Don’t schedule a &$&% meeting during lunchtime without serving up lunch to us!
Don’t schedule a meeting at lunch time. Full stop.
My lunch time is me time. I’d prefer no lunch meetings ever. That’s my walking time.
I hear you, but given that my “lunchtime” could be anywhere between 11:00 and 15:00 (and that’s not even allowing for timezones), that’s pretty impractical.
In my last two jobs in two different countries the unwritten rule is to not schedule a meeting between 12-13. Not everyone has lunch at the same time, and everyone is free to have lunch whenever they want, but this guarantees that you will have some time to have lunch even if you are booked by meetings around noon. But it doesn’t really solve the timezone issue.
People have died for lesser offences than scheduling a meeting over lunch time and not serving lunch.
When people message with a “hi” or “hello” and then say nothing more till I reply.
It annoys the hell out of me. Like, why can’t you just say what you want. It wastes so much of my time and mental energy to switch back and forth while I wait for your reply after replying to your utterly useless hello.
just answer them with https://nohello.net/en/
Especially infuriating when the other person is in a very different time zone. I once worked on a project with a partner company in a time zone 10 hours ahead of mine and it was common for trivial things to take days purely because the other person insisted on typing “Hi,” waiting for my “Hi, what’s up?” response (which they didn’t see until the next day since our hours didn’t overlap), and then replying with their question, which I didn’t see until my next day. Answering the actual question often took like 30 seconds, but in the meantime two or three days had gone by.
I came to believe they were doing it on purpose so they could constantly slack off and tell their boss they were blocked waiting for my answer.
I just wait until they say more things. Hello is nothing.
I have tried this. I’m often reminded the next day that they still haven’t received a reply from me.
I love that part.
What’s worse, after you “hi” them back, some people (looking at you project managers) just ducking call without any explanation. Drives me nuts
Reject call.
‘why didn’t you answer’
‘I’m not available for calls right now’
‘why’
‘that’s not your business’
I’ve wandered down this road a few times now.
Got reported to my manager for doing just that. My rule was simple: if you’re not my boss, I need to know what the call is about in advanced.
I just explain the same as above.
If you’re not paying me for my time, you’re not entitled to it, nor an explanation of what I do in my own time.
If we’re talking about time on the clock, that’s a different story.
Or I think worse yet, I ask a question, and they don’t reply for a while so then when they do respond all they say is “hi.”
It infuriates me, I don’t need to be at my desk for you to answer the question I left you above! Ughhh
I occasionally give people shit for this. Chat is asynchronous and I’m busy just ask me the question and I’ll respond back when I can. Some people just won’t learn though and I usually just leave them on read.
“Hi, we need to talk…”
“We’ll wait a few more minutes for person X to join, then get the meeting started,” like the other ten people who made the effort to show up on time deserve to be punished with extra meeting time for being responsible. Bonus points if this causes the meeting to run a few minutes long.
Yeah, I’m totally cool with being late sometimes, but I know various folks where it’d be an exception, if they’re not late, because they have meetings back-to-back all day long.
Always makes me feel like the official meeting start should be 5 minutes after or something, but I know that those folks aren’t late for the fun of it. They’d definitely overrun those 5 minutes, if they knew they had them.
My frustration is less with the people who are late and more with the meeting host making the rest of the attendees sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the late person. Unless the late person’s presence is the point of the meeting, just get started and let them catch up.
They tried to fix this at my work by changing the default values for an hour- or half-hour meeting. Half an hour would automatically become 25 minutes and an hour would turn into 50 minutes in the calendar.
The idea seemed to work at first, but people quickly adjusted and used those extra minutes to extend the meeting regardless.
My place of business has this dysfunction with meetings—Zoom being the biggest offender—where people just keep talking through the end of a meeting. 30-minute meetings become 35-40. 60-minute meetings becomes 65-70. And, with meetings frequently being back-to-back-to-back, invariably one or another person is late to the next one.
I think it’s because scheduling a meeting with all necessary parties is so difficult that if you don’t finish the thought, the next chance is at least a week away.
To top it off, we had a company-wide survey that spawned a working group to tackle the problem of meetings, whose suggestion was to update Outlook settings to automatically shorten meetings by X minutes—to allow people transit time, bathroom breaks, etc. Almost no one set that setting.
