Underperforming employee who keeps buying the team food

Our team is 4 people. CIO, infrastructure engineer, jr admin and help desk.
Our previous infrastructure engineer left and we hired someone who is clearly not what we thought. He admitted to test dumping to me privately for every cert he has (VCP CCNA MCSE some others) and just generally doesn't have the "get it" mind set that you need in IT. He won't do anything without being explicitly told to do it including calling ISP's. We had an outage with one of our systems and probably 20 open tickets. He went to a doctor's appointment, came back 2 hours later and didn't bother following up with anyone. Doesn't use the ticketing system at all because I guess nobody showed him? Just all around shitty employee I suppose.

The flip side being he really tries to be nice. He goes to Carls JR and gets buy one get ones for the team. He takes us out to lunch every other Friday (nothing fancy but it's always a sit down place). Still my coworker and I have openly complained and lobbied to have him replaced. My boss has brought up the under performance to him which immediately resulted in more Carl's JR, him interacting with us and asking if we need help, but still just not being proactive / really getting it. I've more or less taken over his job (which isn't practical long term since I do not know AD well enough) and it sucks. I know I shouldn't be taking the stuff he's getting but it would make an already awkward situation move to the boiling point if I just stopped.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? I feel like I'm screwed either way I approach it. At the least I am hoping some of you guys have some funny stories.

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Comments

triplea

We have almost the same scenario where the latest level 3 person is quite frankly crap and out of his depth.

Theres only 4 of us including the supervisor and I'm pretty much running the service desk that these guys are supposed to assist me with when I'm over run ( the big boss recruits on this basis )

Now the level 3 and level 2/3 engineers are just happy to **** me with everything they don't fancy, got really fed up with it.

So I just took a total of 18 days off inc public holidays, never seen them work so hard lol.

volfkhat

hmmm....
didn't realize there were so many differing opinions on this topic.

Personally, i can relate to blatini.
It's frustrating when you work Hard, but you see "slackers" passing you by.
And it's even worse when their incompetence translates into "More Work for Me".

i guess it's just a life lesson, you know?
Certifications = $$$

Personally, i would Stop doing the extra work.

Seriously, if it's as bad as you say it is,
then I'd tell Mr Carls that he's gonna have to start paying me directly Out of his Own pocket.
$100 a week! (or whatever you want. tax free)

The math is:
he knows he's a fraud; but paying you might actually be worth it (to him).
Of course, he could go run to the BOSS, and turn you in....... but doing so would also expose his fraudness.
Would he risk it?
and of Course, your gamble might end up getting you fired... or would it?
You still carry a heavy workload... maybe you'd only get a write-up.

Or maybe, it's time to start looking for another job anyway?
:]

TechGromit

Blucodex wrote: »

Similar experience. It can also be very difficult when a single individual holds all the knowledge and can be hostile...

I'm fortune to work in an environment where my co-workers are happy to share knowledge and responsibilities for cross training purposes, at least far as networking. NRC compliance and cyber security goes. I know other locations where co-workers are down right hostile to each other, not willing to share knowledge, makes for a uncomfortable work environment.

blatini

Well after sitting him down things have gotten much better. Turns out he had a few gigs since oil and gas and was either let go or ended up taking another contract because while at OnG you never collaborated or reached out to your coworkers unless told to. So he always stayed in his lane and could never figure out why people seemed annoyed with him. Pretty funny but definitely weird as hell. I would have starved to death if I did that growing up

Fulcrum45

I'm guessing OnG is heavily regulated and secure in terms of IT so I suppose it isn't a surprise. Either way he's been put on notice and he'll have no excuses now. Of course you may stemmed the flow of the Carl's JR pipeline but your arteries will thank you.

Params7

To his credit, Carls Jr is a good choice.

blatini

Well ultimately for this guy he ended up shooting himself in the foot multiple times from the technical side. On top of it he was obviously interviewing elsewhere and would leave for "doctors appointments" more than someone with a combination of cancer, AIDS and bird flu would need. The day he was going to be fired he put in his immediate resignation citing a hostile work environment, lack of trust, and that the rest of the team truly didn't care about IT. The person who previously had his position decided to come back and now we're actually getting stuff done! FeelsGoodMan

volfkhat

Alls well that Ends well...
lol

Did he even last 90 days?

scaredoftests

Wow! That worked out well.

blatini

volfkhat wrote: »

Alls well that Ends well...
lol

Did he even last 90 days?

