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.

People who piss of early out the office or work from home but leave their office doors open to make people think they are at work. Lazy arses that don't read actions of meetings and come to the next meeting having done f a.

Unnecessary desk shite. Photos of the grandkids, dog, cat, husband. Cuddly toys, inspirational quotes.

Live. Laugh. Loath

The holder of the purse strings who makes you feel guilty for spending money every time you go to the office to ask for the credit card.

Senior management who forget urgent deadlines they have and then spring them on you.

People who stay in their own silos when it comes to work.

Mitzik post at 18:11 was spot on.

I'll second the people asking for donations for a collection for the boss's wife, who 's broke a fingernail, when the boss never ,ever puts into collections even for staff who've worked there for years and are seriously ill.

People who ask you a question i.e. how to do some kind of process, then proceed to argue with your answer or go and ask someone else who gives exactly the same answer - if you know better than me or don't believe I know, don't fucking ask me 😠😠
Also, I've been working in my job now for over six months, people know me, know my name, I'm no longer the 'new girl' so how can they not fathom that my desk is no longer 'the spare' desk. I leave my desk for a second and come back to someone sat there 'just making a quick call', in fact they'll make said 'quick calls' whilst I'm sat there, they'll come over and just start rummaging through my desk drawers just looking for a pen or similar. The paperwork I'm dealing with is confidential, I am trying to work, you have a staff workbook (yes a school), go away!!

Martyrs.
They come into work crippled with illness, bravely soldier on and then judge you for taking time off when you inevitably catch it.

My old boss who used us for free childcare. She would bring her coughing, puking sick children in to the office and then fuck off for meetings all day with her phone off.

The 'overseer', not in anyway a manager or even someone related to my work. But this person felt it necessary to breathe down my neck and talk me through what I was doing (looks like you're about ready to press send there) even though they had no fucking clue what I was doing. A formal complaint when in after they sputtered scalding hot tea down my back.

The woman who is perfectly competent but ONLY if she performs a running commentary of everything she is doing until your head is battered and you go to bed each night dreaming about the precise wording of every letter and email she sent that day.

Yvonne’s twin sister, who eats and eats and eats. The office fridge is so full of her stuff she has a shelf to herself, leaving two shelves for the other 59 people who work here. That’s before we get to the multipacks of crisps, the nuts, the endless, endless biscuits. Then she goes out at lunchtime and comes back with six packs of Thornton’s mini millionaire shortcake because it was “on special”. She has to go out herself now because we no longer say “I’m nipping to the shops, anyone want anything?” as we’ve learned the hard way that oh yes, she always wants something. We used to come back doubled over like a Buckaroo about to spring under the weight of her shopping. And her demands and preferences were so convoluted and precise - “will you get me some crisps, but not Walkers and not cheese and onion, pickled onion is okay but not if they’ve only got Seabrookes in which case get me...” which is hard to believe given that she eats ABSOLUTELY FUCKING EVERYTHING.

People who complain about being SO busy, and delegate stuff to you because they’re SO busy, yet literally every time you go to speak to them about the work they’ve only half-explained to you, they‘re on their phone to their husband/kid/other kid/kid’s school.

I hold my hand up to being the annoying person who asks what the temperature is like outside if someone comes back and I’m about to go out though. In my defence I have Reynauds so I know if Jennifer says it’s a bit chilly then I’ll definitely need a jacket and gloves because Jennifer is always warm and opening windows, but if three non-Jennifers all say it’s gorgeous out there then I’m probably safe without.

I worked in a company where the CEO's wife and ex-wife both worked there - he started seeing the current wife when she joined the company, while married to the ex-wife...

His ex-wife just took the complete piss - came in at 11, sat with her screen locked reading a book and taking personal phonecalls. Went for a long lunch then left at 2!

In a year of sitting near her I learned about all the plumbing and leak issues in her house, what her mum's had for lunch every single day, her husband's blood test results, and her dog's diarrhoea. If she was any other employee she would have been fired years ago...

Oh, I've never given money to a single collection apart from when my office best friends left. No way am I spending my salary on buying tat for people I hardly know & will never see again when I leave the company.

Christmas party.
Don't want to spend £30 out of my own pocket to hang out with people I work with.

Team building days (shudders)

Fuck spending your own money on a works Christmas do!

