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While workplace etiquette has become less formal and more relaxed over the years, there are still some faux pas that should be avoided so everyone can have a respectful, clean, and calm environment to work in. You can find a whole list of them below, courtesy of people who had to go through the most intolerable colleague behaviors themselves. And while you’re scrolling through, do add some of the things your colleagues do that drive you up the wall so we can all compare notes.
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#1
To me the most frequent and frustrating, has been: I propose an idea. I get told, “No, that won’t work because XYZ”. Frustrating but, it happens. Male coworker proposes an idea, it gets put into action.
I’ve started calling it out? “Okay, that sounds like a great idea, it’ll definitely help boost ABC. To confirm - I had brought this up as an idea previously and we had decided not to do it at that time because XYZ. Have we changed our position on XYZ?”
Michael Largey 1 week ago
Z has nothing to do with it. It's those X and Y chromosomes that are in play here.
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#2
It's also really fun if they treat my male assistant like the boss and me like the assistant even after it has been made clear who is who.
#3
This was a few years ago, about... 14 years to be approximate. Feels like a life time ago though. I was a support contractor at a call center, and the company we were doing work for would occasionally send some of the senior support individuals to our office to teach us things, socialize, etc. During our team meeting that week, our manager... who was questionable in behavior at times said "now our visitor (by name) is going to get up on the table and dance for us", My brain automatically went to "nope, bad nightmare, that did not just happen". The following week those of us in the meeting had interviews with other management about the incident, HR reports were filed from the visitor with BOTH our company, and the parent company. it came to light that this wasn't the first series of HR reports for sexual misconduct. I'm unclear to this day - but he kept his job. At any respectable place of employment, pretty sure he would have been fired at that point. The Visitor said as long as he was employed there, she would Never under any circumstance come back to visit.
#4
Worked at an SMB, and we would give managers and directors and partners' company phones, tablets, and essentially anything they needed if reasonable.
During my last year there, we were trying to lower costs with cell use. We wanted to stop buying and setting up phones for people. Anyways, if someone broke their phone, we would get them a replacement. Except one time, right in the morning, this manager comes in walking fast, pissed off, vein popping out of his forehead. I've never seen him like that, always a funny chill, dude. As he walks towards his desk, he's on the phone having an argument with someone else, and it's getting louder, and people are noticing. This is a modern open layout office, too. People are looking and wondering what's going on. Gets quiet.
He yells at someone on the phone and then chucks the company phone at the floor, and it violently smashes, and you can hear what's left of the phone thud against the desk wall separators. Everyone is kinda shocked and like, "what the f**k". The guy realizes his mistake and you can tell he regretted it.
My manager, who sits behind me, takes his headphones off, turns around and looks at me with disgust, and despises and says, "If he asks for a phone replacement, we're not doing it. And just in case if he asks you, tell him to talk to me." A couple weeks later, he was let go for drinking on the job after getting a warning. Yeah, that was interesting and unprofessional.
Bubs (he/they) 1 week ago
I can't help but wonder if that guy was going through some rough times. You never really know, honestly. I'm not saying his behavior was appropriate, not at all, but I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I hope things work out for him in the end.
#5
CEO called new place where I got a job offer from to ask them to rescind the job offer. Managing partner at new place had to explain the request was illegal. They did accounting services for a lot of companies and unfortunately let the company were they're poaching an employee know. I was not thrilled to find this out.
I took a thankfully second job offer I had and nope'd out.
CEO drove company into ground, they went bankrupt within two years.
elmortero 1 week ago
Long time ago had that happen too (IT is a small world, especially in smaller countries). They ignored him of course and I also found out I was not the first he tried to torpedo, and worse even: I was not the last either... It was almost as if the new company considered a green flag
#6
My former boss literally threw a printer at another employee full force for leaving it on his desk without putting in a help desk support ticket.
#7
I once had a tech that screwed up a task, not that significant a thing mind you but enough that another staff member emailed my boss to complain about it.
The tech logged into my bosses mailbox and deleted the email... after she had already read it and was talking to HR
30 seconds of pulling logs later he was fired.
