Workplace pet peeves refer to common grievances at the office that are irritating and hinder you from doing your job or simply just annoy you. Workplaces come with people, habits, and situations that irritate us no matter how much we love our jobs. To be honest, these pet peeves wear us down and slash our productivity. How many times have you thought that should have been an email instead of a meeting? Or had to lie to avoid sharing a cab with a ‘peculiar’ colleague? Pet peeves can come in many forms in and outside the office. Below is a list of things that have been irritating you and how to deal with them:
Unfitting Co-worker behaviour
Many annoying office issues are a result of the colleagues we share space with. These inappropriate behaviour include; eating spicy food, chewing gum, making personal calls, wearing too casual clothing, and complaining nonstop. Other behaviours include; clipping of nails, taking shoes off, whistling, humming, or singing and wearing strong cologne or perfume.
To avoid these irritating traits, you can move from the environment to some other space or use your headphones to get a breather mentally. Talk to your colleagues and let them know how their actions they affecting your ability to work negatively. You can also raise the issue with your supervisor if the offences persist. On food-related peeves where someone decides to eat stinky food from your work area, you can take a washroom break as they eat. You can also choose to have eating schedules with them not to be around when they have their meals.
A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one’s own ignorance-Niccolò Machiavelli Quote
Communication Mishaps
They include; long email chains, hitting reply all, awkward phone calls, meetings that are start or end late, basic grammar mistakes, interruptions, and unnecessary CC-ing on emails. These annoying things you have faced at your workplace tend to bother most people.
You can ask politely to be excluded from chains, point out recurring issues or try to determine the cause of the problem and the remedy. Bring up the issues to your manager if your teammates struggle with the same things and see if they can address them. Try to take a deep breath if it is a one-time thing because everyone makes mistakes at the end of the day.
Reporting to work sick
Coming to work with contagious diseases or other severe infections is clearly disrespecting your coworkers’ health. Nothing will be accomplished at the workplace if everyone gets sick.
Kindly, you can suggest that your sick coworker works from home if your company offers the opportunity to do so. You can also speak to your boss about your concerns if you are not comfortable approaching your boss. Suppose they won’t work from home even after the concerns raised. In that case, you can explore working from a different location like a conference room or another desk is available in the office until your colleague is healthy.
Work Environment
Some things happen in the office: you have no control over things like too cold temperatures, a loud working environment, disorganised shared workspaces, a fridge full of leftovers, and cluttered desks.
Raise these concerns with your manager or supervisor. They will have a solution to the problem. You can always use your headphones for a loud office, have an office sweatshirt for hot days, among others, if a solution is not offered. You can also organize a team of like-minded people at the office who are willing to clean up counters and kitchen messiness.
These peeves are habits that can be avoided or reduced if we all decided to have honest conversations with our coworkers about things that irritate us and getting solutions.
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