So, I’m walking into our offices this morning and there’s another employee at our company coming in a the same time. They are carrying on a personal conversation on their cell phone as they walk down the hall, talking very loudly. It’s not a short conversation either. And it appears that emotions are getting high.
If this were me, I would have stayed in my car to finish the conversation or told the person I was going to have to finish the conversation later. While this type of behavior doesn’t happen frequently, it does happen enough that it is noticeable. This type of behavior almost always is exhibited by younger people in their twenties.
The most extreme instance was probably a year ago, when I entered the bathroom. As I am standing at the urinal, I hear a guy sitting in one of the stalls go into a detailed discussion with someone on his cell phone about what they were going to do that weekend.
Is this type of behavior acceptable in a workplace these days? I don’t think so, but I work at one company with several thousand people in our location.
Not sure if serious…I’m also not sure if I would go so far as accuse anyone exhibiting this behavior as stealing, but it would definitely fall into the discourteous, rude, and unprofessional category.
Depending on the terms of one’s employment and expectations from the employer, not all time spent on company is necessarily required to be spent purely on non-personal things.
Even in cases where that is the expectation, calling sub-optimal productivity “stealing” is ridiculous. It may be grounds for discipline or termination, but it is in no way stealing.
Half the people in management I’ve worked with have been cell phone addicts, especially WRT email. It’s really ridiculous.
I do see people taking personal calls on their cell phones at work. But for all I know it’s about work. I can’t understand what they’re saying because they’re all speaking Nepalese, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, or Russian. But they do step into an empty office or conference room and no one is loud, so I can’t complain.
It bugs me when my workmate comes in yaking to someone. Sometimes it’s “Hiya enipla” other times she is talking to someone else when she greets me. Get your conversation overwith already. sheeesss. I tell her ‘hi’ when she is talking to someone else.
You would have to see the lay out of our office to get this really.
Now that open offices and cubes are the norm, offices really need to provide accessable spaces for private conversations, and ensure those spaces have cell reception. Everyone has stuff that needs to be taken care of during work hours, and you shouldn’t have to make that follow up appointment with the gynecologist in front of everyone.
The best setups I’ve seen have had little phone booths for employees.
I absolutely hate that people do this. I work on a college campus and every day, I see so many kids either talking or texting with their phone, oblivious to the world around them. Even more annoying, though is that there’s a woman who works on the same floor as me that talks incessantly on the phone. She has no problem sitting on the toilet and chatting, which I find utterly bizarre.
Some years back I shared a cubicle with a guy who was doing his side business during our work hours. He was a photographer, so he was always talking to clients about the upcoming wedding or other event. That, without a doubt, is stealing. We’re not talking about a quick “I’ll meet you at 8 at the church” conversation - we’re talking long, detailed discussions.
Even more annoying, when he was doing his real job, he’d often leave his cell phone at his desk, and it had the most obnoxious ring. I was so glad to transfer from that place.
I was also glad that for 10 years I worked in a secure facility where cell phones were prohibited. You could not bring them past the lobby where lockers were provided, and that’s where you had to go to use them. I loved that job - so peaceful and productive!
In my area we had an entire school of high school students refusing to go to school in protest of not being allowed to keep their cell phones during classes. The rule is they have to turn them in every morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Parents were throwing fits because they think their children should be available at all times. The teachers complain that the phones are not just used in emergencies and it’s a daily battle to keep them off, but parents won’t listen. They insist their children need to be able to call home in case of a school shooting.
What about co-workers who are speaking in measured tones and syntactically complete sentences about relevant or legitimate personal topics on the phone? Would that exclude them from the characterization of “yapping”? Does this leave room for arbitrary subjective judgment?
There’s a guy where I work who routinely has conversations while on the shitter, complete with straining, grunts and farts. I always wonder who he’s talking to, because it seems pretty obvious that he’s putting in some work on that dump while he’s talking.
That doesn’t annoy me nearly so much as the people who go to the kitchen/breakroom for their personal calls, and then give me the stink-eye when I come in and get a coke, or wash a coffee cup or something. WTF? Go somewhere else that’s non-public if you want to have an uninterrupted conversation. Don’t pick the most public place on the floor for it.
There are some people who “yap” on the phone while carrying out official business. They talk about the wife, the kids, and the family dog for twenty minutes before they finally get down to bsiness. When I worked in a cubicle, these people annoyed the fuck out of me. But now that I have an office with a door, people can yap all they want. And I can too.
I have zero problem with people making personal calls in Cubeville. It’s when they leave their phones on with the ringtone volume jacked that annoys the ever-loving shit out of me. I keep my phone at my desk with the ringer off. I can still see if someone calls without annoying my co-workers. If I do pick up the personal call and it’s going to take more than a couple of sentences to complete then I go into a back room. Nobody needs to know my business.
I was in the loo at work on a Thursday & the guy in the next stall initiated a phone call to BS with a friend about plans for the weekend. Back-to-back-to-back conferences calls, possibly. A call from your kids school, maybe. But to discuss plans for 48 hours later? I guess he’s just a overachieving multi-tasker.
…& I guess I’m an inconsiderate ogre for allowing my toilet to flush 4 separate times. Oops. Sorry. :rolleyes: