28 Worst Office Pet Peeves 2020 Survey of 1,000+ Americans

28 Worst Office Pet Peeves 2020 Survey of 1,000+ Americans You open the office fridge. Grab your Tupperware... but someone ate half your casserole. You throw it in the microwave only to realize the interior looks like a scene of a crime. You want to grab a plate, but theyre all stacked dirty in the sink. You slowly lose your appetite and opt for coffee. But the coffee pots empty.No matter how much we love our jobs, all offices come with people, habits, and situations that drive us nuts.Inspired by hilariously relatable Tweets and stories about office pet peeves, we set out to find the worst ones.We surveyed 1,026 Americans and asked them about:Everything that drives them mad at work.How annoying those situations are.How often they happen.We can proudly say weve scientifically identified The Worst Office Offenders.Gripes of WrathBefore we did the actual study, we turned to Twitter, read dozens of articles about what steams Americans up in their offices, and asked our peers about their pet peeves.First, we curated a list of 120+ office situati ons that grind gears.Then, we narrowed those down to include only 28: the ones that just seemed way worse than others.Before we tell you which one turned out to be the most horrendous, heres a shortlist we came up with. In no particular order.(From your personal experiencewhich of those make you fume?)Not enough coffee left in the potCoworkers coming to work sickCoworkers coming in late or leaving earlyPrinter out of paper, jammed or brokenCoworkers chatting with each other or on the phone in a shared roomA/C too coldA/C too hotSlow Wi-FiNo clean dishes to usePeople using your mugNot enough interaction with colleaguesCoworkers not washing hands before leaving the bathroomElevator out of serviceCoworkers bad breath or body odorCoworkers texting/browsing social media during work hoursNot enough sockets availableCoworkers chewing on pens/pencilsMalfunctioning hardware or slow computerConversations about politics or religionNot enough parking spacePeople calling or arranging meetings to discuss things that could have been an emailCoworkers or clients following up too soonPeople using too much cologne or perfumeToo many meetingsPeople using too much jargon and buzzwordsCompany firewallDepressing decor or bad lightingBeing involved in conversations in a bathroomFor each example of an annoying office situation, we asked our respondents just two questions:How often they feel it happensand how angry it makes them.We then came up with a tilt factor: we multiplied perceived annoyance level with reported frequency. Our assumption was that for something to really take the joy out of our work lives it has to happen fairly often AND be nothing short of infuriating.Here it is. A list of Americas proud top 10 worst office offenders.The worst office pet peeves in the USSoWhat can we learn from the list above?Most definitely, we can divide the worst office pet peeves into four main categories:Ignoring health and hygiene rules: people coming to work sick and people not washing th eir hands before leaving the bathroom.Others not working hard enough: people coming in late or leaving early, chatting in the shared room during office hours or spending too much time browsing social media.Insufficient office tools and equipment: malfunctioning computers, broken printers, slow Wi-Fi.Workflow inefficiencies: meetings that happen too often and concern things that could have been an email.And it makes perfect sense, doesnt it? Ultimately, what annoys us most are the things that make it hard to keep up a good level of our own work.Were unlikely to perform well if:We catch someone elses infection.Others fail to deliver their work.Technology lets us down.Our time gets wasted.Also, lets pause for a second to discuss *the* worst entry from our list.Coworkers coming to work sick.Can we please all take a vow to never, ever do it?If you come in sick, youre spreading your germs amongst:Your teammates.Members of other teams.Finally, all of their respective families.Eventually, t he snowball effect kicks in and everyones work performance and personal life suffer.Feeling sick? Take a day off. Cant do it? Work from home. Really. Simple as this.AlrightSo youve seen the list of the most annoying AND common office pet peeves.ButLets see what happens if we remove the frequency factor.Heres a list of Americas most annoying office situations regardless of how often they happen (see new entries in RED).The most annoying office situationsMalfunctioning hardware or slow computer: 61% find it annoying or very annoying.Coworkers not washing hands before leaving the bathroom: 59% find it annoying or very annoying.Coworkers coming to work sick: 53% find it annoying or very annoying.Slow Wi-Fi: 51% find it annoying or very annoying.Coworkers bad breath or body odor: 50% find it annoying or very annoying (but only 28% feel it happens often or very often).Printer out of paper, jammed or broken: 48% find it annoying or very annoying.People calling or arranging meetings to disc uss things that could have been an email: 46% find it annoying or very annoying.People using your mug: 45% find it annoying or very annoying (only 17% feel it happens often or very often).Coworkers coming in late or