Annoying things your work colleagues do all the time? #3

[ChastityDingle]

Hot-desking’s more annoying I need to sit near my team to bloody WORK with them!

I worked somewhere where there was hot desking but there was one woman who claimed a particular desk and I would not have liked to see the carnage if someone else had dared to sit there !

 

[Ensay]

My son's dad does the 'bye, bye bye' x 10 thing - he's an electrician working on building sites; there are builders next door currently and I hear them outside on the phone all the time and they ALL do it. I have a little chuckle to myself every time 'yeah pal, drop it off at 8am. Alright cheers, bye byebyebyebye bye'

I have a colleague who before meetings calls and updates me on what's going to be discussed, then after meetings calls me to follow up the discussion. And each call takes 30 mins. Plus the hour long meeting. It makes me want to stick pins in my eyes!

I hate that too. I found that working from home reduced it because it took more effort, whereas in the office it’s easier for people to launch themselves at you as you stand up to leave a meeting room, following you all the way back to your desk while babbling on.

I get that it’s sometimes useful but usually it’s not. I tend to want some peace after a meeting rather than more talking.

 

[shadowcat5]

Completely agree with all of the above. I come home sometimes so exhausted because I’m trying to say and do all the right things and not look like I’m stuck up or aloof.
The truth is I’ve been excruciatingly shy all my life and people pick up all the wrong signs from you when you’re like that. Especially when you’re at an age when you’re expected to have “grown out of it”.
At my new place there are very few people who make an effort to draw newcomers in. The only thing that hides the cliquey-ness is the fact that most of the time it’s as quiet as the grave because the managers sit in the same room and frown on any chatter.
Add to that the control freakishness of the place and those in charge changing their minds more times than they change their socks and it doesn’t make a great experience



Ha! My OH has just told me not to be stupid because a company I emailed this morning came to me in less than an hour and I was going to send a nice message back thanking them for reading it and responding so quickly
I honestly believe that most people don’t bother opening their inboxes any more

I could have wrote this myself. My brain is constantly like ' dont be weird, dont say this, dont say that'. I have a check up meeting with my manager tomorrow and i was thinking about mentioning but i don't know what to say really. All the advice us going to be is give it time because I only just started. I don't see it getting better though

 

[ChastityDingle]

Wholeheartedly agree.

It sounds to me like this individual thinks work trumps everything else because they have nothing going on. No compassion or emotional intelligence whatsoever. I can understand certain personal circumstances need to be left at the door when you get to work in the morning, but no within the context of the above-mentioned examples. Some people didn't learn a thing from the pandemic, unfortunately. I don't have much tolerance for people like this, let alone if they aspire to work in management.

He even complained about our former manager being stepping away from his PC for two hours at a time during Level 5 lockdown. The manager had very young twins (aged 2 at the time), no creche was open, so of course, he had to do what he had to do to take care of his kids and he always stayed late to makeup for it.

Hopefully all of that is being noted and he gets nowhere in his quest for promotion.
BIB - why did he even think that was any of his business!

 

[Timz]

I'm not sure I understand the bit about "they did ask the company". How else would they go about it?

I still don't see why they need every Thursday afternoon off when their course is in the evening past 6.30pm. No matter how your spin it, asking for every Thursday afternoon off for 2 years is not reasonable unless you move to part-time.

I did a part-time course and so did plenty of people in the company and we all said it's an unreasonable expectation to take every Thursday afternoon off for 2 whole years. I personally do not agree with this. If you cannot manage your time with a full-time job, then you shouldn't engage in further studies period. There are people out there who are juggling a full-time job, studies and kids including my former manager and they're not asking for special treatment.

We're severely understaffed with one person off sick and this person now requiring Thursday afternoon off every single week, leaving just me in the office on Thursday afternoon. Not reasonable nor fair if the course is not sponsored by the company. I'd understand it if the company was financing the course, but if it's out of your own initiative and pocket, then you should manage your own time adequately without seeking special treatment. What you do in your personal life is no one's business. First time in my life I've seen this type of request even when I was working in one of the top accounting firms and tons of employees were sitting their ACA at the same time.

