Want to know how to avoid winding up your colleagues? Discover your irritating work habits and make work life easier for everyone. Here’s my quick and easy guide to what not to do:
1) Don’t eat smelly food in the office.
2) Don’t shout into your phone.
3) Don’t worry about other’s people’s time keeping. Make sure you get to work and meetings on time, let other people’s bosses worry about them getting there.
4) Don’t use your mobile/Blackberry/smart phone in meetings.
5) Don’t take credit for other people’s work.
6) Don’t come into the office when you’re sick, spreading your germs won’t make you popular
7) Don’t blame others for your mistakes.
8) Don’t sit on a task all day then ask a member of your team to do it five minutes before the end of the day.
9) If you’ve set a deadline for a piece of work, don’t ask for it repeatedly BEFORE the deadline. What’s the point of a deadline if you’re going to nag for it earlier anyway?
10) Don’t miss a deadline.
11) Don’t interrupt. Give others a chance to speak. Don’t speak over other people or ignore them completely. You may like the sound of your own voice but your colleagues will find it pretty grating.
12) Don’t use endless management speak. Thinking outside the box is SO last year.
13) Don’t allow your parents, friends or partner to call you endlessly at work – particularly if you work in an office where there are no direct lines. It’s irritating having to take messages from your husband every fifteen minutes.
14) Don’t be consistently late. A one off is a one off – everyone oversleeps or gets stuck on a defective train now and then. But five minutes late EVERY morning is disrespectful and annoying.
15) Don’t shout across the office at people.
16) Don’t belittle colleagues and if you have to tell someone in your team off, do it in private.
17) Don’t talk on the phone with your mouth full of food.
18) Don’t expect other people to make you cups of coffee if you’re not willing to return the favour.
19) Don’t leave the printer jammed with paper for someone else to sort out.
20) Don’t put the empty milk carton back in the fridge.
21) Don’t say you understand something when you don’t.
22) Don’t expect everyone to drop what they’re doing to do something for you, unless it’s an absolute emergency (and then be nice about it).
23) Don’t make a mess in the staff kitchen and leave it for someone else to tidy up.
24) Don’t leave the toilet roll holder empty.
25) Don’t send unnecessary emails. Pick up the phone, or talk face-to-face, once in a while.
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but you’ve still got that pesky bit at the bottom to write – the bit most people call “hobbies”. So what do you do if you don’t actually have any hobbies? Should you leave that section blank? I think that everyone has something interesting to say about their pastimes and there’s a number of ways you can tackle it.
