Annoying things your work colleagues do all the time? #4

[no-no]

When people start a Teams meeting minutes early, e.g. at 10:57 when it's due to start at 11:00. Why are you so keen

When they do this and leave then X starts the meeting again, then leaves, and so on Even worse when the meeting has been cancelled.

 

[no-no]

When you ask someone a question as simple as “where’s this?” and they tell your boss you’re “working together” on the work you’re doing or they turn it into a ticket It was a simple question not an invitation and definitely doesn’t require a ticket because there’s no work involved from you.

 

[shadowcat5]

Hassle me all day everyday to fix something that is entirely their problem.

Come over to my desk to ask one simple thing when they could just instant message me

Move around all day talking to different people and just hovering around like a fly

Add me to emails that are no relevance to me whatsoever

I’ve had a shit day can you tell?!

 

[smellsofbiscuits]

Deleted for fear of outing.

But I wish there was a way to bat off "well meaning" advice from colleagues

 

[DA Stella]

I don't think individuals should get exceptions for having kids or a long commute. What I do plan to ask for is if the entire team could do two days a week in the office instead of three. All of us would prefer two days. Plus other departments are allowed to be fully remote and in addition other people are just flat out refusing to come in with seemingly no consequences.
It should be across the board or not at all, IMO.

 

[Sunflower91]

In the end the boss got moved to another department because of all his toxic behaviour! Shame he didn't get sacked, but at least it solved the problem for our team.

Ugh they never seem to get fired for these things or even called out. Just moved to be someone else’s problem. At my last place there was a woman who would make people so stressed they were unable to do their jobs well. I reported her for bullying 3 times and I know there were more complaints. She just got “training” and nothing was resolved. Another woman I worked with used to throw people under the bus left right and centre to cover up for the fact she didn’t know what she was doing. Rather than putting her on a plan where she either pulled her socks up or managed out, they just moved her teams. The management scratch their heads when people leave due to toxicity.

 

[Onthehop]

That‘s basically what’s happened in one of my jobs. There’s a woman working there who’s been there for years but she’s utterly toxic. Management have consistently failed to deal with her, partly because she got herself made union rep and raises grievances and complaints against any managers who try to address her behaviour and partly because they literally have no clue how to manage people. Her current game appears to be to hide her own belongings, keys to pool cars, job books etc, then make a complaint that she’s being victimised. Last year, she was off sick for 8 months after making a false allegation against a colleague to the police.

Much as I hate to say it, having been chewed up and spat out by the private sector myself, if we weren’t in the public sector, she’d have sacked years ago.

I worked with someone like this too. She managed to not do any work for over 20 years in the public sector. It’s so disheartening for the rest of us who work hard.

 

[CatCafe234]

I would appreciate some perspective.

I posted about how I joined a new team a few months ago. A few days ago, I was asked to do a presentation in front of 70 people. My manager knows I’d never done this and public speaking terrifies me. Fast forward, I do the presentation and the manager wasn’t in attendance.

All good. People apparently loved it. At around 5.30pm when I’m about to log off, I get a ping from my manager asking me to talk. I dial in and they go on a tangent about how some people did not like that I didn’t have my camera on! They said it wasn’t good, that I should have had my camera on and the team culture is one of collaboration.

I explained that my camera was on and if it appeared off when I shared my screen, I apologize but I’m pretty adamant I had it on. Then she goes on a tangent saying she doesn’t want an apology and that she wants to know why my camera is occasionally off (during weekly team meetings with roughly 100 people on and where I’m not a speaker!) I said it’s for personal reasons and I shouldn’t give such justification. Then she goes on a tangent about how she’s not asking for justification. What? You just asked me ‘why’.

Anyways, I apologize, say it was an oversight (even though I 100% had my camera on and maybe turned it off for a second to drink water) and she kept going on a tangent.

At that point, I had enough and I started crying which she quickly gathered and she says ‘this is not a formal reprimand that will go in your performance record, if that’s what you think’ . I go silent because my anxiety went through the roof and she ends the call.

Fast forward, the following day, I log in, no trace of her asking me even as much as an ‘are you OK’. Nothing. I got an email asking for a deck, nothing else.

I was honestly so happy with my presentation and some people even asked me to join their project with leadership as a result of it. She tore it all apart right after. I’ve been feeling distraught ever since because I’ve been in the industry for 8 years, had disagreements with managers, but never cried in front of one and this one pushed me to tears over something so petty.

I‘m genuinely contemplating resigning next week without any other job lined up because I’ve never seen this my entire career and God knows my previous team was awful.

Honestly - this sounds like jealousy. I obviously don’t know your irl situation or what’s been going on beforehand, but if a colleague came to me with this then I’d say that it sounds to me like she heard you get some praise, it unsettled her and she decided to pull you down a peg or two, irrespective of whether that was actually what you needed. It smacks of someone using the guise of being helpful and managing you to actually be a bit of a bully. If you can look at the situation and honestly say you did ok, then can you also look at it and recognise how it might make someone who is insecure a bit jealous?