You could have just gotten a slap on the wrist dude, but no you needed to turn it into an RGE didn't you?
Hellcaste's Wife 1 week ago
LMAO I'd never heard of RGE until I got to my current job. We always joke when something goes wrong that it's a "Resume Generating Event"
#8
I had a coworker brag to me that one of our clients that he did some web dev work on the side, separate from our MSP SLA paid him twice for the same work and didn’t notice. I was like dude…that’s basically stealing, you know they’ll eventually find out right? He was super proud of himself. My first thought was alright well this guy can’t be trusted.
#9
I worked for a call center where several employees would regularly do h****n in the bathroom.
#10
A former fellow admin was caught spying on HR's emails.
#11
User was phished. They changed their password back to the same password only changing a symbol. There were compromised again in under a week. Which I had to deal with on a Friday afternoon. Wasn’t pleased.
edit: oh yeah and no 2fa because I can't convince the boss otherwise.
#12
Had a guy that worked for our company and he was in charge of getting rid of previous employee's company credit cards. His job was to log into the system, deactivate the card than shred it. Instead of shredding it he would use the dead card to go open bar tabs on the weekend and obviously never pay for his drinks.
It only caught up to him when he was long gone and had left the company.
#13
Was told a story about a previous exec who was 1000% certain that his laptop was faulty. When he was told that, "No, I can't just give you a new one" he violently slammed it to the ground in front of the IT Manager at the time and walked away. He was eventually fired, but for other performance based reasons.
#14
A coworker still falls asleep from time to time during IT meetings and org wide meetings. Usually scares himself awake, you know because the pen goes flying.
#15
Passive aggressive emails. I had a boss who would send me an email criticizing my work or questioning me on why I did something and cc’d everyone else in my office when it was clearly directed at me. Plus, they would do it while sitting in their office that was 10 feet from my desk when I was at my desk. Finally at a staff meeting I said to the person, in front of everyone: “if you need to discuss a work related issue with me, please come talk to me about it in person because cc’ing everyone in an email directed at me is extremely passive aggressive.” He never acknowledged the issue, but never did it again.
Plus being mansplained to or treated like I’m incapable multiple times: I once had someone tell me at a training that the training wasn’t for someone in my position in the company and they started telling me I wouldn’t understand the subject matter and it wouldn’t be relevant to me... I was actually the trainer, they just didn’t know it yet.
#16
Last month someone asked me if I would drive on site (I've worked from home since I was hired and I live over an hour from my job site) to scan some documents for them, and referred to me as the intern in the email chain requesting my assistance.
I'm 25 years old, have a master's degree, have a lot of work experience, etc..Gotta love being a woman working with engineers.
#17
I once worked at an MSP that provided on-site and remote support for a couple of, major, hotel chains. The, mostly married, guys that I worked with used to brag about being "King of the [help] Desk", in relation to how many people they'd managed to have an affair with. They even had a rule, requiring them to prove they'd done the deed, via a WhatsApp group (so, again, not only were they doing this behind their families backs, but they were taking photos/ videos for 'bro-points'). A really, scummy, outfit.
I stayed for 2 months before high-tailing it out of there.
It was a family-run business, too.
#18
A co worker was an absolute perv. Constantly talking about female colleagues in a sexual manner, values by them by their appearance. I’m no SJW, but people deserve respect according to their ability. I left. He’s now a regional managing director…….
#19
When I got started in help desk, they laid someone off. He walked back to his desk screaming profanities. When he got to his desk he tossed EVERYTHING. He was a big a*s dude too. Never seen anything like it before or since.
#20
I was a new IT sysadmin at a software company. My immediate manager got unreasonably pissed at a young programmer who was just asking for some info on the status of a server that was being worked on. He was worked up to the point where he physically blocked the doorway to prevent the kid's escape and poked him in the chest to emphasize his point. The kid laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. IT manager decided he didn't like being laughed at, escalated to shoving, then erupted when the kid continued to laugh out of nervousness, took the kid to the ground, straddled his chest and started punching him in the face with both hands while screaming at the top of his lungs. The door between us wedged closed in the struggle and I was only able to helplessly listen to the screams from both of them after that. The entire floor watched stunned and unable to react. (See: "normalcy bias") Took several guys to get them eventually separated.
