Holllleeeey fuck, good thread.
I got one person in particular I could write a book about. Called him "Junior" cause he looked like he could have been Rod Blagojevich's offspring, same always-present dumb look on his face.
Best example is he was outsmarted by a 1 button mouse. He was a claimed "mac expert" but couldn't figure out how to use a Mighty Mouse. He'd keep clicking on the right side bringing up the contextual menu, instead of selecting what he wanted. He accused me of changing the preferences to suit my tastes and to alienate him. Keep in mind, an IT Manager was standing there, two coworkers, and a software engineer for our R&D division. All I did was hook up the keyboard, mouse, and display, then power it up and log it in. Nothing else. The software engineer (who is bald) had to keep his back turned to keep from busting out laughing. You could see his entire scalp turning bright red from him holding his breath.
Seriously, could have tied a piece of string around a rock, told him it was a mouse, and he would have been confused by it.
Same person accused me and my coworker of sabotaging a mail merge terminal so he couldn't use it. IIRC it was like an HP 5700 running Win 7. No matter what he did he couldn't get the screen to work. SPENT 15 MINUTES fucking with it. Finally he blurted out an accusation. I walked over and pressed the power button on the monitor to turn it on.
He'd spend all day surfing an RC car forum, and try to hide it. We'd bust him every single time we walked past. He would be on conference calls with our project managers and their customers, and start arguing with both of them on the phone. That really set off some office people.
One week our office was oppressively hot and humid, and we had to wear office attire. Since maintenance couldn't figure out what was wrong our supervisor gave us permission to wear shorts as long as they were clean and had a nice shirt on. My co-worker and i opted to just wear our normal attire. Junior walks in wearing his black safety boots, white socks with the horizontal stripes around the top near the calf, vertical striped shorts, and a black and white (grayish) horizontally striped shirt, with a Gomer Pyle hat (hats were an absolutely no). I swear it looked like his four year old dressed him.
Maintenance figured out the HVAC problem (someone left a damper open at 100% and it was pulling in the hot and damp August air), and we were told to go back to our normal business casual. He continued to wear shorts for three more days until he was written up by HR. He was told, clearly I might add, numerous times by our supervisor that his attire was not appropriate. He continued to wear the hat even though again, not allowed. One day the VP of Operations asked him about his hat, and he gave some dumb answer. The VP had to actually say, "I'm pointing out your hat to you because it is not allowed. I shouldn't be having to explain this to you after your supervisor and HR have already spoken to you."
I don't know why they wouldn't fire his ass.
Oh, forgot the kicker. When he was hired he was told we were primarily a Windows environment and he was asked if he was comfortable with that since he came from a Mac shop. He said, "yes, no problem with that". The day he started he proclaimed he had never used Windows before in his life.
They should have fired his ass right then and there. Would have saved us from like three years of fucking headaches, stress, and a severely toxic work environment.