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

[Emsie]

Do you wear slides in March?

Not guilty

 

[TheGlossy]

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.

OMG. Someone I directly work with does this all the time! I’m like “I have a question on point d”. This person doesn’t let me finish and starts going through a,b,c which I didn’t ask anything about.

Also, I hate it when people say “don’t be afraid to ask”. If I haven’t asked YOU specifically, it doesn’t mean I haven’t asked anyone at all or that I even need to ask anything in the first place! If I haven’t asked, take it for what it is. I find this sentence to be undermining especially when you have a decade worth of work experience.

 

[Orange99]

My old boss had a message on her OOO which said she was away and if you send her anything whilst she wasn’t there it would be deleted on return. She did have alternative people on it to cover her work but sadly I am not high enough up to get away with a mass delete

My boss does this too!

 

[Popcornshovel]

My company has been really flexible in that you only go in to the office if and when you want to. Now they are changing tack and there was an announcement from the CEO that we will be required to work 3 days in the office.

What annoys me is the people who are now saying "but I have kids" and "I have a massive commute" when these people worked in this company for years and had their kids when we were all in offices 5 days a week and their commute was the same then!

I know one of the team constantly logs off to drop kids to and from school and appointments and after school activities and then complains she is the only one working late but it's because she is offline for hours during the day. I IM'ed her one day with a question and asked could we have a call and she was down in her mother's house for a chat. Now I do adjust my time for appts but its one every now and again not constantly.

I dont have kids and my commute while not amazing isnt that bad but it still means getting up earlier. Everyone is already asking for exceptions and I think this defeats the entire purpose of a wfh policy. Just because I dont have kids doesnt mean I should have to go in more.

That's annoying that they changed the requirements. If they'd left it as flexible as it was, it would help with 'good will' from the good workers like you.
But sounds like some were taking the flexibility too far, with the colleague who popped to her mums etc. She could still have done that, just worked a bit later to make up for it without making a song and dance over it.

 

[asunder]

100% bring it up!!!!!!!!

 

[Ensay]

Colleagues who want you to help with something last minute, but seem to get annoyed when you ask for more details, before confirming if it's something you can help with.

This guy asked me for some help but was very vague. I don't want to say yes without discussing the request in more detail, but he's clearly annoyed and just wants me to say yes based on little information. Not gonna happen, mate.

 

[Chickenandgravy]

I really despise when I'm a backshift and I come in and 2 of the day shift are sitting on their phones while I run around like an arsehole trying to do jobs they could've done earlier

 

[nunoidia]

Person who is annoying me at work… my ‘on paper’ boss. I work for one person only, he is not my boss though. The officious team leader is my boss, and I can’t think of a worse person to be a manager of people, she’s officious and petty and seems to dislike everyone. I came back to this job for a year as a favour to the person I work for (I worked for him for 8 years several years ago, we’ve kept in touch). Person I work for doesn’t give a monkeys if I work from home, nor if I need to shift my hours on a particular day. However, boss on paper expects me to be in the office 3 days a week, and is rigid about hours (every other department treats staff as grown up and doesn’t care as long as work gets done. She even expects me in when person I work for is quite literally in another country. I get the strong impression she hates her job/life, but she’s so unapproachable and terse i have no interest in showing any concern. The office is so depressing and the atmosphere is terrible. I get very little done whereas at home I can cuddle my cats and get superhuman amounts done! I only have to stick it out to the end of the year, but the urge to tell her to get stuffed is strong!

 

[Curly]

This is a bit petty but it honestly annoyed me.

I normally sit at this one seat at work (we don’t have assigned seats, but no one ever sits there). One of my work ‘friends’ walked past me and was like ‘oh, you do like this seat? Does it work properly?’. I said yes it does but the desktop isn’t working right. Then they offered to raise a ticket on my behalf to fix the issue affecting my desk and the one next to it.

Fast forward, the desktop got fixed and my work friend was like ‘it got fixed, so I’m gonna sit at your desk now because my neighbors are driving me mad’.

He essentially booted me from my usual desk pretending he wanted to help fix it. I’ve now have to find a new spot where to sit.

How rude!

mid just make sure I was in work before him and sit at the desk you want

 

[shadowcat5]

I had someone teasing me about not being in the office and eventually I just told them that my working arrangements were between me and my manager and as long as he’s happy with my performance I’ll continue to do what I’m doing. They seemed to think it was harmless “Bantz” but I asked them to stop because I found it very annoying.

theres definitely a clear divide that’s formed between some people who go into the office a lot and people who prefer to work hybrid or home majority. I fully get the benefits of going into the office sometimes, but also I’m more than aware of my productivity in both environments.

I don’t want to make a mountain of nothing but he does it on a group chat with everyone, so multiple teams. It’s really embarrassing. the worst bit is I have to go in tomorrow as it’s my day in the office.

 

[Rodneytrotter]

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.

Hey, im sorry you've had to deal with such a difficult person

Don't worry about crying it is a normal human response to being distressed! I'm not normally one to throw around the jealous card but is there any way she could feel threatened by the great job you did with the presentation?

 

[ChastityDingle]

I was about to say, his behaviour sounds very strange. He had no answer when you asked him why others couldn't have taken on the work. He is in over his head, I imagine.

If this was a major account, about to be lost, surely it would be a case of all hands on deck whereas it seems like he looked for the non obvious solution, ie wanting you to cut short your holidays, then when that didn't work, threw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[Black.bird]

Lack of preparation on his part does not constitute an emergency on yours - as the saying goes.

I love this! I have said, "Your priorities are not my priorities" in the past, but this sounds way better.
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Lack of preparation on his part does not constitute an emergency on yours - as the saying goes.

