Yesterday, Selection Sunday marked the start of the frenetic sports season many like to call March Madness. Today, we’re launching a bracket like the one you may have filled out yesterday, but our March MADness tournament contains only the most infuriating, enraging work communication pet peeves. These annoying office habits keep you from understanding—or, sometimes, liking—your coworkers, and we’re trying to find the worst habit you can form at work. Over the next month, we’ll be asking our community to vote for the worst habit, ultimately crowning the March MADness Champion on _____.
Below are descriptions of the four “conferences” for March MADness, as well as a list of all the “teams.” Have a pet peeve we missed? Comment below with your work communication pet peeve.
Work Chat Woes
These are the Slack, Google Hangouts, HipChat, and other work chat program sins we all commit. While many of the office instant messenger programs have made work life easier, they have their dissenters. Those folks probably hate these chat behaviors.
1 Gifs that keep on giffing
2 Emoji overload
3 The one-word line
4 The never-ending message
5 Early-morning chatters
6 Late-night chatters
7 Giant group chat
8 Blowing up the group chat
Email Fails
Ah, email. As the default business communication method, email has been used, overused, and abused for decades. Every professional tries to escape “email jail” (the constant state of reading and responding to emails), with varying degrees of success. Even if your inbox has been tamed, these obnoxious email habits make email jail into email hell.
9 CC overcrowding
10 Boss CC sneak attack
11 Over-forwarding
12 The “+1” response
13 Email scheduling hell
14 Email autonotification hell
15 Should’ve messaged
16 No subject line
Call Catastrophes
Interruptions, introductions, dropped calls. We all know the perils of conference calls and video chats. Even if they’re necessary for connecting with remote team members and other offices, calls can strain even the best work relationships. And if you experience these call habits, you’ll probably feel more than strained.
17 Background noise nuisances
18 Call distractions
19 Should’ve emailed
20 Should’ve spoken IRL
21 Eternal introductions
22 Total tardiness
23 The long talker
24 The interrupter
IRL Irritations
Of course, sometimes your coworkers will irritate you in real life. These smaller, more subtle bad habits may not ruin your day, but they can add up to something more enraging over time. Even if you work with angels, you’ve probably experienced one of these horrible office habits.
25 Passive-aggressive notes
26 Whiteboard woes
27 Temperature wars
28 Loud music
29 Early morning chatters
30 Close talkers
31 “But . . .”
32 “Well, actually . . .”
Want to start participating now? The polls for the first matchup between X CC overcrowding and the boss CC sneak attack, as well as the second matchup between gifs that keep on gifing and emoji overload are live. Vote for your least favorite!
No comments:
Post a Comment