Mundane stuff coworkers do that drives you bonkers

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m sure just about everybody has a coworker(s) who do something mundane, or have some obnoxious idiosyncrasy that gets on your nerves, but in the grand scheme of things, is not really worth whining about. Well, here is your chance to act as melodramatic as you’ve always wanted to be about the nose picker, the close talker, or the guy that drinks straight out of the water cooler :stuck_out_tongue:

I would say the most mundane yet annoying thing that bothers me is coworkers that whine about doing the simplest of tasks. Today I had a situation like this. Things like this aren’t really pit worthy, since even I know deep down its not worth frothing at the mouth over. Anyway, things were quiet at work, so the manager had an employee go in the office to mail postcards. Normally we look up addresses on the computer, but the database had been acting up that day, and they couldn’t do it. The manager said, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to look up each person’s adress under their file” (We have a hard copy filing system of all the member info in addition to an online database). The employee whined, “Oh, do I have to? That’s so much work!” :eek:

I damn near tripped over myself in shock. Firstly, she was getting to work in the office- any ‘office work’ at my job is the epitome of cushy, and generally the only opportunity you get to sit down while working. Fact is, ‘office work’ is the closest thing we get to BREAKS! Apparently to her, spending 20 minutes opening binders and pulling out files to retreive adresses was just too much work for her. I thought she had a lot of nerve to try to weasel out of it by whining like a six-year-old. Our shifts are only 3-4 hours as it is (and believe it or not some coworkers complain that a four hour shift is ‘too long’ for them :o As it is, this particular employee tries to use every opportunity to get out of doing her job when possible, but I’m not too sore about it, because people like that don’t last long in my particular line of work.

2

I have a cow-orker who’s a maniacal “bless you” merchant. I swear his sneeze-radar outranges the DEW line. If you sneeze three times and he’s over the other side of the building, he races to within normal earshot and says “bless you” three times. Yep, one for each individual sneeze, no volume discounts here! Drives me bloody insane.

3

I have a co-worker who overuses quotation marks. Any time she writes a memo or anything there are at least three sets of totally unnecessary quotation marks around words she really wants to emphasize.

For example: “Use the “blank” paper on the “back” counter “first” before opening up a “new” package, please!”

Drives me freaking crazy!

4

I got a co-worker that joined around 3 months ago. Its a small office (6 people) and very quiet. Noticed she clears her throat a lot. Then noticed it a bit more. You know how it goes from there. Every single time she clears her throat I hear it! I have to wear fucking headphones to cover up the bloody noise. Once, during a decidedly ill-timed crash on my pc, I noted how many times she did it whilst I re-booted. I then extrapolated. guess what i came up with. >400 times a day!
She says she can’t do anything about as she has a sinus problem.
Big breath. OK. I’ve hatched a dastardly plan though. Told all my colleagues (innocuously of course). Now theyre all starting to notice and one is probably in a worse situation than me (no headphones). Alright it’s a bit harsh on the girl who is going crazy, but desperate measures were required and I’d just read Sun Tzu. :smiley:

Was meaning to pit this woman but got distracted by some nice music on my headphones.

5

Don’t get me started!
Oops, too late, here goes:

It’s one thing to ask me what’s for lunch today, but you don’t have to PUT YOUR FACE IN MY FOOD!

Is it too much to ask that you finish your thought INSIDE your head, instead of torturing us with a string of “whachamacallits” and “whathisnames” and “thatthingwetalkedaboutlastweeks”. Use that dormant organ between your ears to COMPLETE your thought before you voice it.

Oooh, now you’ve done it. More to follow

6

I have a colleague who doesn’t listen properly; he’ll phone me up and ask about some mundane task, then not pay any attention to my instructions; I just have to listen to him trying to muddle through it in his own way.

This week it was copying files from one folder on his hard drive to another folder (simple, you’d think, eh?)

