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

[TheGlossy]

I was talking to a colleague earlier about work stuff and the guy sitting at the desk across mine literally told us to shut up because he couldn't hear his music. We weren't even loud at all. Hella rude. We work on an open floor, so people are going to interact. Isn't that the point of working from the office? Neither of us uttered a word for the rest of the day.

 

[Spoke]

I’ve written here previously about how much my new workplace is obsessed with small talk, but I feel a distinction needs to be made in that people here just love to TALK full stop.

Meetings are typically only 30 mins, which would be fine if not for the customary 12 mins of small talk to kick off each one and then the inability of people to just STOP TALKING. Meetings always overrun and rarely actually get to the point as people just go on and on - they’ll ask you a question, you come off mute but they never break for breath and just continue talking until they have talked themselves away from your question and onto a new topic so you just to go on mute again.

Honestly it’s a company wide issue - I have been avoiding my ‘buddy’ like the plague as she physically does not stop talking unless you force her - e.g. in our first 1:1 I came with a list of 5 questions and did not get to ask a single one as she monologued, without break, for the entire 30 mins. I have to go camera off a lot of the time as the frustration is just too much - I’ll have my head in my hands whilst waiting for a solid 7 mins just to answer a simple yes/no question while the asker repeats themselves over and over AND OVER for absolutely no reason 🫠

This this this!!

So many times I have asked a yes or no question and got a waffle newer.

Now I say “yes or no…” and then the question.

On the other hand I have also asked questions that have nuance and cannot be answered y/n and have received that as the answer. I have had to say “this can’t be a yes or no, answer me properly”

 

[Samf2020]

Get assertive and tell him to ask others before he opens windows.

He is in holiday mode as he finishes up today.
I try to be nice and explain how office life works but he just doesnt get it.
He is annoyed that he cant play music at his desk like they do in reception.
I told him reception are not suppsed to do that even if the bosses arent in as soneone can complain but he is still sulking away. Told him there is no issue with having his ear buds in as much as he wants if he wants music. He can be quiet childish in ways.

 

[JOHN1967]

When we start work at 9am and Maureen walks in at three minutes past and some unwitty clever clogs colleague shouts out 'afternoon maureen!'.
It wasn't funny the first time and it's not funny to keep repeating the same line everytime a colleague doesn't make it for 9am on the fucking dot, Darren.

I agree with Darren, no need to be late. Everyone can make excuses, traffic, train periods etc. Pull your fking figer out and get to work on time.

 

[Pineapple glitter]

A colleague who never responds to emails in a timely manner and whose phone, nine times out of ten goes on to voicemail, phoned me 15 minutes after sending me an email asking 'have you had a chance to look at my email yet'

 

[TheGlossy]

So did you take the advice above?

I discussed the issue at great lengths with my manager who is fully aware of my workload and they acknowledged my points. I followed up with an email but it's falling onto deaf ears as they tried to address the situation with the project lead, but according to them, the project lead "would not listen".

At this point, the fact that I was given silent treatment by the project lead despite the fact my manager got involved, it just speaks volume.

The manager stated they will escalate this matter on their end to address these unreasonable expectations and more specifically the non-cooperative behaviour. We will see if it comes to fruition at all. I don't have much faith.

 

[MrsAgnesSkinner]

Im stuck at front desk for a few hours. So far one boss has made me organise a meeting for him as he didnt come in.
He does this all the time, just takes over meeting rooms without checking the calendar. Am surprised he didnt ask me to do tea and coffee for them.
The slight issue is that we are meant to be having IT work in the room today so he has thrown the entire works schedule off because he cant work a calendar.

Yep there's a couple of those at my office too. One in particular gets over excited about a project launch and has one of the admins send out a company wide meeting invite without checking the big wigs diaries or without considering whether all the prep can be carried out in time. Invites an external guest speaker into a meeting and waits until the last minute to tell anyone which puts undue pressure on admin, facilties and IT. Shows up to meetings with no clue what it's about and derails it, with his excitement to talk about something random his team are working on. Doesn't check his inbox for days and then fires out a load of requests to people with urgent deadlines because he didn't react quick enough

 

[WeHadFunRight]

Totally. It was very obvious his boss didn’t have any time or respect for women and the PM being desperate for his approval mimicked his behaviour a lot. I’m sure you can imagine how pleasant an environment it was I made a small mistake once and heard about it for weeks

Need an eye roll reaction!!! People do not spit their double standards!

