People Who Never Pull Their Weight

People who don’t pull their weight can drive you mad. Even worse are people who do very little but see themselves as overworked.

Many years ago I shared a house with a number of others. One girl constantly complained that she was the only person doing housework. Her “housework” consisted of hoovering her bedroom and the (very short) strip of carpet outside her room. If ever she saw anybody else doing housework she’d say “you and I are the only people who ever clean this place”.

Working with people like this is even more frustrating. In one of my earlier jobs, I had a quiet day and offered to help a much older co-worker. She handed me a stack of papers that needed several hours work. I later discovered this was a monthly task she hated. I was happy to help, but the following month, when the job needed to be repeated (and I was up to my eyes in my own work), she plopped the papers on my desk and said ‘there you go.’ I was too young and too new to say anything. While I struggled to cope with my own workload and the work she had dumped on me, she told me what a great worker she was and how much her bosses appreciated her.

Then there’s the co-worker who is fed up with life/work and spends so much time bitching and complaining, there really isn’t any time to do much else. Such a person is Rachel, one of the characters in my thriller ‘Girl Targeted.’

Rachel is what the Irish call ‘a dosser’. She’s very good at delegating and has a, not always unfounded belief, that she’s being treated very badly. Therefore she watches everyone, compares her workload to theirs and bitches if she feels others are getting preferential treatment. She somehow manages to have far less work than anyone else, yet she is convinced she’s overworked.

If you’d like to find out more about Rachel, check out my thriller ‘Girl Targeted’ here.