leaving early: 44% find it annoying or very annoying.Not enough parking space: 43% find it annoying or very annoying (only 31% feel it happens often or very often).What do the three new items on the list tell us?In short, while situations like not having enough parking space, other people smelling bad, or coworkers using your personal items all get on our nerves, luckily, they dont happen too often.Who gets annoyed by what? Office pet peeves across genders and generationsMen get more annoyed than womenWe found no major differences in what gets on men and womens nerves across US offices. ButTheres one clear trend. Men reported higher levels of annoyance for 25 out of 28 office pet peeves we analyzed.The only outliers?Coworkers not washing hands before leaving the bathroom : very annoying to 45% of women vs. 33% of men.Coworkers coming to work sick: very annoying to 30% of women vs. 22% of men.A/C too cold: very annoying to 20% of women vs. only 10% of men.Whys that?Most likely, because women are more concerned than men about their health and overall office hygiene.Gen Z and Millennials are angrier than Gen X and Baby BoomersThe general trend we found is: the older you are, the less angry you get.Gen Z and Millennials reported higher annoyance levels than Gen X and Baby Boomers for a staggering 26 out of 28 office pet peeves in question.Apart from these two:Coworkers coming to work sick: very annoying to 32% of Baby Boomers, 30% of Gen X, 24% of Millennials, 23% of Gen Z.Coworkers texting/browsing social media at work: very annoying to 25% of Baby Boomers, 15% of Gen X, 13% of Millennials, 11% of Gen Z.It seems that younger generations are so used to the omnipresent social media that they barely notice their coworkers rummaging through their smartphon es every day.Also, surprise, surprise, older generations seem more concerned about their health and well-being (YOLO, right?).Office situations were (surprisingly?) okay withNow that you know what Americans are most annoyed by, lets see what pet peeves arent as bad as they seem.Heres a list of the 10 least irritating office situations asked about in our study.Not enough interaction with colleagues: 19% of respondents find it annoying or very annoying.Coworkers chewing on pens/pencils: 25% find it annoying or very annoying.Company firewall: 25% find it annoying or very annoying.Not enough sockets available: 25% find it annoying or very annoying.Not enough coffee in the pot: 27% find it annoying or very annoying.Depressing decor or bad lighting: 28% find it annoying or very annoying.People using too much jargon and buzzwords: 28% find it annoying or very annoying.Being involved in conversations in a bathroom: 28% find it annoying or very annoying.No clean dishes to use: 29% find it an noying or very annoying.Elevator out of service: 29% find it annoying or very annoying.Open-ended question responses (have we forgotten something?)At the end of our survey, we included one open-ended question: just in case we forgot to include something really important on our list.AndIt seems like we did.Most answers to our additional what else annoys you question, concerned three issues.(See some sample answers below.)1. Office politicsBackstabbing or assigning blame to someone else.The cliques. The favoritism... Infuriating sometimes, really.Gossip. Mostly office gossip, but also any other [kind of] gossip about anyone.2. NoisePeople whistling or singing, people eating crisps or [just] eating loudly, people running, people being loud in general, people listening to music without headphones.People talking very [loudly] on the phone. So [loudly] that you cannot concentrate on your job.Anyone being too loud in any way.3. Others not doing their jobPeople not doing their share of work .Nothing annoys me. As long as people do their work [well], I dont care what else they do.People pretending to work.And finally Some bonus answers we loved!Some specific-yet-relatable ones:People discussing lunch plans at 9 AM.Im sick of hearing about your children.Some employees whispering thinking that others dont realize.Some well, just weirdly specific:The jail smells.I work in an adult entertainment venue as a performer. When someone else uses my props without permission is annoying. Also when we run out of lube or sanitizerthat's also annoying.Judy.Some plain depressing:People.The entire human race in general, about 90% of the time.Having to work.And, last but not least:WORK IS HARD.It is.Methodology and LimitationsFor this study, we collected answers from 1,026 American respondents via Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Respondents consisted of 54% females and 46% males. 7% of respondents were 23 or younger, 62% aged 2439, 22% aged 4055, and 9% 56 or older.This self-report study inves tigated office situations American employees find annoying. Respondents were asked 56 scale-based questions regarding the perceived frequency of a given annoying situation as well as perceived annoyance level caused by it.As experience is subjective, we understand that some participants and their answers might be affected by recency, attribution, exaggeration, self-selection, non-response or voluntary response bias.Given the gender and age makeup of our large sample, the study can be generalized to the entire population.