**Me:**OK, open up Windows Explorer - there’s a shortcut on your desktop that says Windows Explorer - double-click it
Him: OK
Me: Now, in the left-hand pane, find the entry that says ‘my computer’ and expand it by clicking the little plus sign next to it
Him: What left hand pane?
Me: Did you open Windows Explorer?
Him: Yes… errr… no, I opened the ‘My Computer’ icon on the desktop, see the problem is that…

(five minutes later, I’ve finally got him to launch Windows Explorer and expand the ‘my computer’ entry

Me: Now, don’t click anything yet… see the entry that says ‘Hard disk C:’ - click the little plus next to it, don’t click the words, just the little plus
Him: OK
Me: Now, you should see a list of folders below the C drive, can you see one called ‘SalesApp’?
Him: No
Me: Are you sure you clicked the plus symbol next to the words ‘Hard disk C:’?
Him: The plus next to the CD drive, yes
Me: No, not the CD drive, the C drive, the hard disk!
Him: Yes, the CD drive…

(another ten minutes and we’ve got the window set up for him to copy files)

Me: Now, using the button on the RIGHT HAND SIDE of your mouse, CLICK AND HOLD on the file, then drag it across on top of where it says SalesApp, then release the mouse button
Him: OK
Me: Now you should see a menu giving you the option to move, copy or create a shortcut
Him: Nope
Me: Did you click with the right or left mouse button?
Him: Yes… errr… not sure

(fifteen minutes more and we’ve managed to undo the move he just made)

Me: OK, now RIGHT-CLICK and drag the file on top of where it says SalesApp
Him: Oh!
Me: What happened?
Him: It just opened up something called DBase
Me: Did you right-click the file?
Him: Yes, errr… no, I double-clicked it

And so on.

7

Well, I’ve got a trainee at the moment who talks loudly to himself when he’s working out calculations. His job requires rather a lot of calculations, so I expect him to have talked himself hoarse inside a week. I hope.

8

We used to have a guy that I swear had a preamp and power amp hooked up to his fingernail clippers. And he could take half an hour clipping his fingernails! In a quiet office, sounds like that drive you batty!

Another irritating sound was my coffee slurper. Every morning at 8:00, from over the cube walls- slurp, slurp.

9

Cow-orkers generally don’t know how to ‘minimize’ an application. When I pop over to help, they close it, open something else, and repeat when showing me something. They also don’t know what an ‘application’ is.

They don’t know you can have three word docs and two spreasheets open at once. They don’t know you can reduce two windows and look at things side by side.

Our time clock ‘rounds’ from the nearest three minutes. Even after explaining this, they still will stand there if it is 4.28pm…they all stand there until 4.30pm to swipe out.

Virtually no one knows math. This has been cause for war. Yesterday’s example:

Years ago, we cut wasted call volume by 50% with an improvement. We went from 10,000 calls per day to 5,000. With self service, we cut 50% of our volume.

When business expanded, we went back to taking 10,000 calls a day, which requires 100% more staff 5,000 calls up to 10,000). But no one would listen to me. “After all, we lost 50% and got it back, so we should just need 50%” was the argument! Now, since I campaigned hard to make sure we hired the right number of people(100% more), some folks are convinced I am scamming them into hiring more people!!!

10

I have a guy who clears his throat literally every 40 seconds or so. (I timed it.) He does this when he gets a cold, but his colds last 2 to 3 months. I’m not making this up.

11

How about simply TALKING TOO DAMN MUCH? The guy who sits next to me is a nice guy and sometimes he’s funny, but dammit, he just won’t stop talking! Some of us are trying to get a job done and don’t need the distractions. He also likes to share his collection of Bob and Tom MP3 files. I personally think Bob and Tom is the unfunniest radio program there is. This is in a small room where only 3 or 4 of us work, being an offsite test facility. If we worked at the main site which is a much larger office he could never get away with these things.

I also hate compulsive whistlers and hummers, especially as they’re usually off-key. Some people think such workers are happy. I see these as signs of nervousness. There was also a guy at the main site who constantly snapped his fingers. I wanted to walk over to his cubicle and super-glue his thumb and fingers together.

12

Our Office Assistant is obnoxiously nice. Not that I want a bunch of pricks around the office, but there are limits to one’s ability to tolerate excessive niceness. What’s really unbearable is her Betty Rubble laugh. It’s a high-pitched, scratch-my-ears-off-with-a-cheese-grater laugh. And she laughs ALLLLL the time. And it carries all through the office.

The new guy helping me with a project apparently thinks he is Ned Flanders. Now I know why Homer so often wants to cause Ned bodily harm.

13

One guy who joined our staff about eight months ago insists on excusing himself every time he sneezes. Unfortunately he sneezes many, many times during the day, so all day long I hear him yelling “excuse me!” Occasionally he’ll tack on a “wow, that was really loud. I hope I didn’t disturb anyone.”