 

[WeHadFunRight]

Can I ask people's opinions on this? I am finishing up in my job in less than 4 weeks. A few weeks ago (after i handed in my notice) my manager asked me to put together a file of all my passwords for my log in details to our tax authority (our equivalent of HMRC) where we file tax returns etc. I have two issues with this

1) I will no longer be an employee so why do they need my access. Instead they should sort access for other people and
2) I use the same password for these as I do for personal things (i know I shouldnt but i try and reuse a certain number of passwords).

Am I over reacting here? When you submit a return there is a warning something like knowingly submitting a false return is an offence. I cant remember the exact wording but you enter your password then as a digitial signature of accepting this.

I stupidly ignored the email but didnt want to say anything as she has been in a good mood and now she has asked me again. All via email despite us being in the office together a lot. I would prefer to speak to her about it but have been delaying as I know her attitude to me will change and she is a big part of the reason I am leaving

Can you just swap out your email address for someone else’s (the person who is taking your tasks) and put in a dummy password as a buffer in the meantime?

 

[Rxt156]

Any tips on laying the law down if it gets worse?

O god I really am not good with things like this. I’m either:
Too straight talking and offensive OR quite vague so the bad situation continues as I’m not quite clear enough

If she’s gossiping you could say something to shut it down and end the conversation. Eg if she says “have you heard the news about X” You can say nah I’m not really bothered anyway or something very casual that isn’t rude but shows you aren’t bothered.

On the printing thing - who cares why the person can’t print the documents ?!!!If someone says a ridiculous thing I just repeat it to them so they can hear it. Often they realise the stupidness

 

[Samf2020]

I'm no neat / clean freak by any means, but the state some people leave their keyboard / mouse in... I'd forgotten the dongle for my wireless keyboard & mouse when I was in the office a few weeks ago so had to use someone else's, with nothing to hand to clean them. They were so caked in gunk and grime I was nearly gagging using them and very conscious not to touch anywhere near my face

One of my team mates quit last week so I was collecting her equipment for the IT department to clean up.
She had a brand new desk for about 6 weeks and it is disgusting, basically its one big food stain.
If she was happy to leave her work space like that I wonder how disgusting her house is.

 

[TheGlossy]

While I understand that, I'm just booking how long I've spent on the project. Budgets aren't my responsibility.

If I don't book honestly to her project, then I'm going to have to inflate the time I've spent on other projects, but the Project Managers for those projects will reject that time as well. Which would be correct.

So I can see myself getting into a roundabout situation where all PMs will say: "Sorry Ensay, can't approve that". And all the arguing about timesheets wastes time.

I don’t know how your company works, but charging just the budgeted hours on one project shouldn’t lead to you inflating hours on another project (unrelated) to compensate even if you are subject to a utilization rate. Some people did that where I used to work and it was bad when they got caught and were asked to reverse it.

Budgeting may not be your responsibilityunderstand, but when the margin drops on a project due to an overrrun on hours, it drops for everybody and impacts the revenue you’re making individually as well. Working according to budget is the PM’s responsibility for sure but it is also the whole team’s. If you see you’re about to run over, you should highlight to the PM beforehand so they can manage accordingly.

I used to work in a similar setting … This happened a lot. I left because I couldn’t deal with all this stuff.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you some perspective on why the manager is being annoying about this.

 

[Samf2020]

Im stuck at front desk for a few hours. So far one boss has made me organise a meeting for him as he didnt come in.
He does this all the time, just takes over meeting rooms without checking the calendar. Am surprised he didnt ask me to do tea and coffee for them.
The slight issue is that we are meant to be having IT work in the room today so he has thrown the entire works schedule off because he cant work a calendar.

 

[TheGlossy]

Several types of people today:

• I tell the person I'm available for a call with them at 5pm because I have another call between 3.45pm and 5pm, then they proceed to ring me during other call at 4pm when we're on the same time zone? Why?
• Someone I had been chasing for weeks over documents I needed to perform some inputs in the system and work on some decks (it takes roughly and entire day to do it all). The deadline is Friday and they should have provided me with the documents last week. I get an email from them at noon today with the documents asking me if I can do it all by COB today? Excuse me?? You're asking me to do one day's work in 4 hours? Plus, someone is shadowing me so no way I can do this at my regular pace. You were late in providing me with the information I kept asking for and now you're making your rush mine?
• Another person who sends me an email at 2pm when my schedule is packed telling me that they urgently need my help because they've missed a deadline and something needs to be done today. OK and?!

