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

[DA Stella]

People who message me on Teams asking me non-urgent questions first thing in the morning

Today’s: “Please can I book a day off in June as Annual leave” sent 8.03am. Piss off and leave me to my morning in peace

I used to get people who would approach me with a question or request when I had barely made it through the front door first thing in the morning. I still had my purse, lunch cooler and car keys in my hand and they'd be asking for stuff. Can I at least set my stuff down before you bum rush me??? I also had someone follow me into the bathroom to ask for something. I said "can I wipe before I answer?" They sheepishly apologized and left the bathroom. Idiot.

 

[ChastityDingle]

Well done @TheGlossy !

 

[TheGlossy]

So, one of my former colleagues moved teams after only 1 year in my current team. This person was off/onfor 6 months out of that one year, so they never really took part in day to day operations from end to end. I assume they sugar coated reality on their CV because today they were asked by their new manager to leverage on knowledge from their previous experience in my current team. They were asked super technical questions by their new manager and they had no knowledge on what their manager was asking so they reached out to me for answers lol.

 

[MediumLoad]

I worked with someone whose schedule was supposed to be 6:00 am to 2:30 pm. Every day she had some kind of "appointment" so she would wander in around 10:30 am. Then promptly at 2:30 she'd say "quittin' time!" in a singsong voice and leave. I did payroll and noticed she put her full 40 hours on her time card. I asked the manager what I should to. He paused, then said "just give her the full 40 hours". He said he didn't want to deal with any hassle.
So why again was I bothering to work my full week when I could have been getting paid for 40 hours while only working 20??

I spent 2 years working in a local government office. In my time there, our supposed manager rarely did a full week of work. She would never be in on a Monday or Tuesday, might do a Wednesday afternoon, would turn up mid-morning on Thursday as we got paid in the afternoon, and then either skip Friday or else come in mid-morning and spend the day out and about doing her shopping before taking it all home mid-afternoon in a taxi on the work account.

She could never understand why people got upset when she docked their pay for being half an hour late because "rules are rules." yet her own pay was never docked nor was she ever sanctioned over her non-attendance.

 

[petitspois]

I've had a few instances of being very busy over the last ten years - all very genuine. I asked the part time staff if they wanted to work additional paid hours for a week or two - it was totally optional. The response I got from some was that they would do it if work paid their childcare. What???

 

[Heidi88]

This is so minor as I previously came from a very toxic work environment but my manager in meeting with me and say his manager refers to me as "she" rather than by my name. Where I come from this would be considered rude but he is from another country so maybe its cultural but I cringe every time I hear it.

He also tends to jump in and explain issues that are mine. I am reaching a block wall with one team and need issues escalated so he suggested we both meet with his manager to discuss next steps. All good but then he talks him through the issues. Issues that I have spent weeks trying to resolve and held many many meetings on and have spent time quantifying the impact of these issues and then he controls the meeting with his manager. All this work was 95% on my own and I didnt like him jumping in and it felt like he was trying to take credit. I jumped in where I could but felt like he was dominating the meeting. This is a massive issue that I have uncovered and I am only 5 months into the job. He did acknowledge to his manager that this has taken up a lot of my time.

These are very small compared to issues that i previously had and I quite like my company and role which is nice after working in a very toxic place for 18 months.

 

[TheGlossy]

I think it's weird. I cringe at the thought of an adult buying a manager unsolicited breakfast unless they are in a secret relationship and this is one of their ways of showing love or something The manager should say something.

They’re definitely not in a secret relationship haha.

I find it super cringe and rather inappropriate. If it’s not breakfast, it’s home baked goods every week or so.

The manager will never say anything because they like this kind of attention.
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If they're only buying things for the manager it's obviously an attempt to ingratiate themselves. If they weren't, they'd buy a few things for other colleagues at the same time.

Agree! I found it super inappropriate yesterday when this colleague showed up with coffee for the two of them only. It honestly made me uncomfortable.

