Given that office work is a common form of employment on Lemmy, and given our higher-than average technical ability, I’m interested to hear what bothers you most.
For me: coworker says “I’m old fashioned” and refuses to employ the simplest keyboard shortcuts (using arrow keys to navigate excel, using Ctrl+C instead of the mouse, et cetera) and then complains about how much their wrist hurts because of their mouse.
A fucking open office floor plan. A lot of my work took deep concentration. If I didn’t have noise cancelling headphones I wouldn’t have been able to get anything done. Businesses adopted it because it was cheaper and one or two articles, since refuted, said it was good for collaboration. And nervous managers couldn’t possibly imagine that someone they couldn’t see was actually working.
Just generally having to do all of the office culture stuff when my type of work (programming) is much better done remotely. Having to wake up much earlier than needed to commute all the way to the office dressed up according to their policy, showing up on time and having to be stuck there the whole day even at the times of the day where there’s not much work to be done, having to deal with certain coworkers that I’d rather avoid, having managers spending more time trying to pressure you than doing any actual work etc.
Work would be so much better if I could just deal with the problems being solved rather than the corporate rituals we all have to take part in.
I have a coworker who’s doing all of our UI and screen designs. Every time he has finished a design he immediately wants to talk about it and randomly calls. Sometimes when he spots small errors in a live project (“this looks a bit wonky in Safari”, “the headline here needs three pixels more margin”), he wants me to immediately fix them and gets pissed when I finish my current task first.
Dude, we all have work to do here, yours isn’t (always) the most important one. I am very close to escalating this to my boss, because it gets increasingly difficult to ignore it and sometimes it feels like he’s cosplaying as my manager.
In short: I hate getting interrupted when I’m in the middle of a task and I hate someone breathing down my neck. I’ll get to it when I get to it.
Let me suggest another way for both of you to think of this. Sounds like you’re development and he’s UX. These two roles need to be tightly aligned. Do you work in sprints? Do you have regular meetings to discuss these concerns so he doesn’t have to bother you unexpectedly? Do you guys have a design system so you don’t have to ask and he doesn’t need to tell you something is 3px off?
People who cough and splutter at their desks instead of staying home until they stop.
People who hate on their spouses, bragging when they’re “in the dog house”. Divorces exist, Brent, you don’t have to stay married to a person you hate.
In a similar vein, people who comment about work being a “break from the family”. I had my first kid a year or so ago and one person at my new job said how it must be nice to “get away for awhile”.
I actually said “no, I love my family and enjoy my home life.” They avoid me now.
I have friends with kids and are in happy living relationships, but they’re definitely not upset to get some away time from the chaos of young children when they go to school or daycare. That’s not to say they don’t love them or love being around them, but it’s a lot of work and a break isn’t inherently a negative thing.
I don’t like boomer humour like making constant insults about one’s in laws or their spouse. I do think that your coworker definitely came with the wrong tone and probably fits that bill. Solid in you for shutting that shit down.
I 100% agree that a break isn’t a negative thing and I thank my mother in law every time she watches our kid.
Never in my life will being at work be better than being at home. Regardless, It’s the same guy who makes off hand comments like my wife “wears the pants” and “is the boss”. I use to ignore the comments and just carry on but I didn’t hold it in the last time.
Lol this guy might be a cuck and want you to bang his wife.
I get it. More people need to push back on that kind of stuff. I jokingly refer to my wife as my accountant when the discussion of money comes up, but it’s because she’s literally an accountant. I then give her all of the accolades for why we are financially stable and get to do fun things. Nothing demeaning, and always followed up with high praise.
Nice win for you. Congrats on the new family.
People who talk excessively loudly and can be heard across the entire office.
I had a pair of coworkers that would chat over slack all day. One of them had a laugh. My other coworker at the other side of the large office would message me “what’s so fucking funny over there?”. I never knew because they never shared.
When people get upset that I bought durian to the office, I was going to share the durian with every one.
Next time try microwaving a fish meal. Your colleagues will surely appreciate the aroma.
I’ve brought fermented shark multiple times. Nobody ever wants any.
I had a very nice coworker, who I got on really well with. But he has the disgusting habit of eating cereal with an open mouth. I could hear it through my noise cancelling earbuds. Great guy, but that really bothered me.
