Name Some Pet Peeves You Had With Your Working Life

Don't get me started! I am cursed with working with slackers, people who take every opportunity to chitchat with other co-workers, or spend lots of time on their cell phone instead of doing the job they were hired to do. And to make matters worse I don't think they even get what it is they are supposed to be doing. There is no initiative. And then are others who won't make any effort to do anything but just the absolute minimum, especially when it comes to something they don't really like to do. They just leave it for someone else. The boss is aware of the situation and has tried to motivate everyone about their responsibilities, but because they are so desperate for workers they put up with it. I love what I do so I put up with it too.
 
That lack of planning on your part apparently constituted an emergency on my part.

Of course, I could have just said, "I'm so sorry, but I've already worked an hour past my quitting time and I can't stay another four hours to prepare the reports that you've just now decided you need for your 8 a.m. meeting. Especially since tomorrow morning, there's a 50% chance you'll decide not to use it."

Unfortunately, I was raised to have an overactive sense of responsibility and I'd stay til 10 pm getting the report done and,, as I expected, you didn't use it.
 
I enjoyed my job...but perhaps the only "pet peeve" I had was the hours...especially during my last 10 years. I was trained on virtually everything, and I wasn't assigned any account responsibilities...my job was primarily to "assist". During my last decade of work, I covered the weekends, and usually took Wed/Thurs off...which was great, because the kids were grown, and the wife and I could go somewhere on weekdays when places weren't so crowded. Plus, I got time and a half on Saturdays, and double pay on Sundays....52 hours pay for working 40. Then, too...on the days I worked, I was on call 24 hrs., so I often got called out at night, then got to sleep in part of the next day. It was rather hectic sometimes, but it paid well. When I retired, it took a few weeks before I got used to getting a full nights sleep without the phone ringing.
 

Name Some Pet Peeves You Had With Your Working Life​


I loved work
Just let me loose

Thing is, others would come to me for advice/direction/instruction
I had zero authority......didn't want it

Upper management took notice

Got kicked upstairs

Had to squeeze in golf rounds 'tween responsibilities

That was okay...ish

But preferred grunt work....dirty hands

Not much of a peeve, I guess

Finally, after retirement.....my hands stay dirty

swing low.jpg
 
Not sure whether this is a "pet peeve" or a serious one, but those managers you could describe as using the, "Its my way or the highway" style of management didn't enamour themselves to me very much.
Generally they'd have to be confronted by the argument, "This isn't reasonable", if they tried to kid you their power within the organisation was limitless, not least because I felt their concern for your welfare was zero, and they'd have pushed you into an early grave, if they thought it would assist their aims!
 
J-Kat said:
Couldn't concentrate on my tasks because of multiple daily emails from the higher ups asking for updated reports, comments on attachments, ideas for next meeting agenda, etc. and all with a short turnaround deadline to respond. Certainly don't miss that.
Click to expand...
Sounds like where I was. They’d say things like, “Well by golly, we’re going to keep having these meetings until we find out why nothing’s getting done!” Or at least words to that effect. 😳
 
My peeves were with internal politics of the system which resulted in preferential treatment of a favored few and an uneven playing field. Rules applied to the masses, with supervisors taking hour and a half lunch breaks while enforcing twenty minute lunch breaks from employees. You’d have to bow and scrape to take a doctor’s appointment, whereas one manager would run home during a thunderstorm because her dogs might be scared.

Sadism was a rewarded trait; the second in command would put her ailing but still living fish down a garbage disposal, and joke about it! Those in charge devolved from being leaders to managers and finally to control agents who decided that it was better to be feared than loved. They might not be able to fire you, but they’d make you uncomfortable enough so that you’d quit on your own, just to put an end to the harassment...
 
Granny B. said:
Don't get me started! I am cursed with working with slackers, people who take every opportunity to chitchat with other co-workers, or spend lots of time on their cell phone instead of doing the job they were hired to do. And to make matters worse I don't think they even get what it is they are supposed to be doing. There is no initiative. And then are others who won't make any effort to do anything but just the absolute minimum, especially when it comes to something they don't really like to do. They just leave it for someone else. The boss is aware of the situation and has tried to motivate everyone about their responsibilities, but because they are so desperate for workers they put up with it. I love what I do so I put up with it too.
Click to expand...
I used to work with a guy who landed a desk job with the company. When he got tired of sitting, he would pick up any piece of paper and go for a walk on the floor to gab with his buddies. The paper was to make it look like it was work related.
 
I didn't like the various cliques that huddled together and bad mouthed other groups. One such clique was a four dudes who lived out in the sticks and didn't like me or my friend. They gathered deer droppings and piled them on my time card in the early morning. It was constant stuff, so I learned my first lesson in ignoring mean people.
 
Paco Dennis said:
I didn't like the various cliques that huddled together and bad mouthed other groups. One such clique was a four dudes who lived out in the sticks and didn't like me or my friend. They gathered deer droppings and piled them on my time card in the early morning. It was constant stuff, so I learned my first lesson in ignoring mean people.
Click to expand...
Never cared for cliques either, which happen in most all workplaces, from food service to banks to support staff at educational institutions.
 
1) If you came up with an idea & presented it to management, you were told, "No, that'll never work" and find out a while later that they presented the idea as their own to their higher-ups.
2) Whenever a change was going to happen, even a change that you agreed might be a good one (see #1 above), you always knew that any tedious (or even unpleasant) parts of implementing that change, all in addition to their regular workload, would be handed off to whoever was lowest in status (usually the female with the lowest amount of education, i.e. yours truly). An awareness of this about how changes are implemented explains why some people are so resistant to change, I think.
 
Granny B. said:
Don't get me started! I am cursed with working with slackers, people who take every opportunity to chitchat with other co-workers, or spend lots of time on their cell phone instead of doing the job they were hired to do. And to make matters worse I don't think they even get what it is they are supposed to be doing. There is no initiative. And then are others who won't make any effort to do anything but just the absolute minimum, especially when it comes to something they don't really like to do. They just leave it for someone else. The boss is aware of the situation and has tried to motivate everyone about their responsibilities, but because they are so desperate for workers they put up with it. I love what I do so I put up with it too.
Click to expand...
A lot of management types seem to have same tendency as some parents: The kid who is always testing their rules, just cause they can, just to see what they can get away gets way more slack the kids who try hard to be good and only resist over things that matter deeply to them. The slackers and yakkers get a lot more tolerance from management than hard workers if they make, as everyone does sometimes, an honest mistake--or one caused by someone else not providing needed info or supplies. Still i wouldn't mention that unless asked...but took responsibility for my mistakes, in fact i often approached supervisors and saying i made a mistake, how do i fix it?
 
Cliques, gossip, Supervisors that didn't know as much as they should about the daily details of the duties of those they supervised. And around the 70s or 80s corporate attitudes that still demanded worker loyalty tho the company displayed little genuine concern for worker safety and well being, and in fact started even in offices not just on factory floors to see us a easily replaceable. They are often willing to let productivity and/or customer satisfaction decline if they can use excuses like "We have several new employees, it takes a while to train.' What they don't tell customers is they pushed older workers out so they could be replaced by young less costly employees.
 
Been thinking about this one, here is a list I could think of:
  • People not listening to me or accepting my ideas, and then being intolerant of me ignoring them...
  • Not being paid as much as I thought I was worth, even though it was as much or more than many others were paid...
  • Being expected to work and produce things on someone else's schedule...
  • Not taking enough time off...
Hmm... seems all of those are more my problems than others.
 

Back
Top