An employee with no ulterior motive would either bring nothing or if they felt compelled, would first get into the office and then say ‘I’m going downstairs, does anyone want anything?’.

SMH.

 

[ChastityDingle]

Someone who came in every day during Covid so there would be 1 person with an "on site presence" and hates that wfh has become a thing!

I know the type...

So Jane works three days in the office, and two wfh but when you cover for her holidays you have to do five days in the office regardless. Aaaargh.

 

[ChastityDingle]

The bad side of me would be tempted to ask her who complained so that you could personally apologise to them for the fact that they thought your camera was off.

However I wouldnt recommend doing that, !

 

[Mamacita]

say how ‘naughty’ they are for eating chocolates/ biscuits/cakes. I work in a GP practice and one of the nurses finished an 8 week gym challenge a few weeks ago where she lost 7kg and was on a strict diet.. we get sent lots of chocolates and cakes this time of year from patients and clients etc and the first thing she does when she comes in is ‘complain’ how much bad stuff there is as it’s a temptation to her and then proceeds to eat it.. she was eating cake at 8.30am last week on the sly when I walked in and saw her. I wouldn’t normally care but she keeps yapping on about how she shouldn’t be eating it etc.. just eat the goddamn cake and don’t cause a fuss!!

Sounds like a typical behaviour coming out of strict diet and not being able to control themselves. Will be back to old weight pretty soon I bet.

 

[grumpy-nosy-cow]

I agree with this. I think it can sometimes be a culture thing. At my workplace, almost everyone starts emails with "Hi name", but we work with a third party and a lot of their staff start emails with just "Name". When I first started working with them I thought it was direct and a bit rude (some of their staff can be that way) but I think it's just what they're used to.

Mind you, I also work with someone who never starts emails with a greeting and never adds a sign off! She just launches straight into what she wants to say and that's it. So most of her emails are just one paragraph of text.

She's often involved in document approvals and will come back with suggested edits. The only problem is she never accepts anything other than someone taking all of her edits on board. So, even if you've got a really good reason not to make an edit that she's suggested, she just replies with a repeat of the edit she wants. Then, even worse, sometimes when you've made all her suggested edits and ask her for final approval she'll come back with more comments that she didn't raise the first time. I once had to escalate to someone senior and he just replied with: "these are now classed as approved, we've all had ample opportunity to comment and every relevant comment has been addressed". She didn't like it.

we regularly get emails from another firm we deal with were the sender starts the email with the word "Hey" not hi x , good morning etc . It really riles me as i think it comes across as aggressive and as a result we normally leave there request till last

 

[klarakluckbag]

I'll set my OOO but patients see that and decide to text/call/Whatsapp me instead. I love my job and I care about my (non-emergency, not sick) patients, but when I'm not at work, my work phone is off. And no, you can't have my personal number!

 

[lanathebest]

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.

She got jealous
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Thank you so much for the kind words & support. I really don’t have anyone to talk to about this, so it means a lot

Honestly, how many times did I attend a presentation and couldn’t even recollect the face afterwards of the presenter because the focus is on the presentation, not the speaker.

It’s really sad because I’m always going to link this huge personal milestone with her drama.

I agree that I’ve had my fair share of grief with this company. Changing teams just
caused me to go from one issue to another. I’m not interested in this company anymore.

Nah trust me. She got very jealous of ur success with the presentation so she had to find a flaw and there were none so she invented one. People are jealous, they bring their negative energy to bring u down. You did so well it broke her. Believe me thats the truth. Thats how people are at work
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in my last job there was this guy who kept going to Slack (where u can create channels to discuss different topics) and he’d go to the social media one where there are 100 people to criticize my work. It was always petty things like « u made a typo, it’s not good to do that [rant] »
But most of the time was when i posted about football he kept critizing to make me look not knowledgeable in football maybe cus im a girl.
So he’d be like « Messi won ballon d’or though… » always with three dots. And it’d make my anxiety go thru the roof because I wanted to slap the shit outta him.
well in the next video call meetings I made sure I let the managers know that he never provided me with enough info to create good content.
But i didnt do it in an aggressive way ofc. I was more like
I just have a few issues I think Richard should provide me with more information as all the form I sent is never completed it has been months I just wonder why, so i can improve the way we work!

