A Randstad USA poll of nearly 2,500 U.S. workers found gossip and ‘reply-to-all’ e-mails were the biggest
office nuisances. No surprise there. What I did find interesting, though, were such other ‘irksome’ things as:
– Unwashed dishes in kitchen sinks (that drives our receptionist over the edge)
– Potent smells like perfume, food or smoke (occasionally a pungent Middle Eastern takeout lunch will totally disrupt our office. And, I used to work for a guy who lit a cherry tobacco pipe every workday at 5pm. Talk about overpowering. Ugh.)
– Speaker phones (when I did my job swap for a day, I literally couldn’t concentrate at times because a certain someone was sooooo loud on her speakerphone)
– Loud talking (we have a few prime candidates)
As the number one ‘reply-to-all’ e-mail offender of all time, I thought I’d also list a few office pet peeves not found on the list:
– People who come into the office sick as dogs and summarily infect others
– People who use their blackberries during management meetings
– people who neglect the courtesy flush in the men’s room (now known generically as "pulling a Bray" within our office)
The other interesting finding in the Randstad survey (btw, who or what is a Randstad?) is the worker complacency about such transgressions: only one in four would confront a loudmouth; only 33 percent would say something to a rumormonger and only one in four would complain about reply-to-all e-mails.
Maybe working alongside passive-aggressive employees should be another pet peeve?
Cute smiley face, MSE. What a nuisance that is.
Me thinks you thinks a little too much. Trust me when I say an external audit of our internal e-mail prompted the blog. It’s as simple as that.
sorry to disappoint rep, but me thinks that the old age bug has finally bite ya. see, thanks to a new technology called electronic mail and the ability to save those discussions on a new program called Outlook, we can all see the conversation below. note there being no mention of this already been discussed and note the date. Me thinks a little apology is on order…
—– Original Message —–
From: Isaac Farbowitz
To: Steve Cody
Sent: Tue Oct 30 08:46:18 2007
Subject: thought u would appreciate this one…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071029/wr_nm/work_peeves_life_tech_dc
a blast from the past š
From: Steve Cody
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 8:56 AM
To: Isaac Farbowitz
Subject: Re: thought u would appreciate this one…
Great stuff. I’ll use on friday. It’s been great with the Mets and Jets, no?
Steve Cody, Managing Partner & Co-Founder
Peppercom, Inc.
470 Park Avenue South, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10016
scody@peppercom.com
direct: 212.931.6114 fax: 212.931.6159
Sorry to disillusion you med guy, but this particular blog was prompted by an internal discussion at our most recent mgmt committee mtg.
i am shocked repman- a blog about “reply to all” and i get no mention, not even a shout out for sending you the idea. and then to boot, bray gets slammed in this one- not a nice way to treat your former ace. that would be like omar and the mets kicking sand on pedro in a few years.