You seem to have had a lot of problems with this company so I wonder if it’s really the right place for you? It seems like quite a toxic environment, and it’s probably not doing you much good being there.

 

[JustmeKC]

Somebody on the general enquiries line has decided that they are actually a switchboard operator in 1986, employed to sound posh when speaking to men in three piece suits and bowler hats.


Despite having task oriented email addresses specifically to allow for differentiation of tasks, sharing of workload, monitoring AND protection of individuals from absolute basket cases who can and do hunt you down if they take exception to the font you've used in an email, never mind emailing them something they don't like, this absolute tool has unilaterally decided to give angry randoms my full name, the work 'personal' email address, the direct telephone number, the precise working pattern, that I'm alone in the building from x o'clock because it's easy for me to get home in (just off the street where I live), that there is no security at that time of day so it's easy to just walk in off the street AND promised each one a personal callback during the period in which I am lone working to 'explain and apologise'. You've just fucking doxxed me because you don't want to do your literal fucking job.


Dickhead dickhead dickhead dickhead dickhead.

Does this not constitute gross misconduct?

 

[Samf2020]

I worked in a company where if you had been there for x amount of time you could pretty much do what you wanted.
There were 3 on my team, they were supposed to take a 30 minute lunch so they could leave 30 minutes early. They took longer breaks than the rest of us. They would also log off and sit at their desk with coats on from 4 o'clock and leave at 420 not 430. So again taking more time off from rest of us.
One of them was in a very minor car crash on way to work. So obviously was off for few days.
She claimed her back was really bad and no way she could sit in a car for an hour to get to work.
She was able to handle a plane journey for 6 hours though as she had to go away to get better.
She was out for 6 months and admitted there was nothing wrong with her she was just trying to get a bigger insurance claim.
She came back on the dot of 6 months off and her first task was to put in for 4 weeks holiday.
She was very unhappy to find out she was actually only entitled to half a day paid leave as she had gone sick first week of the year and hadnt worked up any time.
She tried to get the rest of us to back her up and go to management on her behalf. Nope we had been doing your work for 6 months as well as our own.
She ended up taking unpaid leave as they had already booked the holiday.

 

[Black.bird]

I don’t know if I’m being too cynical but one of my coworkers wants to create a couple of PowerPoint slides to wish our manager a happy birthday. She wants us to write a few paragraphs and provide pictures.

I mean, how about a virtual card? A PowerPoint, that’s way too much now. This is not school. It’s a nice gesture but we’re at work.

That seems very OTT - for a retirement it would be fine, but just a birthday? Nah ...

 

[Ensay]

Yesterday's annoyance:

I've had a regular meeting with a few people for a while, yet one attendee falls over herself to decline it if any other meeting goes into her diary, even if it's not that important.

If I get a meeting invite and I'm double booked, I'll nearly always decline the new meeting, as I've already committed to another meeting and they can see it in my diary. Whereas it's obvious this one is glad to get out of the regular meeting so accepts anything else, even if the invite comes in on the same day.

I wouldn't have minded so much, but it was some fluffy non-project meeting that wasn't more important.

 

[Black.bird]

I would appreciate some perspective.

I posted about how I joined a new team a few months ago. A few days ago, I was asked to do a presentation in front of 70 people. My manager knows I’d never done this and public speaking terrifies me. Fast forward, I do the presentation and the manager wasn’t in attendance.

All good. People apparently loved it. At around 5.30pm when I’m about to log off, I get a ping from my manager asking me to talk. I dial in and they go on a tangent about how some people did not like that I didn’t have my camera on! They said it wasn’t good, that I should have had my camera on and the team culture is one of collaboration.

I explained that my camera was on and if it appeared off when I shared my screen, I apologize but I’m pretty adamant I had it on. Then she goes on a tangent saying she doesn’t want an apology and that she wants to know why my camera is occasionally off (during weekly team meetings with roughly 100 people on and where I’m not a speaker!) I said it’s for personal reasons and I shouldn’t give such justification. Then she goes on a tangent about how she’s not asking for justification. What? You just asked me ‘why’.

Anyways, I apologize, say it was an oversight (even though I 100% had my camera on and maybe turned it off for a second to drink water) and she kept going on a tangent.

At that point, I had enough and I started crying which she quickly gathered and she says ‘this is not a formal reprimand that will go in your performance record, if that’s what you think’ . I go silent because my anxiety went through the roof and she ends the call.

Fast forward, the following day, I log in, no trace of her asking me even as much as an ‘are you OK’. Nothing. I got an email asking for a deck, nothing else.

I was honestly so happy with my presentation and some people even asked me to join their project with leadership as a result of it. She tore it all apart right after. I’ve been feeling distraught ever since because I’ve been in the industry for 8 years, had disagreements with managers, but never cried in front of one and this one pushed me to tears over something so petty.

