Your Job Stinks: The Top Workplace Peeves
The annoying habits of your co-workers can drive you to hate your job.
July 24, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- While working at a weekly newspaper in Wisconsin, Angela Kargus became intimately acquainted with a co-worker's personal life. Kargus learned about her fertility problems, that her dog urinates all over the carpet and that she does indeed have a regular menstrual cycle.
You're right to think these are the kind of personal details shared over a cup of coffee or on a friend's couch. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Kargus and her co-worker aren't even friends. But her co-worker is a classic workplace loud talker. She yapped on her cell phone throughout the day with friends and, quite frequently, her mother.
This probably sounds familiar. Office loud talkers are everywhere, and the worst part is, they probably don't even realize they've been labeled as such. To the unknowing, here's a tip: Proper decorum calls for people to take personal conversations outside the office or into the hallway, especially since so many workplaces are in an open format where only top managers have offices (and doors they can close).
Check out a slideshow of the most annoying workplace habits at our partner site, Forbes.com.
We're not all so lucky. In fact, the office loud talker certainly isn't the only pet peeve known to cubicle land. Among the more popular (or, actually, unpopular) are using a speakerphone with the door open or while in a public area; leaving the kitchen a mess; bringing potent-smelling food for lunch; and leaving the sound on the computer so everyone hears the ding of an instant message.
Despite the laundry list of complaints, the loud talker wins the award for most annoying. Of 2,318 people surveyed in March 2006 by Harris Interactive and Randstad, 32 percent say an office loud talker is their biggest pet peeve. Coming in a close second at 30 percent is using an annoying cell phone ringtone; 22 percent said speakerphones are their No. 1 peeve.
As for Kargus and her colleagues, no one in the newsroom ever complained directly to the co-worker. Kargus was nervous that her co-worker would get upset and seek retribution or that it would create a tense atmosphere.
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