Maybe I am crazy but I always thought it was lazy as fuck to have meetings for absolutely everything. Like, how about you spend some time researching and analyzing a subject on your own before calling a meeting for every little step of the way.
Now I understand that there must be a balance, but man there was so many of those meetings where nobody has a clue on the subject and it is just pointless talking for over an hour. Another meeting is scheduled with another party as soon as that one meeting is over, and it is just back-to-back meeting with everyone in the company, slowly but surely deriving a solution from everyone opinion. Seems to me like people who do well in those environments are the lazy workers who just want to spend their whole days chatting in meetings.
Can we, at some point, derive a solution based on experimentation and verifiable facts? Can someone come up with a summary analysis with recommendations and possible solutions? Why does everything has to be the result of endless meetings, endless compromises with people without a clue, and end up being a shitty design-by-committee feature.
Anyway, could be just be a me thing, or specific to that place I worked at.
Just disconnect.
they don’t respect the meeting time, they don’t respect you.
If they couldn’t fit everything in, then that’s their problem for under booking the meeting.
Pizza parties, “lunch and learns”, lunch at a restaurant with the boss…
All of that condescending shit that is intended and expected to deprive people of time away from the office, building, worksite, whatever if they need it.
I value my personal time and it’s not easily replaced by free food.
Some of the other comments in the thread are great too…
Overabundance of redundant or unnecessary meetings in general is another one for me.
An absolute lack of consideration in regards to chat etiquette. Man now that I think about it, it’s chat threads/notification in particular.
People who carry on side conversations in threads. You’re giving everyone else who has participated in the thread the choice of “disable notifications for this thread and risk missing something relevant come back around, or get a notification for every single side message they’re sending”. Especially when someone is chiming in like 4 hours later. “Glad you guys got this sorted out”. Yes, all 12 of us on-call people in this thread needed to get that message direct to our phones at 3a.m. 4 hours after the outage has been resolved. Thanks for that. Very fucking helpful. High value communication.
People who will not use threads. I don’t need a new fucking notification every 20 seconds because you guys are deciding to have a chat about e-bikes. Make a goddamn thread or use a room made for chit chat, we’re all on the same team, we’re all in on-call positions. I’m paid to respond when this thing makes a noise. I am NOT comfortable muting the team channel.
It’s addressed elsewhere in these comments, but +1 to folks who just message you “hi”. Go get stabbed.
On the topic of notification fatigue:
People who will just not finish a thought. Before hitting their enter button. So they end up like doing this thing. Where you get a notification every 15 seconds, because they are just absolutely addicted. To their enter key I mean. They are addicted to thier enter key. their* Oh. I guess I could have just edited that message instead of sending the correction with the thing. Asterisk? Asterisx? I forget what it's called. LOL. Anyway, that thing.Also, when I’m helping you I am 100% going to stop what I am doing every time I get a message and read the message. There’s no way for me to know whether or not you’re messaging me “Oh never mind, I had a typo” or “here is more relevant info to make your work easier”. That message may very well have immediate impact on what I’m doing, and affect the course I take. Of course I’m going to stop what I’m doing to read it. So maybe don’t wait 5 minutes to send me the message “k” after I kindly, thoughtfully provide you with the status update “I think it’s the fizzibob, let me verify in the logs real quick” of my own volition so that you are not only aware of what’s going on, but don’t have any question as to whether or not your question is still being looked at.
Not using threads is fucking driving me insane too.
Also when somebody just says “hi” and waits. Don’t you fucking dare to do that. Type in what you want so I can decide if I want to reveal that I’m currently actually there and want to deal with your bullshit. Sometimes I just don’t write back. And then 3 days later they ask me in the office whether I saw their message. And I say yes, saw that, I just thought that was all because you haven’t continued.
Also you don’t have to say “Hi Golem” every single time when you start to ask something on the same day. Sometimes even 5 times a day. Geez. Just say what you want and be done with it.
Introduce them to the wonderful world of No Hello!
Everything: from 8am to 5pm I’m a steaming ball of anger that struggles to act polite while planning small acts of office terrorism.
