Office life- What is your pet hate?

[SuperMeerkat]

Mine has got to be meetings where nothing ever actually gets resolved. Too much time is spent letting everyone have their say and ideas are considered that we then need another meeting to decide on what to do 😡😡 If anyone actually dares to be decisive then everyone looks at them like they’ve just kicked a puppy.

@wineisnecessary, I think having somebody in the office who is subjected to coercive control from a husband who obviously thinks a trip to the toilet is a cunning ploy to have a quick bunk up with a bloke from Accounts doesn't really count as being unprofessional - more being very obviously in need of somebody saying quietly (like the manager) that there is an employee assistance programme and that level of control/monitoring isn't a healthy relationship.

The one I hate the most is one I was guilty of for a short period - the dickhead partner that is always hanging round, waiting for her.

For fuck's sake, just leave the poor woman alone for nine hours a day - she doesn't want you here 'just passing' or 'thought I'd pick you up on the way home' when you're there an hour before her finish time, chatting to the receptionist trying to get information about the people she works with and details of her precise movements during the time she is not directly monitored and waiting to see whether she walks through the door smiling at a male colleague to be able to have a go at her about it later and accuse her of having an affair with him. And, of course, if she gets into trouble about it or loses her job, that's a result for him - he won't stop if she tells him work has a problem, as that'll be her lying to get time alone with the menfolk.

The other one I hate is unnecessary controls over who and how you communicate with others - where you get grief for going to speak to people in person, for example. Yes, an email or phone call is adequate when you genuinely can't leave your desk - but making the effort to find them, rather than expecting them to come to you all the time or essentially issuing orders from afar, is far better.

In the same way, it's shit to have disapproval of you stopping to speak to the site team/cleaners/reception/security briefly when you've finished work and they aren't hugely busy. Two minutes to acknowledge their existence and value. It's not difficult, weird or unreasonable - and everybody benefits in the long run.

Oh I agree @MitziK as I said the manager was there and said nothing so it was awkward for all because he'd speak to us like shit and I wouldn't stand for it so yeah I was more pissed off with my manager for doing nothing . This went on for years I used to try and say it wasn't right how he behaved and I suspect this was why she wouldn't retire . The reason I'm not so sympathetic is because she wasn't very nice to me but I suppose it's all she knows as her husband speaks to her like shit so she thinks it's normal .

Yvonne sounds like a bloody nightmare. I had to laugh at the yoghurt description. My ex used to eat a yoghurt like that, drove me to the point that I could imagine physically hurting him.

People who won’t use the proper systems that we’re meant to use.

‘I’ve set up this Google doc to collect responses’. That’s great, but why don’t you just add them to the fucking spreadsheet I spent hours making?

‘This room looks about the right size for my meeting so I’ll just tell my students to go there’. Or you could use the actual room booking system so you don’t get a scheduled class turning up half way through then come to me all outraged.

I work with academics.

Shared documents

We have to update a monthly forward planner at the end of the month.

Every fucking month 'John' cocks it up
Can't remember where on the shared drive it is
Saves it as a new version so it's out of sync with everyone else
Manages to break some of the formulas even though it's all locked down
Changes the colour coding, it's pretty simple red for stop and green for go. He added blue - wtf does blue mean?

I'm just waiting for the day 'John' manages to delete the whole thing so that I can justifiably kill him with my stapler.

Shared documents are a recipe for disaster. I've seen all kinds of desecration of my (protected) carefully compiled spreadsheets. There's one I went into earlier this week and I don't know which fucker did it but in amongst the rows of data in one of the boxes that is supposed to be blank there was a random -0.98. Fuckers. You're not even supposed to be in that box. That box has nothing for you.

Thermostat wars! Especially today. I still can't feel my fingers 🥶

It's miserable isn't it. I hate being cold. And all the window opening freaks just say "ooh wear a jumper then" like that will sort it out. Wearing a fuck tonne of clothes isn't the same as being warm, you fools. That's why we have pissing heating.

