Things or processes that irritate you at work

[BuzzShitbagBobbly]

For me it's when I tell someone that I will send updates e.g. on a payment being made. And then the next day they ask me if I have any update.

OH YES I DO I WAS KEEPING IT SECRET

Meetings about meetings
Meetings about meetings about meetings
Etc

People diary tracking you. I have a colleague who does this, will look under/over the frosted strip of glass of the meeting room to see who you're meeting with and then afterwards ask how it went nosey

Or failing that, pre-emptively ask me about my meetings before I've had them as they've been looking at my calendar. I just find it really rude. DH says he gets this a lot and it's totally normal and fine?

Having to fill in a time sheet where I have to guess what I will be doing for the next day and a bit, and then take notes of what I’m actually doing in that time so that the next time I can identify all the things I didn’t do and swap them for all the things I did do and then take a guess about the next day and a bit.

Friday afternoon we fill in the whiteboard with everyone's meetings so we can see at a glance where everyone is. Only by Monday lunchtime it's all changed and no-one updates the board cos we're all out at those meetings and its easier to check the outlook calendar instead. But we still spend 20 mins every Friday updating the board for next week.

You all work in my office it seems...

I am often gaslit by a team I work with.
Me: "We need to understand xyz"
Them: "We do, blah blah"
Them later: "Tea we need to understand xyz you need to sort this asap"

That's EXACTLY what i was saying you total cnuts and you told me I'm an idiot

We have a senior manager who doesn't read the form they insisted on being put in place and completed for every request for a signature. Total waste of time and energy. I don't sent them stuff directly now, I send it to someone who puts things in front of them and says, "sign here please".

I work in Further Education. All I can say is where do I start!

Time Analysis systems! Argh! Thankfully I'm usually just on one programme so don't have to complete them. Only one client ever made use - they had to be completed properly as the Programme would bring in more resources if we were swamped in a particular area. Other clients aren't interested in the actuals (just complete so it equals 100%) and wouldn't have a (data) clue if any of their team was being burnt out.

I swear if people could cut out the pointless shit they do, half the county would be unemployed. Cant stand office politics, appraisals and feedbacks, pointless meetings that no one cares about and listens and could be an email, meetings about meetings, just all corporate bullshit!

We order items from various places for customers who have standing orders with us.

The standing orders are pulled out every week on the Saturday before they are due and faxed to appropriate supplier.... except half of them don't have fax machines so the whole process has to be repeated on a Monday morning for the ones we miss on a saturday.

Why we can't just do them all on a monday is beyond me.

The Systems Manager in my office is terrified of technology (ironic) and has convinced our MD that the computer systems could wipe at any time (despite doing manual server back ups each day....).

This means that most of us end up triplicating our work. Reports need to be saved to PDF, the data manually input in to a spreadsheet and then, printed and filed.

It drives me absolutely barmy. I'm from a technology background (and spent nearly 10 years in a paperless office) and I'm trying to convince my MD that this is all a madness and a time filler because the Systems Manager has fuck all to do on a day to day basis!

I work for a council, not enough time for a post on what irritates me

Every single invoice that is emailed in must be printed off to make handwritten notes on then rescanned back in to finance system and then duplicate these same notes electronicly. We receive hundreds of invoices every single day.

And breathe - today is my very last day!

The fact that my colleagues wouldn't understand the concept of forward planning if it jumped up and bit them on the arse. This would be manageable if they listened when the bleeding obvious was pointed out to them and didn't expect my team to do all the shit to dig them out of the hole they got into.

I work in a university, if we didn’t have idiotic procedures what would the senior administrators find to do? Nothing is more helpful than having someone who has never set or marked an exam in their lives adminsplain how to do it to those of us who’ve been doing it for decades. We cannot, apparently, be trusted to do any part of our jobs without a four page procedure (which is never audited or reviewed).

Every single invoice that is emailed in must be printed off to make handwritten notes on then rescanned back in to finance system and then duplicate these same notes electronicly.

I once registered online (relevant) to rent a local council garage.
About 6 weeks later, I got a hand-signed letter on official headed paper marked "duplicate", simply telling me they had received my application and would contact me in due course. This had also been sent first class.

