Dealing with coworkers can sometimes be as taxing as doing the work itself.

This story involves one bad coworker whose never-ending excuses and questionable work ethic always made trouble.

One day, a snowstorm and a particularly stressful day on the job pushed another coworker to take a stand against their dead weight colleague in the most satisfying way.

Read on for all the details.

Just because I picked you up for work doesn’t mean I’m driving you home.

So I’ve had some terrible co-workers in the past, but one of the worst had to be “Gary.”

There was literally only ONE good thing about Gary.

Describing him to others was always fun.

Any time I went to complain about him to anyone I didn’t work with, I got to start the story like this:

“So I have this coworker, Gary. His name isn’t really Gary, it’s William. He goes by Dimitri.”

Anyone who got that introduction to a “Gary story” would almost always give the exact same literal double-take reaction.

Following along, then a “wait… wut?” moment. It was (and still is) hilarious.

But that’s where anything positive about Gary ends.

They set the scene for the story.

He was hired to do an overnight packout shift with me and another manager.

It had just been us two, but they decided to make this overnight thing every night of the week, so we needed a third person.

During this overnight shift, we were the ONLY employees in the building.

Gary’s work ethic left a lot to be desired.

He was frequently late, and due to a rule about “no one can be in the building by themselves” for safety reasons or something, if he was late that meant whichever manager was working the shift with him had to wait til he arrived before we could go in the building.

They would sometimes miss out on some pay.

He was slow. Very slow.

He was basically untrainable.

We trained him as best we could, encouraged him to ask questions about anything he was unsure about (which he wouldn’t do, he’d just do the job wrong meaning we usually had to fix it).

Even months later when he was well out of training, he’d frequently do tasks incorrectly and SLOW!

On average, he’d get done in 8 hours what it took the other manager 90 minutes to do.

And he was unresponsive.

He’d frequently just ignore work related texts or calls, and have BS excuses as to why he never responded to them (such texts didn’t happen often. It’s not like we had to be ‘on call 24/7, but a simple response AT ANY FREAKING POINT is appreciated).

And until he got SEVERAL talkings to, he’d take an abnormally large amount of time to “get ready” after clocking in, and extra long breaks.

He wasn’t the ideal employee, but they needed the bodies.

We didn’t like Gary. But no one else wanted the overnight shift (besides me and the other manager) so he was the only “third” we would get for a long while.

Well one day (night) it snowed. It snowed quite a lot.

Gary was late, as usual.

I left early to get to work on time. Gary bikes into work (like 2 blocks from the store), so I figured he’d be walking in due to the snow and might be a little behind.

He’s 15 minutes late. I text him for his ETA.

He was quick with an excuse.

Gary: “They haven’t plowed my street yet.”

I begin a text, trying not to let anger get the best of me and use diplomatic workplace appropriate language, addressing the fact that it is 15 minutes after the shift started and he HASN’T LEFT HIS HOUSE YET, and was apparently going to WAIT FOR THEM TO PLOW HIS ROAD!?

And he apparently wasn’t even going to call or text me to let him know this supposed decision.

He bikes, he can’t bike in the snow, so I figured he’d walk.

Gary’s tardiness was going to cost his fellow coworker.

And he hasn’t left yet, and I’m losing overnight pay waiting for him.

But before I can finish my text which was probably just going to be “Wait, so you haven’t even left yet?”

I get another text asking if I could pick him up.

They had to make sure he got to work one way ot another.

I silently fume and curse to myself, but settle for asking his address, and heading over to get him.

Short drive since he was so close, but almost got my car stuck on his unplowed backroads.

On the way back to the store, I begin getting his excuses.

For every excuse Gary made, their coworker had a simple solution.

He can’t bike because it’s snowing. “So walk, it’s not far.” He has a hole in his shoe, his socks would get wet.

“So bring a change of socks with you and change when you get here.”

But then [his] shoe would still be wet, which would get any new socks wet, and he didn’t want to work all night wet socks.

I’ve had to walk and/or bike to work before as well. I’m internally screaming solutions in my head.

If he can’t be on time, her could at least be communicative.

I was mentally screaming: “Then at least CALL OR TEXT ME so I know what’s going on instead of having to ask where you are 15 minutes after you should have been here!”

But finally I just kinda bite my tongue and try to will my blood pressure to lower.

Once they finally arrive at work, things don’t go as planned.

Cherry on the cake was, because of the snow, our order didn’t show up that night. We didn’t actually end up having to come in at all.

But we couldn’t know that until we got to work as all dialog with distribution could only be done via the “work phone” in the store. Oh well.

We wouldn’t even find out for certain “the truck isn’t coming” for a few hours, so we ran backstock while we waited. ALL the backstock.

The next day, they fill another coworker in on Gary’s incompetence.

Several hours later when the opening shift arrived, one of the assistant managers (who I was a bit closer with) was one of them. I’ll call him “Erik.”

By this point, we were pretty much out of work we could reasonably do.

So I filled Erik in on how that night started, and we shared some mutual hatred for Gary.

They had to find a way to stick it to Gary.

I also filled him in on… it’s a stretch to call it a “plan,” but more of a simple “fact”: I wasn’t going to drive Gary home.

I let Gary know we didn’t have any more work we could really get done since the truck wasn’t coming, and if he wanted he could clock out early and head home.

He clocked out. Then puttered around in the break room, clearly waiting for me to offer him a ride home.

Little did Gary know, they had no intention to offer.

That wasn’t going to happen.

I was ticked that I HAD to pick him up in order to get into the building without potentially ruffling any feathers for “working in the building alone.”

I wasn’t driving his lazy *** home. He’s a grown adult.

Once again, there are several reasonable alternatives Gary could take.

He could Uber, he could take the 10 minutes to walk home, and when he gets home he could take off his wet shoes&socks because he’s at home now.

We had plastic bags and rubber bands he could wrap over his shoes if he really felt like he needed them.

But I wasn’t volunteering this information.

They bought more time, making Gary wait even longer.

I hit Erik up for any remotely busywork I could do to make it seem like I still had important shift manager stuff to do.

Erik laughed along, and Gary killed time in the break room until I finally decided to head out.

Finally, Gary just came out and asked.

Clocking out, he finally asked if I could give him ride home. To which he got a very blunt, “No.”

Best part is… while the actual reason was sheer pettiness, the actual excuse I gave him was sound.

The snow had kept coming down. I nearly got my car stuck on his unplowed road getting him several hours earlier.

THAT was just annoying, but I wasn’t getting my car stuck to take him home now. He could walk.

They’ve dealt with Gary enough. It was nice to finally left him face the consequences of his laziness.

I’ve got literally dozens of stories about Gary/William/Dimitri, one of the slowest, laziest, most incompetent, not to mention pointlessly pointlessly belligerent coworker/employees I’ve ever had.

But 99% of the time I tried to remain as professional as possible.

It might have been just a simple “No, I’m not giving you a ride,” but this was that 1% time I was as petty and spiteful as possible about it.

Telling someone who’s been grinding your gears off is one of the best feelings.

What did Reddit have to say?

This commenter has a clever way of showing two people can play the “not caring” game.

Innocent employees don’t deserve to miss out on pay due to other’s incompetence.

Gary/William/Dmitri needs to learn the value of a little grit!

Work ethic and manners can be taught if you have the patience for it.

His entitled behavior finally caught up to him.

He was left stranded in the snow with no one to blame but himself.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.