I've got a lot of small pet peeves
like:
- A general lack of awareness in workplace safety practices
- People listening and sending audio messages when they could type instead
- People doing personal conference calls without a headset
- When they say “can you please grab that thing on my desk?” and their desk is a post-earthquake library scenario
and many others…
but the thing that bugs me the most is the general absence of people that “just do their job”.
There are a lot of people that do fuck-all and a lot of people that work their lives off and both of those groups expect you to walk at their pace. I’d like to meet more people in the middle.That we all accept that working our butts off for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with only around 2 weeks of vacation a year in the hopes that we can save just enough to retire at 65+ is normal. The social contract is broken, and everyone except the top 1% of earners is paying the price.
Slow computers and awful cheap Keyboards
By this point i spend 400 € for a quality keyboard and noise canceling headphones, money I earned in that very job so I don’t get nuts at that job.
I use it at home too.
Perfume and cologne. MAI GAD I hate it so much and it makes me sick, and they come to work drenched in it. One was wearing essential oils for a while, the fumes of which set off my asthma so badly I had to go see my respirologist for a stronger puffer, and I finally had to come out and tell her it made me sick.
Secondly, casual racism. I had one CW the other day tell me she didn’t care for Indians (by which she means indigenous people), and another who told me she hoped I wasn’t ‘getting Jewed’ out of something. I was quite horrified. I eat lunch alone for the most part and refuse to have social contact with them.
I don’t work at the moment, but here is a list of stuff I’m glad to be away from:
- That guy over there that grunts and coughs and clears his throat every 37 seconds.
- Having ten minute standup meetings every day, that take at least 45 minutes every day and could have been replaced by looking at the status page in the wiki.
- That other guy over there that raises his voice and yells and carries on every time he is on the phone, completely unaware that his phone has a microphone, and that anyone else exists
- People who eat stinky stuff for lunch at their desk, chewing with their mouth open while watching the football at full volume. Go and use the lunch room, you inconsiderate fuck.
- my boss over in the next cubicle who yells out someone’s name, expecting them to be there, and then yells a series of instructions whether they are there or not. I’m trying to think, can’t you just get up and walk all the way over to another cubicle to talk at a reasonable volume, like a normal person?
- The woman that just started, sitting in the next cubicle, that reeks of foul perfume. I know when she arrives and leaves by the smog cloud, the revolting stench that follows her around the office, and the trail of people vomiting and struggling to breathe after she goes past. I tried to do the right thing and talk to her and she conveniently can’t speak English, unaware that I can hear her on the phone speaking flawlessly.
We may have worked in the same office.
I’m sure you’ve got more, this is Dilbert-level stuff!
Having to relogin every two weeks with two-factor authentication. Everything is a MS Office document, in particular ridiculous spreadsheets. Everyone writes in acronyms that they assume everyone else knows. Even though there is always a lot of new staff, every email assumes everyone has been working there forever. (“It’s that time of the year again! You need to complete your GRD before week 5 of the COG and send it to the OSYN. Probably you are already an expert in completing these forms after so many years, but if you need instructions, please go to our IDRN and enter your ICRJ.”)
God I wish I only had to use MFA once every two weeks!
We only have to use it when connecting from off-site.
Best way is to VPN in (requires MFA) then everything via VPN.
Some admin stuff has more strict checks, but the staff access is use the office network or use MFA.
Conditional access rules. If the admins cared it’s easy to apply
Seriously, anything through SSO requires me to do 2FA every time I log in.
I have to login every 8 hours…I’d kill for every two weeks.
I have to re-auth with AWS every goddamn hour and enter a 2fa code for every. single. command. I run from the CLI. It drives me up a fucking wall even though I have it entirely scripted now. Another great example of how overly tight security leads to worse security as people try to bypass it.
I’m so sorry. I will hug the IT team now for only making me login every 2 weeks.
We have these breaking news tv screens all over the lunch room. I absolutely hate it, can I please enjoy my lunch in peace?
I despise those things in restaurants, maybe with the exception of explicit sports bars. Having those in a break room sounds awful
Tell me more about these explicit sports!
uncompensated driving, commute times, etc
people don’t realize how much their car is costing them. IRS rate is like $0.60 a mile. running errands for work all day? 45-minute commute? yeah you’re effectively making less than minimum wage now
very difficult to get people to understand though
Freedom with a cost to every imaginable part of it.
