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.

Meetings, oh how I hate them! Most of them would have been better as a memo/email as they required no input anyway. Also colleagues who, without fail, every lunchtime will ask me if I'm coming to lunch. Even if I'm already out of my chair. It drives me batty.

Open office stand-up meetings
Because they last 15 minutes, it's seen as perfectly OK for everyone to yell.
And for people to be cut off mid-sentence with a 'STOP! Blockers!"
Then for the mahoosive whiteboard or screen they've gathered around to be trundled through the open office with its squeaky wheel.
Then for everyone in said stand up, who didn't have time for a meaningful discussion because the meeting only lasted 15 minutes, to continue the discussion, at volume, around some poor sap's desk in the open office.
At which point, they're usually overtaken by the Phone Yellers who are discussing their actions for the next stand up meeting at considerable volume.
This then lasts until the Loud Dieters castigate me for having a satsuma or whatever because Sugar is a Poison.
I dream of a corner office - not for any great desire for power, but I'd love a door I could close...

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon is shouting "stop" a thing in a stand up?

Linda, I really don't think the computer's broken because you can't log on, I think you've forgotten your password. Yes Linda, but it only seems to happen to you, on an almost daily basis, and no matter which PC you're on. Yes Linda, you really must be unlucky with computers, nothing to do with you typing in the wrong password.

Yes Linda, I'll have a look as to why the spreadsheet (which I built) is not working. Well Linda, you must have done something wrong in order for it to not work. Linda, do you remember exactly what you did because I have no idea how you could have got the spreadsheet this broken. No Linda, it's used multiple times a day by different people without issue, I don't think it's the spreasheets fault. Yes Linda, you just have terrible luck with spreadsheets, definitely not user error.

Team building away days (we have them Every. Fucking. Month)

People who can't communicate concisely and use 500 words when they could've used 50

All of the noise and pointless chit chat

Loud crunching of crisps

People getting in the lift to go up one floor (I work on the 8th so that's my excuse)

My junior colleague who offers me a cup of tea Every. Fricking. Hour. Even though I have said to him I don't drink tea so don't worry about asking me if I want one. FFS!

This is why I work from home 2 days a week....bliss, no people!

Oh we have a Linda! "Is your Outlook calendar not adding invitations?" No Linda it's fine, you just haven't sent it. "My laptop won't start again." Have you plugged it into the right socket in the desk dock, Linda? Remember how I showed you last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, and... "No, I haven't got the email. Has everyone else got it? The system hates me." Have you connected to the meeting room wi-fi Linda? Remember how I showed you last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, and...

Men

@ItIsWhatItIsInnit Phew, glad it’s not just me then!

Loud cereal eaters.

People who regularly work above and beyond their contracted hours for no particular reason and so set an unsaid expectation that everyone in the workplace should do this. Creates a real race to the bottom of replying to non-urgent emails at 11pm, taking non-urgent phone calls on non-working days etc.

People (in my experience always men) who can talk and bullshit confidently but have no skills or knowledge to back it up. They frequently move companies when it becomes clear they add no value and go on to do the exact same elsewhere. My ex colleague who did this moves companies pretty much every 18 months (according to LinkedIn) and I just know it’s because that’s when he gets ‘found out’!

I took redundancy a few months ago and reading this thread has made me want to put off finding a new job just a bit longer!

Constant diet talk.

Huge printers that are so complicated that when stuff gets jammed, you can't get it out, you have to call out the bloody engineers
.

Any conversation that starts “TSS can you just...”

At that point I rip up the to do list for that day and cancel my personal trainer.

hopeishere - no idea if it's an official Thing as such, but apparently to be Modern and Effective a stand-up can only last 15 minutes, so the Scrum Master or whatever the hell a project manager calls themselves these days is apparently 'empowered' to cut off any team member who looks like they might exceed their allotted time.
Now, on the plus side it does stop the droney meetings, but I could cope with a low drone a bit more than a high-octane yell first thing in the morning.

TSS - 'just' is indeed a four-letter word!

Instant messaging. Send me an email if you want something.

The overuse of 'urgent/asap' or the high importance flag (for every email)

The phrase 'quick question...' and then of course the question is quick, but the answer required is often not!

Oh no I eat at my desk loads... And email people sitting next to me because I like having things in writing/want to allow them to get to it in their own time rather than distract them there and then.