I love this! I have said, "Your priorities are not my priorities" in the past, but this sounds way better.
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My new manager knows his attitude and when I joined, they asked me to tell notify them if my previous manager ever reaches out to me for any work related queries. I debated whether to tell my new manager, but they explicitly asked me notify them so if I do him a favor without telling the new manager, they won’t like it.

Don't for a moment leave your new manager out of the loop. I'd be tempted to do something to make your old manager think twice about asking you for help in the future - tell him that your time is going to come out of his cost centre at double the rate or something. If you make it too easy, he might just keep returning!
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I'm frustrated with the team of staff we have working at our fish and chip shop.

We have a separate fryer for gluten-free offerings, which is something we introduced to the business when we bought it a few weeks back. It takes a good 20 minutes to heat up and we don't leave it turned on all day unlike the other fryers, because it's costly to run (and most of our GF requests occur at dinner time). The procedure is that it gets turned at 4:30pm and left on until we close.

Our staff keep forgetting to turn the GF fryer on, resulting in lost sales (when people don't want to wait), and unhappy customers (who have to sit there for a lot longer than anticipated). We've communicated to them via staff meetings, and checklists, that this is an important task -- but still they forget. I've started going in just to check it's done which is ridiculous. We've taken to assigning the role of 'Shift Manager' to someone on each shift and made it clear the buck stops with them ... hopefully that will mean the situation improves.

They're fine with everything else to do with the gluten-free offerings (working at a dedicated preparation bench using tools only handling the GF food, etc.), so it's a mystery as to how they keep forgetting about the fryer.

 

[Hello Kitty]

When an email is sent to someone and then it gets forwarded to you because their emails are playing up, or they can't log into the system.

Funny, as it always happens when it's the same issues. If you don't know how to do it, then be honest.

 

[TheGlossy]

I’m a scene maker
Spent so many years being the bigger person and accommodating other people being pricks.

People using meeting rooms I booked, sitting in my booked seats on trains and planes, using my delivery of stationary items when theirs were not arriving until later that week.

I honestly tried so hard and tbh, it was mostly the males I work with. But now, nah fuck it. I’m not a pushover and I am going to “sweat the little things”

Now I’m like “you’re in my seat” and just stare at them. I will literally stand there and make them look like a dick (and myself probably )
And the ones that will sit with their headsets or earphones on, please you’re just giving me the opportunity to be louder.

fuckers

You’re right. Enough of people crossing boundaries.

I think what I’ll do moving forward is leave a post-it on the actual desk the evening before to say “Seat already booked for Friday XX”.

Like seriously. If people want to be rude, then petty is my name now. This one took my seat and kept giggling the friend all morning.

I spoke to another colleague who told me they had the same issue. Nonsense.

 

[pinkmug]

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.

Ugh a supervisor does this, drives me insane. If she let me speak and actually paid attention to what I'm asking, the whole thing would be done in 2 minutes but because she keeps interrupting and guessing what I'm trying to ask and answering the wrong questions, we get stuck on the same issue for 15 minutes, each second more frustrating than the last. How hard is it to just listen??

 

[Black.bird]

I was stewing over the annoying guy (who wants his temporary administrator to get his water) last night. He's just so 'extra' with everything he does.

He has plenty of time to go running at lunchtime and to do his sporting picks nearly every afternoon, yet can't get basic priorities right. A few of his team had to drop what they were doing yesterday to finish something off for him while he took off early for the long weekend - the fact that some of them may have also liked to leave a bit earlier wouldn't even have occurred to him.

Earlier in the day, one of his team members told him she was going home sick; his response was to insist that she go around each of the team members first to check that there wasn't anything they needed help with. It's just mind boggling - if you're sick, you're sick ... go home and take care of yourself. These 'adults' will just have to sort it out for themselves! This lady was clearly unwell, but given the way he's wired he probably thought she was skiving off.

I'm not part of his team thank goodness but I sit near him (and see him every morning and late afternoon even when I'm working at a client site, as I have to call into the office). When he's not there, his team is far happier. He's late 20s yet acts like a grumpy old man who tries to be everyone's mate at the same time as sticking the knife into their backs.

His wife has called into the office a few times to get money (he actually gives her money - she doesn't seem to have cards) and he talks down to her constantly and gives her lists of things to do ... he's just so, so strange.

Next week is my last one at this place. They've asked me a couple of times to stay on in different capacities and have even said I can name my rate which is very flattering but nooooooo thanks - I worry I'm becoming a product of this very toxic environment.

 

[TheGlossy]

My manager (the one who made my day to day horrible in the last few weeks) has asked us for written feedback on her.

I honestly dont’t want to give her any. Not only because of her terrible attitude in the last while, but also because she gave credit about my work to someone else and has not given me any kind of feedback on a project I worked my behind on. Only the project lead did, but she’s disregarded it, so my performance on this project was thrown under the carpet.

She wants us to give her feedback on the HR portal but I’m honestly thinking of leaving it blank.

What should I do? Should I go along and give her feedback despite her behavior or leave it blank?

 

[TheGlossy]

Well, 100% I’m not going to give feedback.

She always said feedbacks have to be a verbal ‘discussion’ before submitting on our HR portal. She asked me for verbal feedback about her during some of our 1-1, but it was too early for me as I’d only been in the role 3 months.

Consequently, in light of her own rule, I reached out to her asking if we should set some time aside to have a conversation on her feedback request before I submit in writing in our HR portal and her response was ‘Feedback for me??’.

Clearly, she thinks she’s above this. Yet, she’s the one who asked for formal feedback on our HR portal. The worst is I was only going to give her the positives and disregard the negatives.

I’m not putting in any effort with her because she clearly has her own narrative in her head.

If she chases, I’ll be like ‘I’ll fill it in in due course’.

 

[Warpaint]

i


I leave them on read

I do, but it's just annoying noticing it in the first place