Tips for Coming Back Strong after Maternity Leave

Tips for Coming Back Strong after Maternity Leave Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'xvO0qdBuQXJWAr6zdhJoSw',sig:'S0p9e236QCgAXKAfbP3GEdqQqEG6k1Dfi5atSxe41tE=',w:'508px',h:'339px',items:'544489339',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); Coming back after having a baby is a time fraught with anxiety for many women. Women who return to work quickly tend to breastfeed less, experience more physical and emotional challenges, and feel more anxious than women who can take more time off to care for their newborn. Balancing career and earning needs with parenting decisions is more difficult for new mothers than new fathers, a fact that hasn’t changed much over time. A 2012 study of over 2,800 American women found that 25 percent returned to work just two weeks after giving birth. Women with degrees were able to take more time off, according to the survey. Eighty percent of women with degrees took six or more weeks off after giving birth. Women with more education and more earning power are more likely to have paid maternity leave, according to the study. More than 1 in 5 of the top 10 percent of earners received paid family leave, compared to 1 in 20 in the bottom quartile. A recent U.K. survey found that 85 percent of working mothers felt that having children made it harder to advance their careers. I recently spoke with a Danish author now living in Austin, Texas, about how to stay relevant to your company and network while taking maternity leave. Soulaima Gourani is a consultant, trainer, and author of several books on careers and success.   She’s half Danish, half Moroccan, and has been recognized as one of the 20 most business-minded people in Nordic countries and named among the European ‘Inspiring Fifty’   list of inspiring role models. She’s worked in multi-national companies such as Hewlett-Packard and the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and holds an MBA from the Copenhagen Business School, where she taught supply chain management. Scandinavian countries famously offer more workplace benefits and more work/life balance than the U.S., which has no national parental leave policy. In Denmark, women and men are offer a year of paid parental leave after the birth of a child. Gourani surprised me by advising emphatically that women not take advantage of the year-long leave. “Most women feel bypassed and left out when they come back to work. In a year, a lot of things will have happened in your job and in the world. Your company and your network may forget you.” She recommends that women drop the idea that maternity leave is an all or nothing proposition. Consider negotiating a part-time schedule that allows you to ease back into your role. And don’t forget that there are ways to remain connected while taking time off if you do decide on a long absence. First, she says, before your maternity leave, keep taking on exciting assignments and show eagerness, passion and diligence. You may be tired, and maybe a bit sick. She suggests trying to minimize talk about your pregnancy in the office. Make sure people know that you are still capable of giving your full attention to the job. Gourani’s suggestions for the time you are on maternity leave include updating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile and reading and reading and staying updated on your industry (things you may have struggled to find time for when working.) Attend one or two coffee dates a week with people from your network (bring the little one), and check in on your e-mails. Visit the office once a month (sometimes without the little one, she suggests, so your colleagues see you in both your roles: mother and professional.) When you come back from maternity leave, take a good look at the organizational chart. Look for new hires or new faces on teams. Budget some time for catching up with colleagues and meeting new people who make have come aboard during your absence. Rebuilding your internal network is essential to getting back up to speed. Be patient with yourself if it takes you time to adjust. You may be feeling emotional about leaving your child, so give yourself some private time to master your emotions if you need to. You may be feeling fuzzy from sleep deprivation or the physical effects of childbirth, so put some systems in place to double check your work and your decisions. The decision when, or whether, to return to work is a very personal and emotional one for most women. If you can find a way to return that works for you and your family, you’re more likely to retain your earning power and promotion potential. It may be difficult to return now, but many women find it even more difficult to come back after an absence of several years.