him: turns red, stutters

yeah there u go bitvh run your mouth again ill kill ur whole career. Fucking whore
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He never tried to humiliate me again after that. What a fucking bitch seriously. They think cus i got a soft voice and im a girl ill be a victim. Imma kill u real fast u got no idea. I plot that shit in my head if u do me wrong and i always get u back

 

[Ensay]

A colleague of mine swanned off on holiday last week and said all her activities were wrapped up and no cover would be needed.

However, predictably the shit has hit the fan on one of her work items and it's now been marked as very urgent, with muggins here having to pick up the pieces on top of my other work.

If she'd just been honest with me then I'd have asked her to do a proper handover, but I didn't request one (nor did she offer one) given she said everything was fine. Her boss isn't happy and I'm even less happy!

I hate it when people go demob happy and coast for the last few days before their holiday. It's so selfish because she was obviously thinking "oh well if anything happens when I'm off, it's not my problem!" I'd never do that because I know I'd return to an unhappy boss, but she doesn't seem to care.

 

[mee43]

I suggested a way of completing a particular daily task that would be quicker and more efficient.
Line manager agreed and said it was the way we’d do things going forward.
Next day they said they wouldn’t be doing it this way, as they didn’t have time to mess about.
Unless everyone does it the same way, the new process won’t work, so I e given up and we’re back to the slow, ancient way of doing it.
Didn’t need the place today, in all honesty!

 

[TheGlossy]

When someone sends an email to someone to chase them. Then ask you the following day - do you have any updates on XYZ from ABC (i.e, the person they chased)?

Why are you asking me if I have any updates? You’re the one who chased them. I don’t know more than you do.

 

[earlgrey]

“Here is a new image that needs to replace this old image on the document. Do you want to jump on a call?” WHY would we need a call for that

 

[ChastityDingle]

I’m super annoyed today.

I was supposed to log in late this morning but this girl scheduled a meeting at 9.30am, so I decided to log off early instead. Then, I logged in and saw she moved the meeting to 10am then moved it to 1pm (because she works overseas and needed to drive home). Then this meeting lasted almost 2 hours instead of 30 minutes and I had been stuck in meetings since 10.30am at that point. Imagine being in back to back meetings for 4 hours including at lunch time on a Friday.

I lost it. If you have to drive home because it’s getting late where you are (and by late mean it was 6pm), what makes you think I’m OK with a 1.30h meeting at lunch time on a Friday? Then she casually asked “Oh, is it lunch time where you are guys”?

I said nothing and let the other person respond because I was annoyed at that point. I couldn’t schedule my day properly because of her messy organizing for selfish reasons.

I have since blocked my calendar for lunch time. Anyone scheduling a meeting at that time is getting a decline. I can’t get over this because I couldn’t log in late or take a lunch break because of her!

BIB - I used to do that in one place that I worked.
Sod it, it was the only hope I had of saving that time from endless, often pointless meetings.

 

[Hello Kitty]

I've just sent a draft email to someone to send individually to certain staff and asked them to add information from the below email.
5 minutes later I get a call to ask if they can copy the same email and where do they find the info. READ THE EMAIL AND YOU WILL SEE!!!!!

 

[TheGlossy]

Thank you so much for the kind words & support. I really don’t have anyone to talk to about this, so it means a lot

Honestly, how many times did I attend a presentation and couldn’t even recollect the face afterwards of the presenter because the focus is on the presentation, not the speaker.

It’s really sad because I’m always going to link this huge personal milestone with her drama.

I agree that I’ve had my fair share of grief with this company. Changing teams just
caused me to go from one issue to another. I’m not interested in this company anymore.