I made it very clear to my manager this person needs to ensure their work is managed accordingly and they better not expect me to cover for them every Thursday afternoon when I'm already covering for a person who has been on "sick" leave for months.

I personally do not agree with any of this. They may have thought it was "reasonable", but again, never seen this type of request anywhere else. Then again, this is coming from someone who asked for their pens to be refunded when they joined the company remotely. The spectrum of what is "reasonable" for this person is quite questionable.

Wow they must be a penny pincher, but they are going to be spending £20k+ on fees probably.

Yes these days companies do request to know if someone is doing a course in their own time as it can impact business needs and they don’t want to also pay them to study in working hours, so they can request them to use paid or unpaid leave and keep the work/study separate. I used to have fortnight tutorials in evenings but had to do a lot of pre-reading and prep beforehand as I’d be worried even though it was on Zoom. I also had a colleague who did Law yonks ago and they would leave early to drive to their lectures in town.

Well, I’m thinking to forget having half a day off now, and just have a week or two off each month. That way I can block Work out of mind. I’ll book the time tomorrow Besides they already know I’ll be going back to FT end of year so I may as well use my paid leave as I wish!

 

[Samf2020]

Is there a team leader you can feed this back to, it almost seems aggressive action from the fitness fan. Making one unsolicited suggestion every so often is normal, but to be harrassed and bought fruit etc... That's bordering on intimidation!

Management all like her so cant say anything to them.
I just ignore her now.

 

[ChastityDingle]

Ha ha ha! That is so true ' uh-huh' and 'oh okay' are my favourites when she starts slagging people off as I just don't get involved in that. She hates it and goes around saying 'I think rodneytrotter is being a bit off with me" (which I dont care about). I love the idea of pausing and looking at her for a moment! She has no self awareness at all.

That actually does work just a slightly blank look for a moment too long that says 'WTF' without saying a word .
I have done it, not just in work situations but any time anyone asks me a really nosey question.
They usually get the message that they have gone too far.

 

[Rodneytrotter]

No need to be polite about it really if it’s bothering you this much

This is very true. I'm a teacher and the other teacher is in the parallel class to me. She is a senior leader and im just a regular teacher, so there is a bit of a difference in rank. She picks holes in everything I do and although she does it with everyone I have to work with her closely.

 

[Hope96]

Block.

I think this was aimed at my post but I would feel like a proper bitch if I did block him but I don't know how to tell him to keep it to a few messages without him feeling hurt.

 

[abadtroll]

Similarly the older ones act like anyone under 30 is a teenager/naive/useless

Yes! You're so right!

 

[1001 others]

I was promoted from being a "customer experience" agent to team leader a couple of weeks ago, managing a team of 10.

Each day the team leaders have to listen in on three phone calls that each agent has taken, score them, and add comments. These ratings are visible to the agents the next day, and they're encouraged to review them as they're good learning tools - especially in the case of the comments, which often include suggestions for how they could have handled things better. Even as a team leader, I have to take calls for three hours every day which are also monitored and scored - so I'm very much living and breathing the whole process.

One of my direct reports is constantly challenging my scores. This is wasting precious time as a meeting is then scheduled between her, one of my higher-ups, and me, where she'll argue that she didn't say something - only for us all to listen to the recording and determine that she did. I wondered if the issue was personal (with me), but she apparently pulled the same thing with the team leader before me (who is now one of my higher-ups).

This has been going on for two weeks now - with a daily meeting of about an hour to try and clarify things. That is an hour's worth of phone calls going to other agents, who are battling their own workloads, which some members of the team have expressed concern and unhappiness about.

I suggested to my higher-up that this person be assigned to another team as she doesn't seem very happy where she is; he said they will not consider doing that until she proves herself. I then suggested we have a weekly meeting with her - he wasn't keen on that either, as we wouldn't be able to spend enough time discussing all the calls.