It is somewhat defensible, but installing a coffee machine and not letting other people use it. I am willing to provide my own coffee and clean everything, but it is too tempting to have an espresso machine and not be able to use it.
This one is entirely defensible!
You are willing to provide and clean, everyone else will not.
Karen from accounting will come use up the high-dollar beans you received as a present, make it wrong, leave a mess, and then claim her Starbucks mocha-choca-itchy-gitchy-ya-ya was better anyway…
Having to be in it.
the internet exists.
My boss is apparently unaware of this.
we need a new boss. or rather a guillotine
This is a pet peeve on myself. I’m in a supervisor position and sometimes I will get frustrated at people because they have a bad work ethic. I have to remember not everyone has the same work ethic as me and I also have an irrational fear of being fired/laid off.
What? The mouse came waaaay after keyboards and shortcuts, that makes no sense. They are just lazy and stupid.
Reheating seafood. Don’t think I need to elaborate.
Does that mean if it’sthe first time I’ve heated this canned tuna I’m in the clear?
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poor heating/cooling. Usually offices aren’t a comfortable temperature for everybody.
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not getting compensated for the commute. It’s a pay cut. Fuck you, management.
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people that just walk up to your desk and start asking questions. Send a message like “can we talk about XYZ?” and I’ll get to it when I get to it. Though this maybe is a learned behavior from people who are bad at responding to messages.
Yep, commute time is work time. Unpaid usually but you can find jobs that include commute time. Usually the ones where you service a different customer every day.
I think it’s ridiculous that commute time is private time, meaning it’s ideal to live close to your employer but no employer pays enough to live nearby. The house market is cooked here.
I work in a shop in manufacturing and frequently need to email and/or teams message someone for information but there’s absolutely times I’m not even gonna bother and will just go right up to an engineer or draftsman’s desk with schematics to talk and work through stuff. Or I’ll just call them and ask them to look at something / talk. Is this not acceptable? Idk, if so I’m still gonna keep doing it, I really don’t care. I hate the back and forth waiting around bullshit of emails. Really the only time I email is if I need to involve multiple parties or I’ll teams message if it’s a quick question.
There’s really something valuable about talking about things in real time and looking at what we’re working on and how it’s designed and what the solution should be. Having a weird “let’s keep everything digital” attitude is prob one of my pet peeves tbh. I really don’t care if someone isn’t social, I wouldn’t judge them if they’re socially awkward. I would judge them if they won’t even give me the time of day or act like it’s a chore to have a work related conversation. Human beings are a social animal, no sense in shutting everyone out all day
For me, it’s situational. I’ll ask if I can borrow them for a minute, and it’s usually a small question, not a request to do a task. I’m fortunate that I work on a really good team and we are all decently close and respectful to one another, and everyone likes helping each other out when they can. I would say our culture is a bit of an anomaly.
I’ve asked people in other departments for small things and been told to create a ticket. That’s fine, I’m not going to be upset about it, but if that person is just sitting and sitting the shit, it is irritating to force extra steps when it’s not necessary.
I didn’t mean I need them to keep it digital. I meant I don’t want my train of thought interrupted. A “take a number” and “now serving” sign would work fine, if it gated the conversation until I was ready. Or just they send a message asking to talk and wait for me to say “ok come on over”
Eh idk still just seems cold to me if someone said “take a number”. Unless you’re like slammed all day and stressed tf out and actually so busy you can’t fit me in, in which case I’ll take the hint and wouldn’t be offended. My old boss was like this but he was just stressed and miserable all the time anyway.
Most office jobs are not overloading people with work like this in what I’ve seen in my career. It just sounds like a personal preference you have you don’t want to interrupt your work.
Since I’m on the shop floor I am working under strict deadlines and ship dates quite often but I’ll still make time for anyone for anything considering I work in testing and quality / design assurance of our product and I want to make sure everything is perfect by the time it leaves. I can always stay late to get things done.
I accept that your job likely has different cadences than software development, in addition to personal preference.
Most software engineers I’ve talked to don’t like being interrupted in the middle of some deep thought. Especially if it means shelving current work to check out something else
I feel like when that happens I have to take 10m just to load everything back into memory. Highly complex systems take a minute
#3 is the worst. ESPECIALLY when people veil their request for aid in small talk or conciliatory ramblings.
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Not being able to deliver bad news / admit when something has gone wrong
