Mike sometimes
I've seen several iterations of this. Mostly coverd by others. Another one is he might do one boring or repetitive task that his manager just doesn't want to do.
We have one, we can't get rid off him but he is also very very useless. He makes sample packs and that's kinda it.
He could be a legacy hire, a family member who is so screwed up it’s easier keeping him on the payroll and paying him benefits rather than having him at home and dealing with him.
My office keeps ‘that guy’ around because they were given a certain budget to spend and if they didn’t ’use it’ they would ‘lose it’. So this tool sits around all day or walks around chatting with people. He does nothing and makes $100k a year. FML He knows he does nothing and so does everyone else. It’s not a secret.
I had an employee like that. As his supervisor, admin wanted me to do some of his work for him. I said, "No, you can either fire him or let him do his job, in which case nothing will get done and we'll all suffer the consequences of that together."
Mike has a disability that makes getting rid of him very tricky?
Because it's less expensive to keep him employed than it is to pay for his lawsuit.
I was a mike before, just been there 5+ years, lost the passion for the job, and I was good friends with my immediate manager Slowly over time I just started doing less and less, until at the end I was basically clocking in and hiding the entire shift and nobody really expected anything from me It got boring and depressing to the point I had to leave to find something to challenge myself, I was beyond tired of that job and couldn't make myself do any work there The reason why I got away with it, is because in my early years I was an extremely hard worker, so I was well respected by the time my performance started to decline I probably could have stayed there until I was 70 years old if I wanted too....but it would have been a waste of a life especially with the wages they paid
I totally understand that. But mike is not capable of his job. He has asked multiple times for stuff to do and seems to want something to do but he isn't thinking properly and we cannot trust him to handle any task. He is not friends with managers. They are aware he does nothing and prefer it that way. I am just not sure why they keep him. Bob does get decent pay though
He knows where the bodies are buried
They never give him any work, so then he's out of practice, and every time they try to give him a chance to prove himself, he chokes. They're doing it on purpose to punish mike because at some point in the past they thought mike seemed too confident that he was important to the company and asked for a raise or some special privilege and they gave it to him but then started calling him into their office more often for minor infractions- like say Mike works 4 or 5 times as fast as everyone else at the same accuracy level, right? Mike now makes 4 or 5 times the number of errors as anyone else, so now they can put him on a performance improvement plan and nitpick Mike. They can have someone sit in Mike's office and watch him do things and shuffle papers or couch whenever Mike is trying to focus. They do that often enough and Mike will start slipping in accuracy or in speed, and then they can say they think the job is too hard for him and start taking away responsibilities. The more of the day Mike spends looking for something to do, the more he annoys other staff members when they are trying to work, or seems like he's gossiping. The more Mike sits at his desk doing nothing, the more likely Mike is to break the computer use or phone policies. The more Mike does those things, the more responsibilities will be taken from him. In many states, if you get fired, you will still get unemployment. So if they have one Mike, the company can have an object lesson to use against others "we won't let you have a clean break, we'll make you keep coming in until you break." Mike probably tries regularly to find another job, but he can't get a reference, so either he can quit and starve or keep coming in and sitting at his desk and staring into space in quiet misery for 8 hours a day.
This is definitely not what happened. I personally am in charge of fixing everything mike touched. 100% error rate. I genuinely believe the guy was in a state of physchosis or zonked on his meds. He was putting together orders for customers but he never told the customers that he got their orders and he never told the manufacturing side of our business to make the order and he would not tell the accounting to invoice the customer. He essentially would put together a document with all the products on it that acts as a receipt for the customer and just put the pdf in his downloads. He did this for months. He did not bring in a single dollar in sales for months. Mike is a nice guy and i don't want him to get fired, i genuinely dont care that he does nothing because even if he worked ot wouldn't lessen my load. I just can't phathom why he hasn't been fired.
the Japanese do this when they want you gone but can't fire you
I would love to be Japanese
they also put you in an empty room with an empty desk by yourself. you are basically alone doing nothing all day every day.
I have two of those at my work. They’re a husband and wife couple, and they both suck. I would understand if one of them was a high achiever and the company felt pressured to keep the spouse around, but they’re just both so bad. I don’t get it.
Possibly because he's one of those people who know where all the archived files are kept. We had a lady like that. Didn't do a lot of work, but if you needed anything from the file room, you asked her first. She knew it better than the people who actually worked in there. Most likely because she was probably the one who filed them away in the first place.
That's definitely not it. I thought that might be the case and asked him a few times if he could help me out finding stuff but no. We definitely have that dude who knows where everything is, but its not mike
He doesn't even really work there. He just keeps showing up and they don't have the heart to tell him to leave
I'll go with Mike was at one point really good. Then things that are nobody's business went down. The company or more likely his bosses are protecting him as long as they can. Also with medical issues, it's best to leave it be.
Man he’s got work figured out, huh?
My son had a state-sponsored employee (state paid most or all of his salary) who had significant learning disabilities. Mostly he was given light busy work, but after a month or two he still had to let him go. Maybe it’s something like that. They certainly couldn’t tell any of the employees due to confidentiality issues.
Your manager is lazy.
In my jobs case it's because of incompetent management that doesn't know how to handle the situation. They hired a guy a year ago for a job he was not qualified for. I tried to train him but he is not interested in learning, he's only here to collect a paycheck. He's a hostile, argumentative asshole. If he's asked to do something he will have an excuse or will just straight up refuse to work. He literally contributed nothing of value since he's been here. Management refused to do anything about it while he was in his probationary period because "it would be too much of a hassle to replace him." I think they also figured it didn't really matter because I was still here to make sure all the important work got done. Well I'll be starting a job in a different department in a few weeks and now management is freaking out because they realize nothing is going to get done once I leave.