I don't want to be the bad guy here - I honestly think she feels that she's being scored unfairly and it doesn't help that she won't take any feedback onboard (repeating a lot of the same behaviours over and over again), but I have to choose my words really carefully as she could take a personal grievance if she feels she's been treated unfairly. A part of me wonders if she is challenging the feedback just to get out of answering calls ... ugh; the whole situation is just so annoying. If I just scored her highly for everything and left no comments, I'd be pulled up for not doing my job properly.

 

[TheGlossy]

Hopefully all of that is being noted and he gets nowhere in his quest for promotion.
BIB - why did he even think that was any of his business!

Yeah, I don't even know how he thinks it was even appropriate to monitor our manager's comings and goings.

I'm praying he doesn't get the promotion. He is the most authoritarian and heartless person I've ever come across in my entire life.

 

[Rodneytrotter]

Oh god. F that. If you don’t lay down the law soon you will have to put up with this shizzle forever. You’ll have to leave. Or die

I'm maternity cover so at least it's not forever

 

[IridescentLipstick]

It is always difficult when new staff/new culture comes in somewhere but everyone has to adapt and be respectful of each other.

The second guy is a bully and needs a verbal warning.

The first one probably just needs a quiet word to establish if they are struggling with that part of their job, so they can get some help by someone with appropriate training. If they’re just being lazy then it’s not ok.

Maybe you guys need one of those team bonding days. A bit wanky but it might help?

Good advice thanks. Would you believe I put a placeholder in calendar for May for a team day and the two that could benefit most declined ‍ Receptionist said she was taking leave (fair enough) and the OM said he didn't feel comfortable going with covid numbers the way they are. I then heard through the grapevine he was telling others "he's too long in the tooth for this sh*te" I've my work cut out here.

 

[TheGlossy]

When you ping someone for something urgent and a they either don't respond or respond 4 hours later. Smh. The purpose of pinging someone is to get a quick answer, otherwise I might as well send a letter.

 

[MediumLoad]

I once worked with some golf bores.

OMG, yes, they were all really into it, and were good players apparently but 🥱 they used to take over every chance they got.

Same here.

Staff Christmas party raffle prizes every year were golf-related and nothing else.

Wouldn't mind but the Boss man was into golf but never made a big deal out of it.

It was the whole raft of middle managers taking up golf and swearing they loved it in order to fit in who imposed it on everyone else.

Organised "Golf Weekends" which were really piss ups away from the wife and kids and usually involved as little golf as possible by going to football matches, rugby matches, F1 races etc instead. Wankers every last one of them.

 

[WeHadFunRight]

Somehow this has happened twice in as many days but people who don’t communicate clearly on division of tasks?

Twice now I’ve had people ask me on an update about an action I didn’t agree to. Just be clear and concise and no one gets hurt.

 

[soph30]

This would drive me up the wall?! Are you made to do this?!

I’m a freelancer and I don’t do it but all the core team do so I guess you’re expected to 🥱
It’s like the team of thirty people I had once when you were expected to write good morning and goodbye in the channel as well it’s just content nobody wants? I guess it’s a way of tracking you or making it feel like more of a team when you’re wfh and nobody’s saying hi, but focus on productivity, you can see if someone’s online

 

[Anne1448]

Someone telling me all about their holiday when I didn't ask them about it.
What the weather was like, what the food was like, what the flight was like, what the hotel was like, the sight seeing, and Kevin's third degree sunburn

Not Kevin's sunburn

 

[tortfeasor]

We seem to be the only department who answers their phones. We get hundreds of calls every day and I would say a small handful are actually to do with what we do in our office.

And then when we explain that they've come through to the wrong department and we'll transfer them, we get huffed at down the phone we've checked the Internet and our numbers are the only linked to our department so it's not like the wrong numbers are being displayed!

Brings back memories of when I worked for a further ed college in their library! We were too helpful basically. Reception was staffed by 3 old ladies, 2 were grouchy as anything and the other one just seemed to sit there. They didn’t seem to know anything either. Student Services were closed half the time or didn’t answer the phone. So every query came through to us and most of my colleagues would end up dealing with it even though it had nothing to do with the library. Bloody ridiculous.