Mine are collections, and probably celebration cards in general. Can't be bothered with it.

Passive aggression.

Regular catch up meetings for no particular purpose. I have four per week with roughly the same group of people with a few variations. Meetings without agendas in general.

Providing someone with the tools/information they need to do something for them to assume you'll do it all.

They're talking about introducing hot desking, which sounds awful.

Meetings across lunch (think from 11 - 2) where no food is provided.

I am so, so, glad I no longer work in an office.....

Those endless meetings, when people try to score points off each other, those endless data tables to dissect, people trying to impress the big boss....

Those 20 item plus meeting agendas..........

Reader, I left and did not look back....

My old boss that I sat next to:

• heavy smoker so she stank
• to cover the smell she used cheap perfume and impulse
• ate chewing gum all day with her mouth open
• sniff sniff cough sniff sniff
• slurped tea
• rubbed deep heat onto her own back throughout the day
• used the floor as a filing cabinet
• brushed her teeth at her desk and at kitchen sink which was in the corner
• ate crisps loudly for lunch
• talked with food in her mouth

She owned the business.

Instant messaging is generally used for bitching and gossiping in my office...

Yvonne has got a new job yah but have to put up with her for at least 4 weeks and she is so fucking full of how brilliant she is and asked me today what will we do when she leaves 🙄

Me tol @NormaBean

Most of these will have been said but ..
The room temperature too hot or too cold can't please everyone.
Brew rounds , people who happily except a brew but never reciprocate.
The chatty boss who wants to tell you the whole long plot of a film he watched last night at 8.30am ffs I don't care .
The supervisor/ manager who needs to discuss something so god dam urgent the world will end if she doesn't this is before I've took my coat off or even reached my desk .
I'm sure there are more ...

'M' who just won't stop fucking talking when I'm trying to concentrate on something. No matter how much I hint that I'm busy and trying to concentrate she just won't shut the fuck up.

Always feeling obliged to offer to get people a drink when going to get a cuppa. Because it's a big team getting a 'quick' drink turns into a fucking mission, especially when people get all hyper specific in the style of "oh I like decaf coffee please, with one and a half sugars, but only a splash of milk, and two stirs anti-clockwise".

'K' who is always off sick (at least once or twice a week) with some minor ailment (cold, slight cough, slightly pulled muscle etc) and when she is in work all she does is moan about her ailments.

Tediously long meetings about nothing important.

'D' who is supposedly a senior manager, but I have decided her actual job role is "general faffer". All I ever see her doing is things like watering the plants, and cleaning the fridge, and washing up cups, tidying the office, and organising a collection etc. I genuinely hand on heart have worked where I have for 7 years, and in that time, have yet to work out what her actual work duties are because I've never seen her do them.

Derek, who is rude, intimidating and massively unhelpful, but he's been there for ever and so his general arseholery gets excused as "oh, he's just like that." No-one is quite sure what he does most of the time, other than shouting at people for "looking at confidential documents" he has printed out on the communal printer and jealously guarding a supposedly communal desk drawer that is allegedly full of top-secret memos. It isn't. I've been in there loads of times and it's full of pens.

Lindsey the new team leader who is trying way too hard to stomp her authority on everyone. She commandeers the break room as her "briefing room" and complains if people come in to make tea. Lindsey thinks she's making a great impression. She cannot have noticed the Nazi salutes she is frequently given behind her back.

Competitive housewives.

They don't need the money - they take great pains to let all and sundry know that they have turned every single payrise offered since 1992 (their husbands earn around £350-£450k a year), they never take a break, always do at least two hours unpaid overtime a day, all because 'we LOVE to help people'.

Thereby diminishing the value of any work anybody trying to keep a roof over their heads does, as if Midwich & Stepford have said it's no trouble and they are following their calling to reject the few workplace laws that protect employees/everybody should be just like them (implying she's an evil, cruel and selfish woman for wanting legal rates of pay and protection) they are intentionally encouraging the abuse and devaluation of women in the workplace.

The coworker who makes 3x as much as me and spends the day on amazon ordering stuff and having it delivered to the office but advises me not to check my personal email from the work computer as “they” are watching what we do. At the end of a day of faffing about and just before she leaves early she says cheerily “don’t we have the best jobs ever!” Well, maybe you do Margo, you swan in and out as you please, waste hours on line and get our 3x as much as me. My job, however, not so much!