The working day can be the most stressful part of your life. A recent Forbes Survey showed that only 19% of those in work enjoyed their jobs. Most employed people have to put up with many serious pressures, but just for fun, we will look at some less serious ones. Here are my top 10 most irritating workplace problems:
Bad Communication
Bad communication can really get on your nerves and make your working day hard to get through, so much so that I recently wrote a paper on improving workplace communications. Sometimes bad communication can be interesting though. If you have an office gossip or tell-tale then feeding them with snippets of information and watching them squirm and spread rumours can often put a small smile on your face when things are looking down. With these types of people, planting the seed can be so easy. This is definitely a good method of brightening up your day.
Bad Coffee/Tea Makers
OK, so this will sound ungrateful but I’m going to have to suffer the consequences. There is nothing more annoying than a fellow colleague going out of the way of their busy workload to offer you a drink and it coming back nothing like how you like it. If you want something doing, do it yourself!
Phone Distractions
There are very few more annoying irritations than talking on the phone whilst 2 or 3 other conversations are going on in the office – at loud volumes! This background noise can make it hard to continue the phone call.
Whispering
This can be the most irritating behaviour. Alarm bells ring when colleagues have to whisper, who knows what they are talking about!
Taking Shoes Off
Phewie! The smell is just not nice and it sort of makes you feel dirty. An office is not a living room, others should understand this and try to help keep the office clean, tidy and smell free.
Micromanaging
If you are one of those people who likes your boss stood behind you, leaning over your shoulder looking at your screen, watching every move and breathing bad breath into your face then you should consider getting an office job if you don’t already have one. This is one of my biggest pet hates. Not only does this behaviour show a serious lack of trust from your boss but it generally makes your day go slower, which brings me on to my next irritation…
Clock-Watching
OK, I admit it, I’m a clock-watcher. The problem is, I absolutely hate clock-watchers! It’s acceptable for me to watch the clock but when a colleague does it, I just want to staple their tie to the desk.
Dialling From Speaker Phone
Picture this… You have your head in a spreadsheet, concentrating and trying to calculate the gross profit margin based on inaccurate figures. All of a sudden, the person next to you starts dialing without picking up their phone. BEEP BEEP BEEP. This knocks you right out of your stride and by the time you have got back to your spreadsheet, you have forgotten what you were doing.
Not Responding To Emails
This really makes me grind my teeth. I email somebody because I have something to ask or say. If I didn’t have something to ask or say, I wouldn’t email you. The least you could do is answer me. I checked my inbox and I sent 13 emails last week without a response yet. Maybe that tells you something about me though, and not the ignorant party?
Whining About How Busy You Are
How often do you hear colleagues spend 30 minutes talking about how busy they are? Surely if you have time to waste 30 minutes talking, you can’t be that busy?
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