4 Tops How to Prepare For a Job Interview - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

4 Tops How to Prepare For a Job Interview - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career A job interview is the final step before getting the job. It’s the most critical step because if the candidate does not convince the decision maker of being the ideal candidate, the job goes to someone else. Preparing for the interview is not to be taken lightly. To win this tough competition, one needs to invest time and effort, must feel commitment, and must persevere. Following are a few practical steps. The single most important thing to do during interview preparation is to hold live mock interviews with someone experienced and competent in this area. Practice the 20 most common interview questions again and again until you feel confident. Focus on learning about the prospective employer’s problems and immediate needs. Prepare for reciting fact-based success stories from your past that are relevant to what you’ve learned about the hirer’s needs. Practice, practice, and practice some more. You’ll be happy you did! Learn as much as you can about the company. Begin with the company’s Web site, and look at every page. Drill down into details to mine specifics you could talk about with the interviewer. Find out who are the people you’ll interview with, and evaluate their LinkedIn profiles. Check out who they’re connected with on LinkedIn. Attempt sleuthing into the company via these connections to find out about the company’s culture and, possibly, specifics about the position. Find out what your interviewers are tweeting about. This might be challenging because people sometimes use pseudonyms. Use topsy.com for your research. Do searches on YouTube and Vimeo. Don’t underestimate what you can find out in these hidden places. Look for and review blogs posted by your contacts at the company. Use free tools to gain additional knowledgeâ€"for example, klout.com and blog.linkedin.com. Do Google searches on both the interviewers and the firm. Go through several pages of the results. Answer the following questions. Do you fit into the organization? Do you have the skills, education, and experience required? Do you possess experiences and skills to offer in support of the company’s mission statement? Can you recite via a vignette or two some past experiences that would serve as a natural evolution into company growth? Engage with the interviewer via questions that prove your value. Ask questions you already know the answers to. Show the interviewer that you’re very familiar with the industry and the company’s competition. Preparing for a winning interview is hard work and takes many hours, if not days. By doing such preparation, one gains not only specific knowledge but also a lot of confidence.

How to Maintain a Great Instagram Web Profile [Top 3 Tips]