For awhile he was running an incredibly annoying … well, sneeze contest, for lack of a better name. He designated a “sneeze day” for each employee. That person was supposed to do the most sneezing that day. If someone sneezed on the wrong day it would launch this guy into a 20-minute monologue:

Coworker M: A-CHOO!
New guy: Hey, M, it’s not your day! You’re only supposed to sneeze on Thursdays. Today’s coworker R’s day! R, you’d better start sneezing if you want to beat M.
Coworker R (bored): OK, I’ll try.

And my coworkers wonder why I started wearing earplugs. :rolleyes:

14

ladybug, good Og.

15

Our place is quite a serious place. There are big issues to talk about and deal with. I come back from a week off and find out that things are worse, a few people are pissed off about workload and who’s doing what. I am talking to one cow-orker about this and he has the most serious grave look on his face and he says, in all seriousness…

“Yeah, I’ve been pissed off lately. I came in the other day and there were 4 cups, with a little water in them?”

CUPS!!! YOU’RE BOTHERED ABOUT THE F*CKING CUPS!!
It’s not just this. The particular orker makes a big deal about f*cking trivial meaningless crap. The dust on the table, the stack of papers, the fact that the little plastic ‘today’ thing hasn’t been moved to today on the year planner.

16

Oh god—I’m in one of those offices where every single person is on a different diet. I have had people snatch up the box from whatever frozen food I’m microwaving and loudly comment on the fat/carbohydrate/calorie content. I eat at my desk because I feel like I’m having my food inspected if I eat in the lunchroom.

We have a new(ish) department head. I get the feeling she has never worked in a open-space environment before, because EVERY time she passes my cubicle, she says hello (or makes some other comment). Once in the morning is fine, but I don’t need to talk to you every time you walk past my desk!

There are at least two people here who apparently are oblivious to telephone manners. If I’m on the phone, one of them will walk up and begin talking to you loudly, while the other lingers annoyingly. I work in an office where protracted phone conversations are a necessary part of the job, so the latter is particularly aggravating.

17

Stupid question mark. Get back where you belong. (at the end of ‘cups’ not ‘them’)

18

I work with a woman who never throws broken stuff away or refills things.
She picks up a pen, discovers it’s out of ink… does she throw it in the trash? No, she puts it back in the pen cup and finds a working pen.

The stapler is out of staples. Does she refill it? No, she sets it back down and looks for a filled stapler.
The other stapler is broken. Does she throw it away? No, she sets it back on the shelf and goes in search of a filled, working stapler.

Oh, my, the pencil point is worn down. Does she sharpen it? The pencil sharpener is less than a foot away. No! She puts it back in the pen cup and looks around for a sharpened pencil.

Drives me batshit crazy. When I say, “If the pen’s out of ink, throw it away!” she just looks at me in awe. “Oh, yeah, okay.”

19

Good lord - everybody in the office where I used to work would do this too. “Overly! How can you eat that sandwich? It has soooo many carbs in it. deep sigh I wish I could eat bread.” Now I have an irrational disdain for low-carb diets (even though I’ve finally admitted they work for some people) because I am so fucking sick and tired of people commenting on food.

Another co-worker I used to have at the same job got a bag of chips every afternoon. As soon as I’d see her walk by with them, I’d shut my office door. Her office was across the hall from me and over a bit, yet I could still hear every smack and slop when she chewed those damn chips. I even had people on the phone with me ask what the sound was in the background.

Then, when I worked in a commercial real estate firm, we had this really cute broker. Very easy on the eyes. But he knew he was cute and was a total asshole. His cube was almost directly behind me, and he had photographs of himself pinned all over the cube walls. Also, he would regularly hock up loogies and spit them into his trashcan. It wasn’t like he was in an office - we were in cubes with one entirely open side. We all hear him - snoort…ssssnnnnoooorrrrrrtttt! SPIT! That is still the singular most disgusting behavior I can remember witnessing in an office.

20

For me it would be my co-workers lunch. Keep in mind that the following is at least twice a week and, no, I am not making this up.

Picture if you will a raw chicken breast, covered in Kraft Italian dressing nuked in the microwave. The smell alone is vile, and to watch her shoveling the gelatinous mass into her gob is the stuff of nightmares.