So, why are folks seemingly deliberately bad at their job? There are a number of reasons behind this.

The most clear-cut explanation is that the person is completely incompetent and is thinking with anything else other than their brain. And, sometimes, training and onboarding as well as meetings don’t really help. Because there is no cure for stupid. Well, education is, but you gotta consider the cost-benefit ratio.

Another thing that makes someone a bad employee is their tendency to do a no-show. What is worse is when they are also unreachable. Calling in, not picking up the phone, not responding to communication—all of these mean that the worker is irresponsible and not committed to the job they’ve been hired to do. Sometimes, things like addiction might complicate things further.

Some folks are also compulsive or habitual liars. Either that, or they always have an excuse up their sleeves. Regardless, someone who’d rather lie or make excuses instead of doing a job right, doing it at all, or learning to do it and making something of themselves is a time-waster from a business perspective.

People like this don’t take responsibility for their actions, but work is something that demands taking ownership, so this is another incompatibility that leads to poor results.

Sometimes, people might be careless by nature and fail to follow directions right from the get-go. Now, it might be a simple case of “I didn’t read it” and doing so might resolve the issue, but some might not have the aptitude to internalize it and would continue to make the same mistakes. In turn, their lack of consideration, ignoring protocol and taking shortcuts leads to headaches for everyone else.

And, sometimes, it’s just the case of a bad attitude. They don’t give a gaw-giggity about the customers, the merchandise, the quality, nothing. This often means they are unwilling to collaborate, let alone to do a good job, and even more so when their arrogance and asocialism doesn’t allow them to draw the right conclusions and to become better employees.

Besides being innately bad, there might also be external factors for why someone is bad at their job.

Being poorly paid is at the top of the list, but it becomes worse when the employee also feels like they are stuck there having to suffer the bad paycheck without any exit strategy.

Having a bad boss, being overly managed and underappreciated do not help in the quality of the work being done. Why do a good job if the boss isn’t going to be happy about it anyway? Either that, or it’s about quantity, not quality that pushes employees to assume different work priorities. That also likely kills the passion for work somewhere along the way.

There might also be other factors at play—factors like being stuck with poor job security or not being able to sort out your work-life balance.

An employee will never be a good one if their needs aren’t met to a sufficient degree, and that means reassuring them that their job is not at stake and encouraging self-care rather than min-maxing how things are done.

And if it’s none of the above, chances are it’s laziness.

While laziness breeds more laziness and it can become a habit, habits can also be broken. It’s not something people are born with, but rather a behavior that can be phased out. The idea is to learn to be industrious: do things that energize you (sleep, exercise, etc.), work first and reward yourself later, and visualize productiveness (make it tangible and reflect upon it). That’s at least a good start.