Annoyances at Work

[Xanthious]

My biggest complaint about my work is a toss up between having to go into the office at the beginning and end of the week or being out in the field and only having roadside roach motels to choose from.

If I had to pick it would probably be the latter of the two because if I'm in the field I don't have to go to the office at all and if I'm working from home I only have to be at the office for about two hours on Monday for the weekly meeting and less time than that on Fridays to turn in my work. If I have to stay at a cheap motel I can be stuck there for as long as a week and that just sucks.

 

[Agayek]

My only real issue with my workplace at the moment is that I have nothing to do. I'm a programmer, and I recently started on a new project with a new supervisor/project lead. The guy has no idea what to do with me though. I finished my part of the project (or at least as much as I can without the rest catching up) 2 weeks ago, and since then I've been coming in to work and doing nothing all day, despite repeated requests for something to work on.

It's got to the point where I'm just working on personal projects on their dime, and I'm bored out of my mind by it all.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

It's called picking your battles, my friend.

What battle? From what you said you haven't even ASKED. Basically you are annoying yourself. That makes no sense.

Sooooo because I'm not so rude as to expect the 4 people in my office that enjoy the music to bend to my will just because I don't like it...that makes it wrong for me to not like the music? And as such I'm annoying myself? You're the one that's not making sense.

I tolerate the music because I'm not selfish, how does that suddenly make my distaste for the music invalid?

 

[burningdragoon]

My only real issue with my workplace at the moment is that I have nothing to do. I'm a programmer, and I recently started on a new project with a new supervisor/project lead. The guy has no idea what to do with me though. I finished my part of the project (or at least as much as I can without the rest catching up) 2 weeks ago, and since then I've been coming in to work and doing nothing all day, despite repeated requests for something to work on.

It's got to the point where I'm just working on personal projects on their dime, and I'm bored out of my mind by it all.

Oh I've been there. In fact my last job was almost all that, except I couldn't even do personal projects.... which I why I don't work there anymore.

So yeah, having nothing to do is my answer as well.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

It's called picking your battles, my friend.

What battle? From what you said you haven't even ASKED. Basically you are annoying yourself. That makes no sense.

Sooooo because I'm not so rude as to expect the 4 people in my office that enjoy the music to bend to my will just because I don't like it...that makes it wrong for me to not like the music? And as such I'm annoying myself? You're the one that's not making sense.

I tolerate the music because I'm not selfish, how does that suddenly make my distaste for the music invalid?

Because there are such things as compromises. Part of being a well functioning human being is working with others to find ways we can all work together without pissing each other off. It's not rude to tell your coworkers that you don't share their taste in music, as it is they have no idea that it bothers you. A different station, or perhaps headphones, would solve the problem for everyone.

You are annoying yourself in that the reason the problem exists is you have decided to do nothing about it. Your decision to not act has created the problem, not the people who are listening to the music. Now if you asked nicely and they ignored you, then the fault would be theirs.

You're insinuating that I blame the others for their own taste in music, which I do not. And they do know that it bothers me, I've commented on it numerous times and they agree with me: it does get annoying when you hear the same songs all day long. It's gotten them to turn the music down, and there is your compromise.

I don't begrudge them for listening to the radio, if anything I begrudge the radio station for not having a more expansive playlist. But there's nothing I or my coworkers can do about that.

Here's a helpful hint...unless someone specifically asks you for advice, no one is looking for you to be a conflict resolutionist.

 

[Agayek]

Sooooo because I'm not so rude as to expect the 4 people in my office that enjoy the music to bend to my will just because I don't like it...that makes it wrong for me to not like the music? And as such I'm annoying myself? You're the one that's not making sense.

I tolerate the music because I'm not selfish, how does that suddenly make my distaste for the music invalid?

It's not rude to ask them to keep it down or change the station or whatever. Kendarik's right, insofar as the problem as you describe it only exists because you're refusing to do anything about it.

It's perfectly reasonable to (politely) ask them to change the station or listen to it more quietly/with headphones or whatever. If they decline, then by all means, tolerate away. It's kinda silly to be bothered by something and do nothing about it though.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

My story isn't shifting, the spirit of this topic (which you've quite thoroughly derailed) is to talk about things that annoy you in the workplace, not asking for ways to resolve the issues. Why didn't I mention speaking with my coworkers before? Because that's not the point. My complaint isn't about them, as I said it'd be more accurate to say my complaint is about the radio station. The full story is that from time to time even they'll get tired of it and switch to Pandora which, thankfully, has a much more expansive playlist. Yet even then you'll still end up getting the same songs, just not as many times in a row.

But regardless, I'm done with this off-track conversation. Think what you will because I'm done caring.

 

[Chemical Alia]

I honestly can't think of anything super annoying about my current job, I work in a small office with a few really cool people.

A couple years ago I worked at Halliburton for a total of three whole weeks. I meant to stay there and collect an exorbitant salary for a little while to help pay off my student loans while I worked on my portfolio, but these people were insufferable. They hired along with me the last two people on Earth I would ever have chosen to work with from my school, and my art lead was something of a troglodyte.

We all worked in a small dark room together, and he would belch and snort and listen to his music loudly. He had this tremendously sour body odor that would fill the room and make you gag when you walked in, and he would often berate me for the college I went to for grad school out of his insecurity of never finishing college (nobody cares about SMU outside of Texas, lolol). He would also start speaking crappy Japanese in mixed company to try and impress another coworker. It just got really old, really quickly. I recommended one of my friends when I quit and she's been there ever since (and making a ton of more money than me, haha.)

 

[Phishfood]

People who collar me in the corridor with "I sent you an e-mail, it said [stuff]". It happens every day and one time I will murder them all with a spoon for doing it.

 

[Worgen]

My boss. Or more specifically, my team leader.

