You know you're old when you start to think, "When I was your age, I would have NEVER acted that way." This describes how I feel to a T with one of my co-workers. I work at a small staff non profit, which means that in general you have to get along with your co workers or it can be pretty painful.
So there is a co worker, the only male on staff who is under 30. We'll call him Loafer, for the sake of his privacy. So Loafer started with us roughly a year ago, as a temp employee. My boss thought he was "fabulous" and wanted him to stay along, mostly because it was the choice of hiring him, or hiring someone new. He made a choice to move on because he was interested more in politics than our line of work.
During our last time together, I had a conversation with him about returning to work with us in any future capacity. Basically I told him that if he wasn't going to participate in "life" and arrive to work on time, produce quality work that he should do the organization and my boss a favor and stay away. Of course he didn't make the right decision and came back. He claimed he was going to be "great" at his job, and was really super excited. How did he show "excitement" in the last two months, he hasn't made it through one full week of work. He's had a variety of maladies such as strep throat, uncle getting a pacemaker, mother allegedly having hepatitis, and now someone committed suicide. Obviously, I don't wish all these things to happen to one person, but I am highly doubtful that they did.
Do you have a co worker who needs to be fired? I did get my boss to write him a letter stating that he needs to get his shit together, otherwise he would be fired. So there is that, I suppose. I think he'll get his act together and then go back to his old ways personally. I really can't wait till he moves on whether it's by his choice or ours. He's just deadweight that I would like to relieve our organization of!