More like… feedom
2 mandatory office days even for consultants. If you want to be at the office, fine. But don’t make everyone be because of some so-called fairness. Catering to some imaginary average person isn’t fair, it’s hurting everyone a little or a lot. Alas since I’m working via an agency, I got to follow client directives. Luckily I have good rapport with both my agency and my project team lead so I can kinda toe the line.
Also the inability or rather unwillingness of my fellow devs to follow protocol. Ticket not approved by business? You don’t touch it. Yet the geniuses I work with went total yolo mode on a project I’m not on. So I wasn’t there to remind them and now they’re upset they got told off they spent a week on tickets that they were asked to discuss with the business. And that they aren’t getting praise for their efficiency. It’s government work, not your hobby project. That’s a week of budget spent on work they may need to reverse because they didn’t even put it on a branch. Maybe when they hear it from higher up they’ll listen because I really get the impression when it comes from me it is seen as my personal opinion. No, I just figured out early how the office politics work and play the game I’m paid for. I voice my opinion plenty but here it actually aligns with the organisation expectations.
- Toxic Positivity: “Everything is always great” and the unspoken rule to never talk about your issues.
- Mental health issues not being taken seriously and/or treatment being forced on you
- Alcohol culture: “if we haven’t had a beer together, i don’t know you”
- meetings. As a programmer i can be super productive, but then i’ll be interrupted by a meeting… and that meeting is an hour long… completely stripping my concentration and now i gotta get it back up…
- retro-meetings … talking about what has been done in the last week… and what we liked and what we hated… i never know what to say “yeah i finished shit” or “i hate working with this shit” but then you have to elaborate…
So, I figure all modern corporate offices are exactly the same then. There is some good stuff in there, but it is so over the top and forced that it sort of ruin the benefits imo.
Positivity is great, even if it is forced a little, but hiding all negativity, issues and criticism make forced positivity completely useless. Not to mention that at the office I worked there was virtually always one or many of your “bosses” in earshot, in every situation. There wasn’t a daily, a meeting or a workstation in that job where some guy responsible for my promotions and employment wasn’t listening. This is how you make sure nothing of value is ever said in your dailies and retro meeting. It’s all great!
Now let’s play the game of figuring the smallest politically correct nitpick to mention during the retro so that we can check that self-improvement/self-organizing checkbox in front of the boss. What, you think over 10 hours of useless scrum meeting is wasteful, on top of the actual important meetings? Well, better not mention it. I mean you could, but shitting on scrum will get you canned. Do you think the way points/hours/complexity is evaluated completely miss the mark? Or are you tempted to mention Goodhart’s law when reviewing whatever metric in Jira? Well, better not do that, because you might as well say that your boss’s job needs not to exist. Better not mention anything that might compromise someone else in front of the boss, or anything that could be used against you in a review.
Because that’s the thing, since no one ever admit to mistake and make themselves vulnerable, if you’re the only one to do it it’s gonna raise “red flags” and you’re gonna hear about it in your next review. Better give a good not-so-anonymous review to your immediate managers too, raising any sort of issues could prevent one, or both of you from getting promoted with increased pay.
Forced positivity is horribly fake. Are you American perchance?
No, it was a big international corporation. But afaik the forced positivity was universal.
Retro meetings are useful but I think some people do them wrong.
First off, who remembers shit from a week or two ago? We started a document at the start of the sprint so we could add stuff throughout the sprint as it happened. Made it easy to remember and actually talk about stuff.
Secondly, retro meetings should typically get shorter the longer you’re on a team. You use the meetings to find out what works for you and then most of the rest of the time it’s a short meeting unless there are issues to talk about.
And no one should be forced to participate. After a while there usually isn’t anything in particular to comment on.
So, a brand new team might have a lot to talk about for the first couple of retros because they do things slightly differently (how they go about determining risks, how people pick up peer reviews, etc) but after identifying those problem areas in the retros it should be pretty smooth sailing.
I know every now and then I have to reiterate to my team that they need to prioritize peer reviews. You can’t let 5-8 stack up just because you don’t want to do them or whatever other reason they have. Thankfully I finally have someone on my team who gets just as annoyed with them as I do so I don’t have to always be the broken record.