How to Maintain a Great Instagram Web Profile [Top 3 Tips] Recently, Instagram announced the arrival of web profiles and started rolling them out to all users. The profiles, with a Facebook Timeline type design, are a great way to brand yourself or your company, and with any social network page you own on the internet, it is important to get all the components right to create the perfect brand. Here are my top 3 tips to keeping your Instagram web profile in brilliant condition: 1. Quality In an age where the highest megapixel cameras ever are available on phones, image quality is crucial when posting to Instagram. If you have a choice between, for example, using a 3G iPhone and an iPhone 4s with HD camera choose the 4s. Users will like to see high quality photos that show every detail (unlike the example photo to the right) so using a non-phone HQ camera, and importing the photo into Instagram is an even better idea! When viewing photos, there is nothing more off-putting than a pixelated image especially when an image is maximised and becomes pixelated at a larger size. Quality is crucial on Instagram and can reflect greatly on the quality of your brand. 2. Quantity When choosing photos and images to post, dont post everything thats what Twitter is for. Highlight the best parts of your business awards, special events, celebrity visits etc, however ensure you are selective with these too users dont want to come onto your profile and find you posting about every highlight your company has ever had they want to be able to scan the page and know what you/your company is about in a matter of seconds. However, if you do register for an account (even just as a holder account for the username) try and use it! eBay have 600 followers and havent yet posted anything and their account looks empty. Dont post too little or too much, you need to get the amount just right for the perfect branding. 3. Filters The true-selling point of Instagram is the filters system. The app allows users to take a photo on their phone, add a filter, edit the contrast, and share the photo onto social networks all within one application. It is important to pick the correct filters for your photos. You dont want to ruin the shot or take away any of the character, so take time making sure you pick the correct one to get the full image. However, filters arent always important. You can share a photo through Instagram without a filter and sometimes this works best. Dont over-use the filters they are there to improve some photos, not change every single photo. What do you think of Instagrams web profiles? Are they a good idea or do they hinder the point of it being a photo application? Let us know in the comments. RELATED:  How to Use Instagram for Brand Marketing [Free eBook]

How A Leader Achieves Breakthrough Performance

How A Leader Achieves Breakthrough Performance How do stand-out leaders create not just a successful future for their organization but a breakthrough amazing one?They don’t participate in the bottoms-up Leadership world.evalThe bottoms-up world places the emphasis on management developing proposals and gaining approval from the leader to proceed.The proposition put to the leader typically involves a brief assessment of a few potential alternatives and the selection of the best course of action to take; the one that provides the highest potential net benefit to the organization at least on paper.We all know the difference between what the business case predicts as a benefit to and what is actually realized. Rarely do the actual benefits mirror what was proposed if the comparison is made at all.What value does the leader provide in such a process?At best they question the business case assumptions, debate the customer value proposition and give their royal assent.The results of this approach are imprecise incremental gains.If we add a product to a product portfolio, revenue increases and if costs come in on target margins are enhanced.evalIf we acquire another organization with its customer base and people skills and competencies, the deal has a certain accretive value assuming an effective strategy to integrate the new entity.This process drives most organizations and is their growth engine. Choose the option that has the best paper benefit and go with it.Nothing wrong with this approach but it doesn’t work if leaders are looking for breakthrough performance; to take their organization to the next level.Breakthrough performance comes from a tops-down perspective of leadership.evalIt doesn’t come from choosing among the various paths to follow particularly when the implied benefits are imprecise.Breakthroughs come from creating a future that you and only you own.Creating a new box to play in.Colouring outside the lines to form art that has your signature alone.Mind-blowing performance is the result of c reation not choice.Create a completely different set of customer solutions rather than incrementing the current product line.Create a completely new set of competencies required to do something completely different rather than annexing strengths of another organization that you bolt on to yours.As a leader, the next time you are asked to choose, don’t.Ask for the “antimatter” choice.evalAsk for “the impossible”; the unheard of; the unconventional.The choice that will place you 180 degrees out of phase with everyone else in your market ace.Talk about that.Debate that.Do a cost-benefit analysis on that.evalAsk not how can we extend our business and grow, but how can we replace our business with a new version that is more relevant to what customers desire and one that will better survive the vagaries of the future.Unless your chosen path broaches the unknown, you are on an incremental growth curve.Extending the present business incrementally into a different and more volatile future is not only risky, it could be deadly.