Mrs 'if I had an elephant - she would have a box to put it in'

Drives me mad - always hijacking conversations
Texting/phoning OH to see what they are having for dinner
making social arrangements in work time
eating noisily
sniffing..ffs
I'm fucking busy - so no I do not want to take part in your inane conversation biatch!

pretending to be in the middle of something when the phone rings so she doesn't have to answer it
asking me how to spell something which is for a non work related text!!
the radio - always on the first chance she gets

And all the window opening freaks just say "ooh wear a jumper then" like that will sort it out. Wearing a fuck tonne of clothes isn't the same as being warm, you fools. That's why we have pissing heating.

I know!!!! Wearing fucking thermals and jumpers doesn't stop my hands being numb. Unless I'm meant to type with thick woolly gloves on.

I'm pretty sure that 80% of the reason I left my last job is because of how cold it was. It really gets you down. My current one is so toasty, I love it!

All the overweight people open windows.

In my office.

One guy work with, he is like 14 bales of ganja in his pocket, opens all the windows. The rest of us freezi g.

I'm pretty sure that 80% of the reason I left my last job is because of how cold it was

I brought it up my last appraisal. It gets on my wick people trivialise it into 'things women complain about'. I got so sick of people saying 'oh it's not that cold' while I'm sitting there with blue fingers. In summer I suggested that if we can't agree then we should just turn it off and cope. We don't have any windows, and funny enough nobody was keen on that.

All the window open/closed drama makes me quite glad that other than students there's only me in my classroom (and sometimes a TA).

At least the worst I have to deal with there are claims of "miiiisssss it's boiling!!!! / Freezing!!!! ... Is there a temperature where they have to close the school"

Women do feel the cold more. Higher surface to volume ratio. But it is always the men in charge, or the men feeling entitled to open the windows even though five women have just answered ''well..................'' in answer to their brief token 'nobody objects to me opening this''

@Notawagon unfortunately in our office I'm the only woman complaining. The other woman is the one who complains about it being too hot. Up until this week she was still bare legs. She's not overweight in the slightest, although she is early 60s so maybe stil menopausal.

I'm the age that could be menopausal (49) but although in the summer I experienced the occasional flush, I just sat quietly, waited for them to pass, said nothing!

The main offender in my office (for opening windows), he is overweight but he always wears a woolly hat, benny style, in the office. He is fond of the weed too. I wonder if he took off his woolly hat might he be less inclined to need the window open.

Is it weird that nobody has the nerve to say to him, maybe if you take off your hat you wouldn't mind the window being closed???

If there are any women in my office reading this, they'll know who I mean. He stinks of weed yes [wave]

At least in an office with heaters/windows, you can do what you want to some extent. In my 1st job some people had electric heaters (I had 2) while others had their window open. Wasteful yes....but everyone was happy (mostly).

In my 2nd job at a massive corporate company, there were no radiators or openable windows, just an old air-con system from the 90s. To ask them to change/fix it you had to send an online ticket, which took 2 weeks to get a response. They "fixed" it but either the fix didn't work or it did for a week, then it promptly broke again. They said the office was so old that they couldn't do anything short of kicking us out for a refurbishment. So I left.

Oh and because it was so huge and corporate, you weren't allowed an electric heater because of health and safety. There were even signs next to the microwaves saying the company doesn't accept liability if you burn your food in their microwave! Awful place.

@LolaSmiles. I believe yes, below 15 degrees. Not sure it applies to staff though, just the pupils (?!)

coffee
At 15 degrees we get space heaters put in the relevant classrooms. If the heating goes then we all go home.

Usually the funny cries of human rights, freezing to death, boiling to death are well within the range of normal.

I did enjoy one year a class was saying they wanted snow so we could have a snow day, I said I'd be quite happy with that and then a week later the site was closed due to snow and heating problems/boiler issues (I can't remember now). They took credit for it for months.

People who eat at their desks should be shot.

@NotaWagon I'm 49. My body saves all my hot flushes up for 4am. I was kind of hoping peri-memo would warm me up a but no.