What coworker will you always remember? Why?

I worked in a grocery store. One of my coworkers was a woman in her late 50's. Let's call her Gladys.

Gladys would spend half her day outside on the ramp smoking. Even when the store was busy and the rest of us were working our asses off to keep the lines at the registers moving.

She would walk around the store with her hands in the pockets, and having long chats with coworkers or customers about stuff not related to work.

When I called for her through the walkie talkie because the line wast getting long (our store had a policy about avoiding lines of more than 2 people) she would come walking over the registers after a few minutes, not hurrying at all. She would then yell "but this is not a long line!"

The worst part was that she would always tell the rest of us how to do our jobs. When I was stocking the shelves she would follow me around the store to correct whatever I was doing. Even the most simple things she would know how to do better. "Don't pile bananas like that, do it like this" and then she would laugh.

When I asked Gladys about how to do something I hadn't been trained in, she would reply "it's really simple" and leave it at that.

One time a detail about our work routine changed when she had a day off. A few days later she tried to tell it to me. "I know, I was here when we started doing this a couple of days ago" I told her. She continued explaining it to me like it had been her own brilliant idea.

The shelves were once running low on a certain sale item, and I told her I would go to the back to get some more. "No there's no use in that, there is no more in the back!" she yelled at me. I knew there was, because I had just been there and seen it, so I went and got it. When I showed it to her she just ignored me.

Gladys never smiled at customers, unless they were her friends. Her husband and her mother were really rude customers.

TL;DR: Followed me around the store to correct everything I did, yelled at me in front of customers, never did any actual work herself, just spent the day smoking and bitching. I try my best to never become a Gladys.

/r/AskReddit Thread