I ended up ringing to ask when I might hear about an actual garage and politely queried the "duplicate".

I was abruptly told she printed the originals, signed both, posted one to me and then scanned the other one before disposing of it.

I already had a reference from the online application anyway, so I asked why the letter was even needed; as well as why wasn't I emailed anything to the email I had used when applying.

"Not everyone has email" she crossly said.

I think her name was Karen Jobsworth.

Almost always worked in the public sector so I have a loooong list.

Introduced timesheets. Filled in in 15 minute intervals. Put in manager's drawer, left there.
I spent six months using the same photocopied timesheet, with 30 minutes allocated to completing timesheet. No one ever noticed.

Refusing to let me have software that would shave hours off my job because of the cost implication (about £150).

Introducing mad random policies that every one objected to and they had no intention of carrying out, to distract us from what they were really doing. Then, after a 'consultatation process' costing thousands, backing down as a 'consession',

Wasting millions on a poorly implemented computer system, then proudly announcing they hadn't gone over budget. No, that would because you kept increasing the budget.

Every month, my company diligently sends out details of upcoming public holidays in all our global offices.

Never mind that outlook has the ability to add them directly into calendars, and/or our IT dept could just roll that out centrally.

We don't even get a usable list. We get a screenshot of a spreadsheet with colour coded blocks

Clients who regularly email me updates as to when they're going to bring me their "paperwork" for their tax return.

Rather than waste everyone's time, just get the stuff together and bring in for God's sake!

So many people send me emails "I'm going to get it together this weekend", then a few weeks later it's "Sorry, I had a funeral to go to, I'll do it next weekend", then a few weeks later, "Sorry, I was waiting for a duplicate bank statement, but I've got it now so I'll do it next weekend". On and on it goes. Some people literally send me a dozen or more updates over several months. I could understand it if I was pestering them or sending them reminders, but I don't - these are all just spontaneous emails from them that are completely useless to me!

Then don't get me started when they actually have it all together and are ready to bring it in. Same story, email saying they'll drop it in Monday morning, they don't show, so another email saying sorry, they'll drop it in Friday instead, no show. Then when they eventually do come, they send an email beforehand saying they're on their way, followed by a text saying they're stuck in traffic and will be an hour late. It's not as if they've made an appointment - I really don't care when they come - they can come anytime they want - the office is open 8 hours per day! And after all that, they hand in a small envelope that could easily have been posted or just put through the letterbox.

It drives me absolutely insane. Always the same people. They must need validation for every little thing they do (or don't). Good job the majority of clients aren't like that. Their paperwork just turns up, no fuss, no advance notice.

Break sheets

Each squad has a sheet and one person goes in each slot. There's two on my squad who arrive especially early and grab the sheet as they walk through the door so they get first pick.

Logically I don't really care (not enough to arrive 20 minutes earlier than necessary to get the sheet anyway) morally it fills me with outrage. Making an issue out of it would cause friction that I can't be bothered to deal with so I just let it go and seethe silently

It's a long time ago now but I worked for an ex utility about 20 years ago and if we needed to send something to someone quickly we needed to use a courier rather than normal post. There were about three people in the building who were authorised to approve use of a courier, and you guessed it, they were always ill/on holiday/in a meeting/otherwise unavailable. Eventually one of my colleagues exploded in anger about it (metaphorically speaking) and one of our secretaries was given the power to approve their use. Of course, that still meant we couldn't send one when she wasn't there, but it helped 90% of the time.

Nothing worse than pointless processes that just slow everything down.

In our file we have certain documents that need to be placed in an envelope. We use postage paid envelopes.

I asked if we could use plain envelopes for this seeing as they were never posted and had to sit on the file forever. My request had to go to the manager. He said no as people would get confused.

I work in a different sector but could have written this:

Wasting millions on a poorly implemented computer system, then proudly announcing they hadn't gone over budget. No, that would because you kept increasing the budget.

Yay - the project hasn't gone over budget for the 7th year because they've just thrown another 2 million at it. The off the shelf system would have been less than that to start with. Never mind, the redundancies will balance the books 🤬

Aircon/heating wars.
Natural light/artificial light wars.
No wifi, we're still using ethernet cables.
Cold callers.