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Posted on 11/11/2025 11:10:45 AM PST by nickcarraway
How do we call out freeloaders at work without causing drama?
This colleague seemed like the perfect team member: Friendly. Easy to talk to. Always ready with an emoji reaction in the group chat or a cheerful: "Sure, I can help!" when tasks were assigned. Yet somehow, their work never quite got done.
Reports arrived half-completed, tasks were quietly pushed aside, and when deadlines loomed, there was always an excuse – a miscommunication, a family commitment, a "just need your quick help to finalise this" message. When the project finally succeeded, they were the first to claim credit. I smiled along, telling myself it wasn't worth making a fuss – everyone's busy, after all. Still, the irritation lingered, even though we're no longer at the same company.
WHAT IS A FREELOADER?
A freeloader, said Mr David Blasco, country director at recruitment agency Randstad Singapore, is "someone who intentionally takes advantage of others' efforts or organisational resources to do their work for them". "(They) rely on colleagues to pick up their slack and may even claim credit," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
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The best way to prevent such behavior are clearly defined individual tasks.
They are completed on time or they are not.
Excuses may be given to future employers—not present ones.
Lol.
A former work friend and I had a colleague like this - named "Steven." We called it "pulling a Steven."
It was a large corporation and we could not figure out what the guy did. He had some dotted-line reports to people elsewhere, but never figured out who watched or evaluated him.
He was always attending conferences and meetings, you'd see his (usually bland) opinions on emails, he was always well-dressed, and he would flit in-and-out of the offices. He didn't have customers that we knew of, he didn't work in operations or implementation as far as we could tell. He was always on various "work teams," but If he disappeared immediately, it would affect no one else's job whatsoever.
I've seen in the military, in academia, in congregations and even clubs and families.
Good managers can handle this sort of problem quickly and easily. It’s not hard at all.
But good managers are hard to find these days. In my experience, a lot of the freeloaders are in management positions going on up the chain and none of them want to call out the others, or do anything about the worker bee freeloaders.
When I was in management, I had a terrible freeloader on my team. I put together a plan to “resolve” the issue and went to my boss to get it approved. I got into trouble for that. The “proper solution” was basically to ask the freeloader to stop being a freeloader. Doing more than that was definitely frowned upon. After that, I stopped caring very much and I moved on.
Freeloaders don’t survive long in a genuinely performance oriented organization, and any problems that exist at the bottom start at the top. In any moderately sized group, the leader is familiar with the performance metrics of every member, and in very large organizations, systems are in place to assure that mid-level management are held accountable for everyone under them.
If you don’t know who isn’t performing, then YOU are not performing.
I worked with a girl who looked busy all the time — practically frazzled. Then I realized she was a master at shuffling paper. LOL!
The sweetest person ever. You couldn’t even get mad.
This person would fit right in with the highly paid meteorologists. For years I have pointed out their insane vocabulary
Maybe, perhaps, chance of, partly.
They interchange partly sunny and partly cloudy all the time.
If I used this vocabulary in my job, the boss would come back with "there is a chance of no paycheck."
You are likely in error by castigating the meteorologists.
In your small and imperfect world, you demand certainty. There is no certainty and there certainly is no meteorological certainty. You must learn that uncertainty, the lack of certainty, is ok.
You would do well to educate your self and learn to read and understand the constantly changing radar graphics that we are so privileged to have available.
“ The best way to prevent such behavior are clearly defined individual tasks”
So simple
Who enforces the clearly defined tasks?
The layers of manipulation and the resistance to doing their share of the work is so clearly demonstrated employers have to be practicing behavioral specialists as well and honest people with integrity plus have a HR department willing and able to back them up against an employee that, since she has a good deal going on and has so much experiential people on former jobs hating her, she is very valuable to the employer as she is not ever going to leave.
The people who can’t do her job as well as do their own drop like flies around her
While she sits and sits. She comes back with whataburger and grows and grows.
She is out of control and she will never leave.
You hit the nail on the head. These types seem to get promoted and the problem becomes permanent.
The best way to prevent such behavior are clearly defined individual tasks.
..................................
Agreed. I’m retired but have a part time job with a lot of younger people who just stand around. I do my job then leave early so they can’t pressure me to do their tasks as well.
It all comes down to management but even competent managers are often rare birds.
I had so many managers who were promoted because they were good at their last job. Which was not management.
Knowing how to get a team to work together and get the most out of all in the group is not a common skill. And most managers are afraid to make waves. Which makes it much worse.
I went to my last manager because I was running into a roadblock with another office. I was authorizing bills to be paid and checks were not being cut. They had all the paperwork but they just were not doing it. They were cutting the checks a week or two after the authorization was sent. As we were on 10/2 with most of our vendors this was a major problem.
I was told that I needed to get them to do their job.
I was suppose to make an accounting clerk, half way across the country, do their job by..... apparently nagging at them. He refused to talk to their manager. This was "my problem to solve".
I said ok, since corporate policy seemed to be net 30 rather then 10/2 I would just inform our vendors. He said that would be fine. I got it in writing.
I went back to my office and called a headhunter and said I was interested in that job he had called me about.
I was not around at the next quarterly meeting but I understand that there was a lot of screaming.
That’s quite similar to what I experienced. The “help” you get from leadership is “Just solve it”. That’s fine if you can fire the problem, hire and train a replacement and just move ahead. But if you do not have the power to hire and fire? Well ... just solve it.
Good people can move on to a new job quickly. I moved on quickly. The problem stayed behind for the next guy to just “solve it”.
I stopped whining about that many years ago - when I stop being part of that 20%, you can take me out back and shoot me.
My last company (before I retired) managed to have clearly defined tasks and total accountability for all professional employees.
We had smart managers—and they would not accept any excuses.
This is not hard.
Very late in my career I had an Indian H1B assigned to me. He never finished anything or the task was poorly done. I had to fix his work to complete the project. When I finally had enough and complained he called me a racist. Maybe I shouldn’t have said how did I get the only lazy, stupid Indian out of a billion.
DEI expands this.
It wouldn't be that way if management didn't want it so.
Sounds like our politicians.
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