 

[Scarlet4U]

I don't see him getting the job and if he did I'm sure there will be a mass exodus. As the old saying goes, people don't leave jobs they leave people. His mentality is outmoded. It's from a time when jobs were scarce and people stayed in one company for the duration of their career and became "part of the family". Nowadays its an employees market and if you can't have a personal life in one company you'll soon find that balance somewhere else. I worked with a man before who took extended parental leave as his wife had a tough birth and needed surgery. She was very sick and he would have had his hands full with a couple of kids at home. He was supposed to be off work for a couple of months and yet he was joining calls and on emails the whole time. Did that perceived dedication make him a c-suite exec? Did if f**k, it's years later and he's still in the exact same role. To what end was he sacrificing his sanity, health and approved time off with his precious family. I'll never know why people carry on like this!

 

[JustmeKC]

I work across three inboxes and can easily get over 100 emails a day. One particularly horrific afternoon I had over 250 just in one inbox - it literally made me ill. The organisation I work for has been in existence for many, many years and I often dream of what it must have been like in the days when everything was done by letter and there was a typing pool to respond to stuff. It must have been wonderful.

The typing pool days sound dreamy! We are trying to seriously reduce our email traffic across the organisation which means I get lots of information to filter through and condense into what’s actually needed for the rest of the team. We have quite a lot of email approvals for work pieces too, and some of them need 3 approvals so there could be 15 emails about the same thing looking for more info etc - fun stuff!

It can be hard to manage sometimes.

 

[TheGlossy]

Somebody asks me a question - I provide a comprehensive answer - then someone else in the chain responds no "hi" or "thanks" nothing, just to say: "And what about XYZ"? I don't know because XYZ was not in the original question addressed to me and on top of this, a "hi" or "thanks" would have been appreciated.

 

[Some People!]

I’ve got a nosey coworker as well and he does my fucking head in.
We started on the same day, yet undermines me because I’m younger and a female.

Our manager will be training us on something and he’ll feel the need to then explain it again to me in ‘simpler terms’.

Or my manager will set us a task each - but my coworker will always want to be doing what I’m doing - even if it’s the task he complained about the day previous. He comes over and interrupts me to ask me questions about what I’m doing. He even picked up the stack of paperwork I had the other day and started flicking through it his excuse was ‘well I need to know how this look and get used to it’ - after doing the same task for the previous two days.

You can’t have a conversation without him butting in. I was talking to the lady who sits next to me yesterday about a place we’ve been to and he cut her off mid sentence to say ‘well I’ve never been to that place myself’. He cannot stand not being involved.

Frighteningly similar to my colleague. The butting in to fairly obviously somewhat private, non-work chat is the absolute worst imo, and we all find ourselves just not having those pleasant friendly personal asides with colleagues because you know he'll have something to say about it.
So you wait till he's out of the room, or you are but 70% of the time the moment passes and you just let it go, and everything is just that little bit less congenial because of it.

The mansplaining is something that's worth raising with managers or even supportive colleagues though. Or bringing it up yourself next time it's happening, if you feel able. It's really not on.

 

[StephenTJackson]

Thanks. I am considering it. I might ask my doctor to sign me off for the last month. My notice is 3 months. I've never been signed off before but this job affected my mental health and i think my manager will make it difficult and if she does I wont think twice about asking my doctor.

Former Technical Manager at my place did that, they went off sick for a month signed off. Handed their notice in near the end of the month signed off. Supposed to work 3 months notice, went back to doctors and got signed off for another three months. Didn't work their notice and left the MD in the lurch. But he'd absolutely had enough by the sounds of it.

 

[mochibean]

Leave a mess for everyone else to have to clean up later. It's the same member of staff every time and it's starting to grate on me because I had to clean everything myself again last night whilst serving customers as I was the only staff member on the tills. It was super busy last night too idk how I got anything done. Just wish people would consider whoever is gonna have to clean it all up later.