Seeking Unqualified Lazy Slackers

Seeking Unqualified Lazy Slackers Out of every 100 resumes I review, approximately 95 of them start off with a reference to the personal attributes that candidate believes they possess. The logic here is that these descriptive words will verify the persons abilities and make them a more desirable candidate in the hiring managers eyes. I actually believe that using these words makes the candidate far less desirable. Below is a list of some of the most commonly used descriptive words on a resume. highly qualifiedhard workerteam playerproblem solverflexiblepeople personself-starterNow lets consider the opposite meanings of these words:unqualifiedlazylonerproblem makerinflexiblepeople haterslugBefore you include a descriptive word on your resume, consider its opposite. In practically every case, it will be a word you never want to use to describe yourself. What this means is that all the words expressing personal attributes that you are using on your resume are a given and to assume the opposite is somewhat comical. Hiri ng managers dont need to hear that you are qualified or a team player. They need to see it.Instead of claiming to be a hard worker, show an example of a situation where you did what needed to be done in order to get a project done on time. Rather than saying you are a problem solver, describe a time when you approached a problem in a different manner and achieved outstanding results. Instead of saying you are a people person, illustrate an example of how you built relationships with clients or mentored staff.Carry this logic over to your LinkedIn profile and try to avoid these  top 10 overused buzzwords on LinkedIn.  As you will see, the opposites of these words are pretty silly as well.Need more help writing your own resume? Review our resume samples or download our resume tips ebook.

How do companies fill their job openings

How do companies fill their job openings In Blessing Whites 2008 Sources of Hire report, they summarize the following: Key findings for 2007 include Internal Transfers and Promotions constitute 30.0% of all the positions a company fills. 15 firms are at or approaching 50%. We note that no firm markets the specific details of this fact openly to their prospects as proof of their value proposition to develop their employees. This is a missed opportunity. This would mean that being inside a company would increase your opportunities of getting the job. A great example of this is Wegmans. In order to really see what jobs are available in their corporate offices, you need to be an employee. I know a woman who was looking for supplemental income so she took a job in the Bakery at Wegmans. Her real occupation was Marketing, so when she saw a job posting for a marketing job in the main office on the internal posting board, she applied. This woman got the job. Could she have learned about it from the outside, NO. Referrals (employee, alumni, vendor, etc.) make up 28.7% of all external hires and are arguably the number one external source. (Employee referrals make up between 80-90% of the hires attributed to this category. Alumni and other types of referrals appear to be growing rapidly). The efficiency of referrals i.e. every third referral turns into a hire is one of the single most important characteristics of US hiring practices and not leveraged as well as it might be. Employers are using employee referrals to attract almost 28% of the external hiring they do. I know of at least one company that rewards its employees with a pay out for referring successful hires- Paychex. Are there others, I am pretty sure there are. So if you are looking for a job at Paychex, find someone who works there to forward your resume. There is a process, so make sure you follow it. Hires attributed to Job Boards (including the Company site as a job board) represent 25.7% of external hires. Hires attributed to the Company Website are suspect (we maintain that the company website is a destination not a source). If one of every eight external hires that are tagged with the company site as a source were to describe how they got to the website, then other sources might be significantly elevated. Employers are cheap and lazy. I say that tongue and cheek. Really what I mean is that it costs nothing for them to put their job postings on their websites. They can also put it up and take it down whenever they want. All this for free. The other reason they may chose to do this is because they really dont want to sift through 500 resumes. Its easier to look through the several as they slowly trickle in. Though Blessing White has discouraged this method, its pretty commonplace at least in Rochester, where over 80% of the businesses here have less than 100 employees. It just makes sense for them. There is no silver bullet for diversity hires. Affinity groups, employee referrals and dedicated recruiters are considered the most productive means to reach diversity candidates. The most visible trend in 2007 was the growth of Direct Sourcing (and a related reduction in agency hires). While it appears that hiring through agencies is down, I wouldnt discourage contract work. Its great for skill development, evaluating different companies cultures and networking. Plus, you just never know what can happen. For the first time in seven years of conducting this survey, more firms are predicting that they will make fewer hires in 2008 than 2007. The last point is no big surprise. It doesnt mean that companies wont be hiring replacements for those retiring, relocating or being promoted. In summary, understanding the mindset of companies and analyzing how they have been hiring will hopefully help you to understand the necessity to network. If you are not out there talking to other fellow employees, you MUST.