Our company pays for ours and most of us still don’t want to go

Open planning allowing the dick swinging big gobs to be heard braying across the entire space.

People microwaving fish.

Hoarding the ‘good’ coffee capsules.

The office radio that is guaranteed to play a blaring ad for some treatment for erectile dysfunction whenever a gentleman of a certain age is standing at the front counter. And he and I have to have a conversation (with eye contact) while we both pretend not to hear it.

Having a manager who disagrees with staff working from home occasionally but then works from home himself most of the week and then can’t be reached.

Ifwisheswerefishes*

Ifwisheswerefishes HaHa ! The office band.

I have found my people.

The people who trots out 'well it's if your face fits isnt it' every time someone who has worked their butt off gets a promotion. These people always think they are somehow more deserving, despite remaining just about on target for years (no signs of exceptional performance) kicking off at every tiny perceived slight, constantly stirring gossip constantly, going to the union about tiny minor things that have nothing to do with them and are not union territory, then complaining about how shit the union are when the union tell them its not in their remit, but continuing to pay their subs, never ever helping out to cover AL/sick and complaining about being asked despite it being a once in a blue moon instance where they are actually asked and all of the promotion opportunities requiring the same level of flexibility (which is not much! One day every 6 months maybe)

Lunch time and my colleague has (whilst I am TRYING TO CHEW) "ooh you're having a sandwich? How's the diet? It's cold isn't it? What time are you in until?"
I don't get it. How can I eat and talk? or am I missing something? I don't even reply, just kind of go mmm and still they carry on asking questions

@ItIsWhatItIsInnit

Oh jeez, the buying of tat! Birthday AND Christmas Always some cheap shit thrown together from Poundland, that you then have to feign delight over. I'd rather it all stopped and we just put it towards nice refreshments

When you work in a three-person office, and another person in that office works flexi-time, if you're the only person in when you go to lunch, please don't lock up and take the key with you.

We have about 10 meting rooms and each has a slightly different IT set up which means it’s a nightmare getting Skype or video conference calls to work. Embarrassing as we do a lot of client meetings remotely and it always takes an age to get the IT to work.

We also have a hot desking policy but not enough desks to go around which means people often doubling up or using the break out areas that don’t have proper IT set up. Around a dozen directors have their own separate offices with desk, table and room for coat stands etc. Fine, except they are the employees most likely to be out at client offices, external meetings etc, meaning a high proportion of time their huge offices are empty whilst the rest of us squish up together.

Some are thoughtful and leave their offices unlocked with a notice saying people are free to use them, but most lock theirs up.

The dickhead who insisted on having all his phone calls on loudspeaker in an open plan office.

The boss's pet employee who strolls in late every morning, takes extra long lunch breaks and leaves early every evening. She spent most of her time boasting about how hungover she is and avoided redundancy in her section because she was shagging one of the managers.

People who ask your advice/opinion on something & then argue with the answer that you give - if you already know why are you asking?

Noisy eating, don't really care about smelly eating though

Tea/ coffee rounds - the source of so much angst, so much passive aggressive huffing and so much bad feeling. If you want a drink, GET ONE. People's thirst levels and workloads rarely align so there's always someone who thinks they make more rounds than everyone else, and always someone who only wants 2-3 cups a day but feels like they need to have one hourly to keep the rounds even.

When I am Queen of the Universe, these will be one of the first things that gets banned.

Meetings - people cancelling at the last minute when I've travelled a long way or organised other things around it. Also, people who don't follow the agenda in long meetings. It's there for a reason, stick to it and we all might get out on time

Lunch - people who chat to me, people who ask me to get them something at the shop instead of using their own lunch hour to get it (it's always something complicated as well - just fuck off!), people who make huffy comments about people's professionalism because they take their lunch (the people doing the huffing are never, ever the ones who are the most productive)

Useless office sniping. Everyone works here, everyone needs to be able to get along at a surface level and work effectively. If you can't do that, perhaps you need a new job

On the other hand I can zone-out loud people, don't mind smelly food (as long as it's in the designated canteen/ dining area and not at your desk), and couldn't care less who's in 5 minutes later or out 5 minutes earlier or takes a lunch break of 1hr 5 mins on ocassion as long as they're productive.

Oooh also people who don't use a full ream of paper to fill up photocopier trays and people who expect me to be their personal IT helpdesk. If you want to know how to do something Google is your friend!