He sits directly across from me.

He does nothing all day. Ducks almost all work that comes in, whilst peering suspiciously at anyone else who does the same.

Plays youtube videos and browser games.

Listens to bad music and sings lustily along.

Reads joke sites and guffaws loudly.

He's a nice guy, but he's literally the laziest fucking man on the face of the earth. He's presently in the break room, dicking around. I have no idea what he's doing, but he's not on any kind of official break. He's been in there for 15 minutes.

He makes twice my salary.

Everyone KNOWS he does this stuff, including his own bosses, and no one cares. He's literally immune to all forms of discipline and censure.

Drives me nuts.

That kind of sounds like a story I remember hearing from my professor about a guy who worked with him, the guy would always be seen sitting in his chair with his feet up just starting into space when ever anyone would walk by his office, when the time game to let people go he was naturally fired, a couple months later all the computers they were using stopped working, he was the guy in charge of them so they went to him and and he negotiated getting rehired and paid as a consultant or something, so he goes into the computer room and listens to the server and hits the side of it and it starts working again. It turns out what he was doing while he was just sitting there with his feet up was listening, these were old computers with moving parts and these rubber gaskets in the machines would move out of place so he would listen for when that started to happen and hit the machine so they would be knocked back into place.

 

[Worgen]

My only real issue with my workplace at the moment is that I have nothing to do. I'm a programmer, and I recently started on a new project with a new supervisor/project lead. The guy has no idea what to do with me though. I finished my part of the project (or at least as much as I can without the rest catching up) 2 weeks ago, and since then I've been coming in to work and doing nothing all day, despite repeated requests for something to work on.

It's got to the point where I'm just working on personal projects on their dime, and I'm bored out of my mind by it all.

What about requesting them to pay for you to learn another programming language?

 

[Karhukonna]

My boss. Or more specifically, my team leader.

He sits directly across from me.

He does nothing all day. Ducks almost all work that comes in, whilst peering suspiciously at anyone else who does the same.

Plays youtube videos and browser games.

Listens to bad music and sings lustily along.

Reads joke sites and guffaws loudly.

He's a nice guy, but he's literally the laziest fucking man on the face of the earth. He's presently in the break room, dicking around. I have no idea what he's doing, but he's not on any kind of official break. He's been in there for 15 minutes.

He makes twice my salary.

I have the exact same situation at my workplace. Except we have two bosses. One that's a talentless hack and the other one a shiny example of excellent leadership. Minus the leadership, though. Well, at least he gets stuff done and cuts us a little slack every now and then. The older workers take their summer vacations in synch with the better boss, so they don't have to work in a place that's slowly falling apart while he's gone.

 

[Agayek]

What about requesting them to pay for you to learn another programming language?

That's basically what's going on right now. I'm playing around with Python and C# to get a feel for it.

I would ask them to pay for a class, but I'm a consultant, so I don't think it likely they'd actually spring for it.

 

[Belaam]

I've had a couple co-workers who try to sell me on their politics or religion.

I had an Air Force supervisor who was a ten-year Sergeant (i.e. it took him a decade to make Sergeant, if he hadn't gotten promoted, he would have been kicked out for not advancing at the minimum rate) who had no clue what our mission was, how half the equipment worked, but really wanted to rant and rave about how he was our boss. Luckily, I inadvertently got him busted out of there when I asked his supervisor why he had been IMing me mission questions the day before.
Turns out it hadn't been the higher-up but rather the idiot Sergeant taking his evaluation at the higher-up's desk and using his computer to IM me for the answers he didn't know.

But the winner went to a woman whose husband was the biggest idiot on the planet. He would occasionally get a job, hold it for a week tops and get fired. She was also constantly on the phone to him explaining the most basic tasks in the universe. One day, after they had moved, we literally overheard her explaining how to adjust the shower water temperature. She had massive seniority over us and zero chance of ever being fired.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

*pulls out a Festivus pole* I believe it is time for the Airing of Grievances.

Quite specifically, those you've got against coworkers or work-place situations. What goes on at your job that drives you absolutely nuts?

For me it has to be the radio.

I honestly don't mind people listening to music while working, the problem is the choice of radio stations. For starters: it's probably my least favorite type of music...today's pop hits. So I get plenty of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and all those other talentless hacks, but that's not the problem either. I drown it out while I'm working and it just becomes white noise anyways.

The problem is the radio station's playlist is quite literally 7 to 10 songs long. All day, every day, the same 7 to 10 songs playing over and over...for 8 hours straight. Each of these things by themselves is tolerable...but when combined the create a perfect storm of ear bleeding annoyance.

8 non-stop hours...
Of music you absolutely hate...
Playing the same 7 to 10 songs over and over...

It's funny, I had the same thing going on at my job too. That was, until I mentioned it to one of my managers (the only one who knew how to change the station), and convinced her to change it. Now we listen to music from the 80's :3 Luckily I'm hearing MANY other songs, and a number of them I like, so it all worked out! It was easy to get her on my side though, since she hates the, as you say, "talent-less hacks" of today XD

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Of course there was more build-up. I had been getting tired of working there for a long while. Asshole managers, mind-numbing work, no breaks allowed and, on that particular day, I had been having a bad day as it was.

I won't go into a situation-by-situation story, but suffice to say yes, the incident I spoke of was essentially the culmination of 3 weeks of simmering discontent.

Woah woah woah, no breaks allowed? That isn't illegal last time I checked. How did that go on?

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Snip

Illegal* Whoops >.< (Does editing your previous post (involving a quote) send the fix to the person you quoted? Or could he/she end up reading the mistake and reply with a response not intended?)

 

[theonlyblaze2]

People looking at porn. I work at a library. It is sick how often I have to deal with these perverts.