He wasn't even fired, but left a few weeks later anyway because nobody wanted to deal with him any more.
Software companies are weird places to work.
#21
You mean like the owner of the company calling you a r****d.
Or telling a guy who started 2 hours before that it was OK if he wanted to physically a*****t a female coworker because it was her last day.
Or when he threatened an employee to cancel his PTO (2 hours) before he left.
He got so pissed when I left he refused to give me my last pay check for over a month.
OpheliaPoe 1 week ago
Had a boss who regularly called us F-ing R-words. Loudly. In front of customers. I was in a bad marriage back then so it was bothersome but I was dealing with much worse at home and didn't register how not okay this was.
#22
A group of employees were big gun enthusiasts and would bring fully loaded AK-47s and AR-15s into work. This was in a place that already had regular fist fights and screaming arguments, as well as rampant d**g use. A corporate memo was issued not long after reminding people that they couldn't bring loaded weapons into the building due to insurance reasons. After that, it was just unloaded a*****t rifles.
Christophe Beunens 1 week ago
Due to insurance reasons?? I have hundreds of better reasons not to bring weapons to work. Like : don't shoot colleagues
#23
A doctor threw a binder full of paper at a nurse's head. She reported him to HR and SHE was fired because apparently whatever she said to him to provoke him was worse than physical violence.
Yes, I still work here, thankfully it wasn't that bad. But it's on that track again.
#24
Yelling. I had a boss years ago who thought it was appropriate to close his office door and yell at employees. He was shocked when HR paid him a visit and explained this was not acceptable behavior.
Fuhleeheece 1 week ago
HR doesn't give a s**t about acceptable behavior. They just don't want lawsuits. If the boss can yell insults out in the parking lot, well, okay, then.
#25
My friend’s ex boss broke a computer on a desk and literally destroyed the laptop and everything on the desk all because the employee couldn’t take a joke and asked why.
#26
First boss at my first job was the sales director of a small MSP, who also part owned the company. He basically ran the place though and would read every single ticket looking for things to b***h at us about.
One day, one of the senior engineers is sat eating his lunch at his desk and gets sent pretty quickly to an emergency callout for an entire office being offline. Leave his dirty bowl at his desk. Big Boss comes in a few minutes later and asks where Senior Engineer was, gets told, then calls him up. Tells him to turn around and come back immediately and put his dirty bowl in the dishwasher. Senior Engineer is halfway to the client at this point so says no, but Big Boss gets more irate, to the point where Senior Engineer hangs up on him. Big Boss then walks over to his desk, grabs the dirty bowl and then smashed it all over the floor in the middle of the room where we all worked (not a big room). Then walked out and didn't come back for the rest of the day - leaving us lowly 1st liners and the service desk manager to clean up the mess.
There was never any fallout from this either. They both just pretended like it never happened, as did we.
#27
The Tier 1 manager at my job would regularly shame and belittle his staff when they made a mistake, even stuff that didn't have any negative consequences. He'd make you stand up in full view of everyone in the NOC and ask you questions like "What was going through your head when you did X? You didn't think that doing X would result in Y? Are you sure this job is a good fit for you?" etc etc We all got the impression he really got off on humiliating other people.
The ironic part is he himself wasn't even technologically literate. His background was in finance or something, literally only hired to be a middle manager. Thankfully I was promoted to Tier 2 after only 5 months so I didn't have to work under him long. He was eventually fired and replaced with one of our Tier 2 Admins who was actually far better with people and actually knew his s**t.
Dragon mama 1 week ago
I am getting really lost with all these initials. SOC? SJW? MSP? SMB? WTF?
#28
We had a CTO that was an absolute monster. He demanded wet signatures on change controls and in person CAB. Zero typos or any mistakes. The change control form was a poorly designed form and spell check didn’t work right.