I‘m genuinely contemplating resigning next week without any other job lined up because I’ve never seen this my entire career and God knows my previous team was awful.

Sorry you had to go through this @TheGlossy.

(As usual), I wholeheartedly agree with @ChastityDingle's advice.

I'll add that as someone who owns a couple of small businesses I try and build my staff up. If I was your manager, I would've messaged you to say "great job!" and left everything else unsaid. If I was concerned that you weren't using your camera I'd approach it far more diplomatically than this horrible woman did - and at a different time, so you could enjoy your 'woohoo' moment having done well with your presentation. This isn't a 'how to manage people' technique; it's common courtesy / decency in dealing with people.

I don't know what sort of company you work for, but I've worked for a handful of international corporate consulting firms in my time and they are the absolute worst. Their managers rarely give praise - they'll look for any and every excuse under the sun to berate you and will try their darnedest to drain every bit of life out of you. As soon as they sniff out that you're about to leave, or are unhappy, they'll ramp up the unpleasantness. They will never, ever change - this way of working / this culture, is in their DNA. Even the "good" managers become monsters. And don't think for a moment that HR is there to do anything but feed back any information back to management - they certainly don't care about workers.

 

[Tree_]

We have a lady retiring today. Remarkably, she has been with this company (in all its different forms as it's been merged, taken over, restructured beyond recognition) since she was 15, and she's now 70. I get the feeling she would've liked to just stay forever but she's been talked into leaving and spending the rest of her years doing what she loves (which is work, but anyway ...).

So, to make her day extra-special we all had a small list of things to do - digging photos and what-not out of the archives to create a special book, baking or providing food for her special morning tea, decorating a meeting room (for her morning tea) without her knowing, organising travel for her loved ones to fly in (and picking them up), and doing a whole raft of other stuff. Everyone, except for a couple, did their jobs. The couple in question are the usual types that I'm sure every office has - those who sigh a lot and go on about how much they have to do, but don't really produce very much at all; whose desks look like a bomb hit; who moan and groan at every new idea or initiative and constantly look for problems. One is her manager, the one responsible for talking her into retiring. It's really not good enough. Thanks to the quick thinking of a couple of really cool people who thought what we could do instead to fill the gaps, it was an incredible event, and she was extremely surprised, overwhelmed - all the feels. In her speech, her manager was full of "We did, we thought ..." asshat. He did nooooothing!

Glad she had a good send off despite

 

[mee43]

Am at breaking point these last few weeks- lot of stressy stuff at home and work is ridiculously busy.
Three people off sick to add to the workload - usual faces; can’t help being ill but it’s always when there’s extra work in, or someone new to train.
So the training fell to me. I hate it and get anxious about it but no choice.
I’m only supposed to work 4 days, and I chose to do so for a reason.
I’ve worked 5 days for the last three weeks, and even though I told my manager today that I need take one day off next week. Im prepared to change the day I normally have off in order to fill the gap where I’m most needed, but I don’t want to be expected to keep providing cover.
I could tell from the response that I’m going to be railroaded into coming in.
Others are never asked.
If I didn’t need that extra day off each week, I’d go get a full time job that paid me at least half of what I’m worth.
As it is the pay is crap and the work is worth much much more.
And to cap it off, I’m training on something that it’s very clear will involve taking on even more responsibility that I’m not paid for.
I’m too old to take on another job now, and to my eternal regret, I’m lacking a degree, or any other professional qualifications that would allow me to have the kind of career I wish I’d had.
So I feel like I’m either stuck in this crappy number, or I quit and feel lonely and bored at home.
Just so sick of it.

 

[Black.bird]

Same here. I used to commute by bus, and I just wanted to sit back, daydream, look at stuff on my phone, whatever. Thankfully nobody else was on the same route

Same! Years ago, when I used to catch a train to and from work I would actively avoid people I knew or worked with, just so I could have that time to myself. It was the only time of the day where I could sit back, listen to some music or talk radio through my headset, and doze peacefully.

 

[Sazie1]

I have someone at work that posts stuff about her sport in our workapp all the time. about the world championship, games interviews etc.
Today again, something stupid about an interview she gave. I really don’t care, and it is not about work so shut up!!!

 

[soph30]

THE FEAR

 

[Black.bird]

The place I'm contracting for at the moment has decided to bring in a coach, of sorts, to try and change the culture. I don't think it will make a lot of difference sadly ... some people have been there for a long time and manage to get away with doing the bare minimum while others spend all their waking hours at work. There are also some very toxic individuals who try to run everyone and everything down ... I don't think you can change the way some people are wired.

 

[Some People!]

Interrupting and trying to answer my question before I even give them full context and recommending things I've already done because they didn't actually wait to let me say what my question about a particular issue is.

My worst colleague and my own manager do this and one day my screaming in response is going to get me the sack.