Troublesome Coworker

Im affraid i have to go with nihil on this one. He has to be with an exec somewhere (or havesomthing on them?) if he isnt toast and is bad as you say he is.

The problem with this type of job is that he has no individual responsibility. he is there to help out the team, so when he slacks the team has to pick up the crap and keep going. Send him friendly emails asking him to not spend so much time on the phone for non job related tasks becasue it is causing you to not be able to do your job. BE NICE about it. CC the boss(es). Keep doing this. Talk to the bosses explaining where he lacks. Remind them that they are wasting money by having him there (nothing gets to an exec faster than a threat to his bankroll).

Is it ever just you two covering the desk? if so call in sick one or two days. that way no one is there to pick up his slack.

now if all that doesnt work...smack the guy with a baseball bat.

Spyrus:

Set his host file to point to www DOT sex DOT com,playboy, hustler, etc. Then let websense do the rest.

valhallen:

What can I say but BRA- F***ING-O!

thank you, thank you

/me takes bow

:rofl:

open a shell on his computer and net send him messages form his own box when he's doing something he shouldn't. like "Browsing the net on company time?" or "Stop talking on the phone and get to work".

or you could be less constructive and change his default font to white

To those of you showing concern... thanks, the kid is more or less filling well filling a position i guess is the best way to put it. I've done some research and he have any connections to anyone here and I know his boss (was also my boss) pretty well. He answered all the interview questions pretty solid but I'm thinking he was prepped.

I love some of these ideas and will definitely use them. I really like the mouse pointer idea. Its just hard to catch his computer unlocked.

I am now on the same level as his boss so I am stressing that his boss (friend of mine) go ahead and give him the come to jesus talk to get him rolling in the right direction.

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take a screenshot of his desktop and set it as the wallpaper, remove all icons and watch as he clicks again and again on an 'icon' which is actually just a picture on his desktop.

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Bah. That was mine, lol. Once a guy deleted the folder that I had moved all his icons to after resetting the wallpaper, and in doing so deleted all his important documents a a bunch of other stuff. Then he *still* didn't realize what had happened and figuring that his computer was broken, called me to fix it (oh the irony). I told him what had happened (conveniently omitting the part about who had done it out). He was less than happy...

Another time I took all the keys off my roomate's keyboard and switched them all around and he had fits trying to fix it. He's a horrible typist anyway, and he borrowed mine (which also had the keys all switched around) to use as a reference to fix it. Three hours later I told him that wasn't the best of ideas. You could try that one. ^_^

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Another time I took all the keys off my roomate's keyboard and switched them all around and he had fits trying to fix it. He's a horrible typist anyway, and he borrowed mine (which also had the keys all switched around) to use as a reference to fix it. Three hours later I told him that wasn't the best of ideas. You could try that one. ^_^

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Great idea but most people who spend long times behind a pc know how to type without even looking at the keyboard so it won't be a big problem putting them back on.

Here are some of mine (harmless):
-At my school they use some program that lets them monitor the pc of the students. I am sure that someone here will know some similar program. Install in on his pc and take control over it. Let it go to some pages your not allowed to go on during work time :D

-Switch the big button on the back of his pc to off so it doesn't get power (that what it for right?¿)

-Delete windows or configure it that way that you need a boot disk.

-Delete al his character type's expept the symbol ones.

-Unplug his keyboard.

Just some harmless ones, we don't want to get caught now do we :rolleyes:

keezel I did the screenshot one on a mac in college once.
i was off the day it was discovered (thankfully dont think i could have kept a straight face) apparantly tho the lecturer was trying to fix it for 30mins before calling a tech - tech tried for another 30 before calling down _another_ tech

the pair of them tried different things for an hr before taking it away for 'repair'
which prolly means a full format and reinstall - oops

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the pair of them tried different things for an hr before taking it away for 'repair'

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Yeah, I was downright amazed when I learned that such a simple prank like that could cause so much damage. I really did feel badly about the guy's loss of documents... I haven't tried that particular one since then. The scary part is that I wonder if I would have done the same if it had happened to me. Assuming I'd never heard of it before, there's a good chance I would have freaked out and done something equally retarded.

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great idea but most people who spend long times behind a pc know how to type without even looking at the keyboard so it won't be a big problem putting them back on.

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True, but it worked well in my dorm. :) Surprisingly few people could type without looking at their keyboards. I made a ton of money from typing and proofing papers for people. I rearranged the keys on my own keyboard for my own good (to break my own habit of looking down every now and then) and as a simple extra security precaution. Sometimes I'd forget to put the pw up and walk out of the room, and people would pretend to be me on AIM. :rolleyes: Rearranging the keys on my keyboard helped a bit because it typically increased the time it took people to type a message and could even double the number of typos, and anyone that knew me at all from IM's would catch on pretty quickly that it wasn't me. :D

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Originally posted here by Spyrus
I work the IT department of a pretty good size company, and I work in the same area as our help desk guys... well we just hired on a new contractor, 6 months. His main job is supposed to be answering phone calls and passing them on to the 3 other guys that work the phones and physically go fix things.

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Hire me.

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Well this past week, his boss doesnt seem to care that this kid is an idiot, and he usually lets the phone ring 3 times before he answers it (the rest of us answer after or during the first ring) HIS SOUL JOB IS TO ANSWER THE PHONE....

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I'd unplug it but, you know.

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well whatever, well the last 2 days he has been talking on the phone for like an hour at a time and searching for a new car.... well this infuriated me cause now im answering phone calls and crap..

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Re-Attach your ****ing balls man. Set up something so no matter what he looks for online it goes straight to tubgirl. And if you can make management want PDAs or something wireless. This is real fun.

What you do is track the boss so that when he goes near this new guy, you force a picture of his Wife's head pasted over a porn star's body (You can do this in a lot of image editing suites.) and then sit back and watch.

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Then I decided this wasnt enough I fired up command prompt and typed the following

shutdown -s -m \\hispcname -t 01

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Pffft, Iwould have his box set up to send email to his boss every 200 key strokes by now.

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For tomorrow I plan on disabling his port on the switch and making him tone it out to figure out why its not working then when he comes back (inevitably a few HOURS later) ill reactivate it walk over to his computer and act like hes retarded (ill do a ipconfig /release and renew) :D

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Get new hardware, have him set it up. Wear gloves and stuff it with a petrol soaked rag and blaze it.

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Now i am looking for any more NONdestructive ideas for what I can do to discourage this kid from screwing around since they wont can him

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Pussy, set his house on fire.

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ps: this is like a real life BOFH

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No it's not. You said NON desctructive. That little bastard's chair would be hooked into a mains outlet by now and his testicles would be twitching by now.

Get a metal ruler, they are common on desks and conduct electricity very well, if you need more info than this, you're going to have to pay for it.