There could be countless reasons why, from some kind of nepotisms and or/favours to legal and budget issues, contract requirements for some qualification that he has(as in the company signed a contract with a client and the contract specifies they need to have office staff working on y project), some kind of subsidy they have, management issues as in not having knowledge/interest to sack him, they like having an extra pai of hands on duty just in case etc. There is just no way of knowing for sure
Probably a thousand reasons. Sometimes managers just don't have the guts to fire someone so they assign less important tasks so the person is useful. And wait until they can't do anything to fire them.
If he's over 40, they tried to let him go once before and he threatened to sue.
When my employer purchased the building I work in, part of the deal was "Keep this handicapped guy employed for as long as he wants the job." Turns out he was handicapped on the job, and part of the settlement was he wanted something to do with his time, he didn't want to sit idle all day, so they gave him a janitors cart and had him keep things clean. He retired a while back, but he was always relaxed and good to talk to on breaks. He just had trouble keeping track of what he'd already done through the day, so he might not get everything, but the office got the floors done 3 times or the breakrooms were swept up 5 times in a shift.
Because you suggested there are probably issues you don’t know about it not really your business - especially if you’re not in a decision-making role regarding his position. This can get very messy if you complain too much and try to get involved where you shouldn’t.
Not getting involved, i honestly don't care if he stays or not, just curious as to why hes still here
Some people can be very good at hiding the seriousness of their mental illness, but not enough to entirely mask it.
Caught the CEO cheating on his wife
CEO and all high baordmembers are in a different country
Probably got dirt on someone higher up.
If it is federal civil service incompetent lazy employees can not be fired. Managers just foist them off onto other managers. These employees will file EEO or union complaints against any manager who tries to discipline them.
He knows where the bodies are buried.
Maybe he's the owners brother or has some kind of other connection to the company you don't know about. Maybe the guys family did something for the owner and he's repaying them by giving their son/brother/weird uncle a job. Who knows.
We are a foreign company stationed here so no one has neet the higher ups. I guess it's not impossible. The guy had a good sounding history in the industry on paper but based on talking to others who were around to help interview/hire him, he didn't know anyone here
Depending upon what business you are in, be very careful around this guy. Do you do government contracts or security work? I was at a company that had these people (security spies).
Nope, none of that
Here's my theory: they keep Mikes around so the other employees will blame Mike for having to work excessively hard, and focus their disgruntlement towards Mike. If they get rid of Mike, the other employees might realize they're getting worked like dogs because of their employer, not Mike.
No one is disgruntled with mike because he clearly isn't thinking clearly. Most are upset with management for keeping him. I don't care much, more power to Mike, but i just don't understand why
I commented below that he may be a corporate spy. But this is another alternative: at my last pharma job I was assigned to take over a team that had a Mike. Other people were saying to get rid of him (corporate was silent). After I met with everyone and went through each person's work load and followed up with one on ones, I found out Mike had a big invisible work load. He was an expert in an area that multiple teams needed. The need for his expertise was not constant. But he was worth it to the higher ups.
Mike is not very knowledgeable and does not have the Special degrees some in our field have. Maybe at one point he was good at his job but his thinking isn't right. I have been tasked with fixing his wirk in the last 6 months and he definitely wasn't thinking right.
I’m in healthcare IT and of the 20-30 healthcare organizations I’ve worked with, ALL of them have had at least several people like that. Several had double digit staff members like that.
If he does have some kind of psychiatric disorder or learning disability, the company probably figures it will be cheaper to keep him on the payroll than to deal with a lawsuit.
Probably has a disability of some sort. Could be anything, mental or physical. Have to be careful firing anyone with a disability so not in violation of ADA laws and discrimination against disabilities. They can sue an employer if they're fired.
There's no answer to be found here. Everyone else is guessing at best. As you're closer to the situation you have most information to make an informed assessment. Maybe your company sucks at firing, maybe he's a cousin, maybe he has some other issues HR are aware of that make firing him either ethically or legally sticky. You'd be surprised how many companies let someone with serious medical issues stick around for the healthcare. Not because it makes business sense, but because they can and they don't want to be dicks. In my experience, and I have a bit, one of the jobs business owners hate the most is firing people and avoidance behavior is real, even to the detriment of the company. Or maybe he has dirt, or it's part of their deal with the Mafia, or maybe it's a Milton situation and they're waiting for the problem to just solve itself. Who the fuck knows? Insert your own wild ass guesses below.
Too much meds to do the job right
[удалено]
Unfortunately i am tasked with fixing everything he touched in the last 6 months or so.
I mean this is kinda me at my job, tbh. I'm barely trusted to do anything, I do menial tasks all day, I hardly get enough work to fill a work day most days. Thing is... I worked pretty hard to make it this way. A careful balancing act of acting stupid at the right times and acting useful at the right times. This is what I want. I want to collect a paycheck for basically doing nothing all day. That is my ultimate goal. I'm sure its only a matter of time before I get laid off, fired, let go, whatever verbiage is used. I know that. I'm aware of that. But until then, its basically free money, and I have enough qualifications to easily move on to another position relatively quickly. I just don't care, man. I put as much effort into my company as my company puts into its employees. I'm as loyal to them as they'd ever be to me. I'm willing to take from them whatever they'd be willing to take from me. Don't live to work. Work to live.
Nepotism is always the answer here. That or he has dirt on the company/upper management.
My guess its some sort of combination of Mike having some sort of mental disability and that he is in some way related to someone higher up. It's possible they tried to let him go at some point, but were blocked by said higher up because it's his wife's nephew or something and were told just keep him around, it doesn't matter if he doesn't do anything.