Him physically being here, about 4 months. Unfortunately remnants of him still exist. I guess he thought setting all of our windows servers to auto update was a good idea. Just found that one this morning.

JoJoCal19

blatini wrote: »

Him physically being here, about 4 months. Unfortunately remnants of him still exist. I guess he thought setting all of our windows servers to auto update was a good idea. Just found that one this morning.

Oh, I'd recommend doing a full-scale audit of all your systems and configs man. Who knows how far his reverse midas touch went.

scaredoftests

blatini wrote: »

Him physically being here, about 4 months. Unfortunately remnants of him still exist. I guess he thought setting all of our windows servers to auto update was a good idea. Just found that one this morning.

OMG, really?? That is beyond stupid.

Moldygr33nb3an

I lol'ed reading your post OP. Bull**** aside, I have to give him credit for cleverness. Invest 30+ dollars every two weeks, keep a job doing the bare minimum.

But I'm sure it was said before; miss a few deadlines. That will highlight the problem.

UnixGuy

No more Carl JR I guess

Funny thread OP, I'm not surprised at all. This field is full of funny characters

thomas_

He probably read this thread and thought "Oh crap! That's me, I'm about to get canned. I better quit before they can fire me!"

snokerpoker

I worked with a guy like this. He admitted to dumping everything. He would buy donuts and coffee + lunch all the time. He was nice but always came in late and did a horrible job when tasked with even simple items.

Management wouldn't get rid of him because he would do a bunch of grunt work jobs and was totally fine with $15.00/hr

blatini

snokerpoker wrote: »

was totally fine with $15.00/hr

Haha! This guy was making 4-5x that unfortunately. Donuts and lunch from someone making $15 an hour would mean infinitely more than the pho and buy one get ones this guy got us.

Blucodex

blatini wrote: »

Haha! This guy was making 4-5x that unfortunately. Donuts and lunch from someone making $15 an hour would mean infinitely more than the pho and buy one get ones this guy got us.

You were paying $60-75hr for that guy? Where do I send my resume.

scaredoftests

Wow, same here. I want that job too!!

snokerpoker

I'm not joking. Management literally told me- "He'll do e-waste runs, do break fix work, and replace a drive in a server if we need it. Plus he is fine with only making $15 an hour and has not asked for a raise in two years".

Eventually I left that company and found out later he was finally let go. Apparently he formatted a drive on a CEO's laptop without backing it up and it caused them to send the drive to drive savers (Data recovery company) which ended up costing about $4,000.

LOL.

DatabaseHead

And they didn't get any data back either lol. (JK but I bet a lot of it was gone).

Send the Carls Jr guy our way, I am spending ~30 dollars a week on Food trucks, we could use him around here.

TechGromit

Blucodex wrote: »

You were paying $60-75hr for that guy? Where do I send my resume.

More than I make, was this guy a contractor or full time employee? 120k to 150k year?

blatini

I don't know the exact numbers but suffice to say it paid well. He was a FTE.

anhtran35

He prob. got a raise where ever he job hop to.

blatini

He definitely did not job hop. Found out through a friend that he interviewed at my friend's company this past Monday (he was let go ~3 weeks ago). He's actually claiming he's still employed.

I figured he quit because he rationalized it would sound better to say something along the lines of "mutually parting ways" rather than being fired. Not sure why I thought he would have rationalized anything to begin with

Cisco Inferno

Damn i just read this entire thread. Holy Crap.

I bet he wishes he had all that Carl's Jr money he spent.

What industry are you working in Denver?

blatini

We're a small-ish MPS.

Cisco Inferno

blatini wrote: »

We're a small-ish MPS.

I worked at an MSP once. I salute you.

DatabaseHead

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

I worked at an MSP once. I salute you.

You forgot to mention and never again....

volfkhat

I've gotten crazy, stupid EXP at my current MSP.
The work is nonstop; but so are the opportunities for learning.

One week here... feels like "two weeks" anywhere corporate.
It's been 10 months thus far; i plan to stick it out until next summer.

Maybe i just got "lucky" and landed at an exceptionally-run MSP.... but i don't get all the angst directed at MSPs :]