CIOZone.com - Professional Network for CIOs and IT Professionals

(CFOZone) By Anne Field

Ever suspect that the petty grievances, rivalries and concerns of the Dunder Mifflin employees portrayed on the faux documentary TV show The Office were not too far from reality? Well, to judge from the results of a recent survey of top workplace  annoyances, you'd be right.

Cubicle-land, in fact,  is rife with simmering animosity and resentment over, oh, someone's penchant for leaving dirty silverware in the kitchen sink.

The survey, conducted by market researcher Opinium , which surveyed 1,836 employees in the UK,  pinpointed the ten things that employees find most irritating.  Some responses included:  "Slow computers" (36 percent), "Small talk/gossip in the office" (19 percent), and "People talking loudly on the phone" (18 percent).  The top annoyance: "Grumpy or moody colleagues" (37 percent).

OK. So, you can see how those could be annoying.  And, in this time of stress and over-work, it's hard not to be a grumpy or moody colleague at least some of the time.

But what about "Too much health and safety in the workplace" (16 percent)? Would that mean a surfeit of useless fire drills? Or too few choices of delicious chips in the snack machine? And what about "Poor toilet etiquette" (16 percent) or "People not tidying up after themselves in the kitchen" (15 percent)?  Are employees really that sloppy or are there too many (15 percent of the office, I guess) who are maybe too neat?

Number four irritation was "The use of office jargon or management-speak" (18 percent).  And, as it happens, the survey also asked respondents for the most annoying jargon.  Heading the list were: "Thinking outside the box" (21 percent), "Let's touch base" (20 percent--That's the fingernails on the chalk board winner for me), and "Blue sky thinking" (19 percent).

Seems nearly two-thirds of respondents said these office irritations had increased their stress levels.  One in ten, I kid you not, left a job because of at least one of them. 

Well, at least now you've got that on your radar (13 percent).  

Comments (3)

	1. 02-15-2010 10:48
	love it! so true. Thats in this box. Registered

Naveed Husain

	2. 02-15-2010 11:35
	I read this because it piqued my curiosity. It was fun to take a guess at what would be on the list and see if I was right. I was partially right, partially not.     I do have a bit of advice for those that allow themselves to be irritated. Irritation is to be expected, no job is perfect nor are the people working with you. Be more creative in dealing with these annoyances. Allowing them to alter your own behavior or positive thinking/attitude certainly will place you on 37 percent of the respondent's irritation list if you become the moody one. Registered

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

	3. 02-15-2010 15:57
	The Brits gave us another funny show about the workplace that many here would appreciate: The IT Crowd. In the first episode of the series, the character Moss takes a support call that demonstrates a) why the office jargon cited above is so irritating and b) why IT professionals have to avoid tech speak.     Moss picks up the phone: Hello, IT...Yah-hah...Have you tried forcing an expected reboot? You see, the driver hooks the function by patching the system call table, so it's not safe to unload it unless another thread's about to jump in there and do its stuff, and you don't want to end up in the middle of invalid memory. [Pause.] Hello? Registered

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.