I watched him throw binders at engineers and coworkers if they had errors but he wouldn’t do it to me. It was hard to sit through. People stormed out and cried after the meetings. Sometimes he didn’t say what the error was. English wasn’t his first language, so that was difficult too.
I was done and no one was sticking up for the team. I called him out on it and asked why he was so rude and he said he found spelling and grammatical errors to be disrespectful. So I found an error on his document and threw it at him. He was mad but why would he be any different? He didn’t cancel his change, but spellcheck was fixed in the forms next week.
I left some errors on my changes after and he never took the bait. You want to yell at someone, chickens**t, yell at me.
#29
These French dudes got into a fist fight in front of the main office once.
A receptionist with a m**h habit left a trail of poops in the office at my first IT job, that was weird.
#30
Well, I am hot headed too and talk in a bad mood often, so I maybe should not complain too much ?
but when I was in training, it was my first year working....
I was on a call with a customer, doing support
then my boss next door started yelling and screaming and threw his keyboard, he was unsatisfied with (was not working) out of the office
it was just a few inches behind my head... it could have hit me
well... that was one of the good starts into IT! btw I hated that company then and now. I left as soon as I finished my training.
Rick Murray 1 week ago
I started in IT, worked as a keyboard monkey at an outfit where "the specification was sacred" which would have made sense if the guy who wrote the spec (and owned the company) had anything even remotely resembling a clue. He did, however, have a good line in tipping his desk, the entire thing, and also throwing the company product (lovingly hand built by the secretary) at the wall. I didn't last long, and when she (the secretary) had enough of his 💩 and left, the company didn't last long as there was nobody to get in-between the owner and clients to translate delusional clueless bollocks into what the clients want to hear.
#31
I work in administration and the most annoying rude thing that repeatedly happens to me is IT staff talking down to me. I’m a millennial, my husband is a network engineer, and I’ve been working in admin for 14 years, a role which has always included some level 1 / desktop tech support. It’s beyond condescending to refer to the Ethernet cable as the Ethernet cable for a whole conversation and then have the person you’re talking to describe the “internet cable” to you in intricate detail and then say “actually whoever is working at will know what you need if you just ask for a new internet cable, you can always call me and I can explain it to him”
#32
One guy didn't like me knowing more than him so he would copy all Senior leadership when he wanted to jab something in my eye or argue about something ridiculous via email.
He would even resort to name calling.
It still baffles me that he's not been fired yet.
#33
The most memorable one was this super bizarre guy that got hired in around the same time I did: He would openly work on stuff for the company he personally owned instead of the job he was being paid to be at, was super loud, supposedly looked at p**n, and tried to demonstrate a chokehold on his manager (who was a tiny lady that was very much *not* interested in participating in the "demonstration".
They were eventually fired after months of bizarre shenanigans, not sure what the exact reason was, but I suspect it was actually a lot of reasons.
#34
I caught a manager moonlighting for another company, documented it, and reported it to the higher-ups and they did nothing. He eventually got let go during a layoff, but I can't help but think how much money they basically paid him to work for another company the whole year he remained at the company.
#35
Worked with some people who found out my Reddit name and would stalk my account. Then bring up my posts to harass me in the office.
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Mother of Giants 1 week ago
Anyone else notice how most of these 'horror stories' are mostly from tech type offices? MSP (Managed Service Provider), IT, etc?? I'm currently a full-time student, majoring in Computer Science, minoring in IT/Cybersecurity....I'm a woman...and middle age is in my rear view mirror...I wonder what kind of unhinged behavior I can expect from my future coworkers....
Mother of Giants 1 week ago
Anyone else notice how most of these 'horror stories' are mostly from tech type offices? MSP (Managed Service Provider), IT, etc?? I'm currently a full-time student, majoring in Computer Science, minoring in IT/Cybersecurity....I'm a woman...and middle age is in my rear view mirror...I wonder what kind of unhinged behavior I can expect from my future coworkers....
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