Workplace pet peeves - what are yours?

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Getting threatened with termination

When someone tells me that I worked too slowly or badly

Handshake, germs

There is no point in saying "how are you doing?", Because there are five emotions and happy is just one of them. "Fine" and "good", are the only socially acceptable, answers to "how are you doing?". If you don't say "fine" or "good", idiots bombard you with, well intentioned annoying question. They act like they are trying to "help", you, but just annoying



Micromanagement ("why are you smiling?")


Lil b*****s laughing at me


Mispronounce name

Homophobia

Idiots talk too much and too loudly and there are too many of them


They don't do their job

They blame me for things I did do

They don't take the blame for things they did wrong

Also another one:

Having nothing to do for a week or two then being completely swamped for the next week or two and often requiring overtime.

The Peter Principle... everyone rises to the limit of their incompetence, then they don't get promoted anymore. So most managers are on step higher than they are able to deal with.
Ironically, the manager I had most trouble with and was clearly out of his depth was called Peter.

They laugh too much and too loudly

They laugh at me

Some boy had the nerve to ask me "what the f**k are you looking at?". but I was just standing around waiting for work to start and I was not bothering him. Ass hole.


Pet peeves of work are the same, as outside of work

I have the same problem but it's not because of women (because it's also too cold in the winter for everyone!) but because our building operator is a lazy, incompetent fool who sets it deliberately low so he can take credit for "saving" energy and helping the environment. Funny how his office and the higher ups are always so well maintained and comfortable while one of my heat pumps has been offline since February.

Someone OT, but I took a building operator class with this guy once (I have never worked in building operations) and actually scored HIGHER than he did on both the tests and the field assignments!

Having to exchange hellos or nods with a co worker every time you pass, instead of doing it just once in the day. I'm told this is more of an American habit.

Bosses that are extra nice to their favourite employees and extra mean to their non-favourites

When the most popular or favoured person is also the most annoying person

Male bosses who employ a girl just because she's pretty

Supervisors who don't think things through properly, like making you do unnecessary tasks instead of tasks that more importantly need to be done

When new major changes are sprung upon you all of a sudden instead of being discussed with you first

People who pretend to have a mental illness so they can be privileged, and people who genuinely have a mental illness getting overlooked

Being forced to do things they know you don't like, instead of getting you to do other tasks that you can do and prefer to do

Smokers being allowed extra breaks for smoking

Running out of essential equipment or chemicals

The company messing your wages up or not paying you properly

Not being allowed a bottle of water with you during hot weather

Having to start work too early in the morning

Feeling obliged to do overtime on your day off

I had these problems in my 2nd job

When you're working on a project and you're blocked from making any further progress due to administrative issues or an essential task in the chain which you cannot do and will take years for you to get up to speed to do. Fortunately, there's a person on your team assigned to do that (let's call him/her "X".) However, X is busy and cannot help you anytime soon. Your managers and stakeholders bug you about the project taking forever and you tell them you're waiting on X but they keep bugging you and you keep telling them you're waiting for X. They even tell you (directly or indirectly) that you need to keep bugging X and get him to hurry up.

Shouldn't they simply contact X and tell him to hurry up rather than pressure me in this situation?

^
Urgghh, bottlenecks - I'm lucky that I can do a lot of the things others do myself and I'd rather do their job then wait for them to get round to it.

Maybe they're hoping you'd take the initiative to help X finish what he/she's doing assuming you are capable of helping X that is. They should still tell you to help him/her instead of being on your back about how you need to be on X's.

Co-worker in the cubicle next to mine has put a Glade plug-in air freshener under her desk, and the perfume stench is overwhelming.

Unfortunately, in my case, I'm completely unqualified to do the work that X is doing. Both X and I are specialists in highly technical fields and X is part of a orohect I'm managing, although neither of us is a subordinate to the other. The expertise of both of us is needed to complete the project and it's very rare to find a person with both of our skillsets.

Unfortunately, X is completely swamped and cannot complete my project and there's no one else in the department with X's specialized skills, yet all of the stakeholders keep harping on my to get it done. Since they're aware that X is holding things up, they keep pressuring me to put pressure on X instead of pressuring X directly which makes no sense.

To the point where, when I was suddenly tapped to train a new batch of employees (on zero notice, of course), I supplied them with an enormous list of acronyms and industry/office jargon, along with explanations, based on everything I'd learned over several years there.

This was, at the time, the only such list available anywhere nationally, and I got a lot of people coming up to me weeks or months later to thank me for it.

The unwritten and completely unnecessary social interaction aspects of almost all workplaces. Almost no job advertisements will ever even allude to them, except with weasel-words like "fun", or the darker "sense of humor". Is it really so bad to be able to want to turn up to a job, do the work required, do it well, and go home? Without having to constantly fend off unrelated socializing from co-workers (and even from the employer itself, if they have an official social club or 'team-building' events)?

Is it so bad to want to keep work and personal life separate? To be able to spend breaks (particularly lunch breaks) taking an actual break from people you have to endure forty hours a week as it is? To have no expectations of after-work or weekend events? To just... I don't know, be paid to do work? Is that not a thing any more?