Are you calling me from the bathroom?

Office Etiquette Rule #3: Do not call anyone from the workplace bathroom.

I’m always amazed when I walk into the bathroom and either see someone standing around talking on their cell phone, or when I hear someone in a stall jabbering away. The first time I witnessed this I thought it was a phenomenon, a freak occurrence that I was never to see again. Since that first time though, I’ve had the dismay of walking in many times to the sound of someone in the stall talking away on their cell phone.

Previous to our office moving to a new building 7 months ago, I worked with a lot of hourly workers. These were people that were strictly limited to their 15 minute breaks. This was the only reason I could image why people would find it necessary to use the cell phone as they’re taking care of other business. But since moving to our new building, where the majority of the workforce is salary, I’ve continued to see this happening.

What is the etiquette of the person walking into the bathroom? They’ve come in for a specific reason. Why should that person coming in leave just because someone else doesn’t have the sense to talk on the phone is a place where bathroom splashes and flushing can’t be heard? I always find it an awkward situation. Half of me doesn’t want to flush the toilet because I feel bad for the person on the other end having to hear that. The other, evil half of me wants to start flushing away to let that person on the other end know just where the person they are talking to is calling them from. The evil half usually wins out.

Someone Stole my Candy Dish

A few of my co-workers have candy dishes out on their desks. They leave them out, so that anyone can stop by their desk and grab a much needed sugary treat at any time. During the last observed Veteran’s holiday our office had one of the ladies, Jessica, came back from the holiday to discover her candy dish and it’s contents were missing!

There were only a handful of workers here during the observed holiday. There are multiple companies that work in my office building. Some of the companies that reside here give the holiday off with pay, while my company does not. With so many people gone though, most of my co-workers take they day off using a vacation day just so they won’t have to come into a nearly empty office.

With so few people here, it is really suprising that her candy dish would come up missing on a day when there were only a handful of people here. Our office building is enormous, so there would never any way to track down exactly who had taken the treats.

Jessica did find her empty candy dish in a nearby conference room later on in the day of her return. I could just picture someone slinking into the conference room with a bowl full of candy and proceeding to kick their feet up and mow down the entire bowl. It makes for a pretty funny image.  Who could eat all that without getting sick though? Maybe they had a few of the treats and simple took the rest to enjoy later. Either way, they saw an opportunity to take advantage of someone who was being generous and they seized it.

Let me finish a sentence, please!

Office Etiquette Rule #2:  Let the person you’re talking to finish their sentence.

Audio meetings can make communicating difficult. I’ve had the experience of dialing into many audio meetings where it was tricky to get a word in edgewise. Last week I experienced some extreme frustration in attending an audio meeting. I was dailed in with 2 people that interrupted my every sentence.

There were three of us on the call, the host, one of her co-workers, and myself.  My initial thought was that this would be a quick meeting. I had a clear understanding of what was being requested by these 2 users when they sent the meeting information over with the outline of their request.

The meeting got underway and the meeting host started to go on saying that she knew what her coworker was requesting. She then proceeded to go into a long question and answer session with that co-worker about everything that was stated in their initial request.  I attempted a couple of times to interject that I had a good understanding of their request, and explain that we would just need to make a couple of quick updates to accommodate the request. Every time I started to explain this, one of them would cut me off in the middle of my sentence. They would either exclaim that what I was talking about was exactly what they needed, or they would interrupt with another question. Each time I began to respond to them, one or the other would then jump in and cut me off again.

If it had been just one of them interrupting, I would’ve chalked it up to them being rude and having no social skills, but both of these workers constantly interrupting? This was clearly more then rudeness. They were feeding off each other and showing that this is how their group communicates within itself.

I tried my best to stay cool on the call and use all the patientience I had.  I know my voice was getting louder and louder as I would try to finish my sentence as they talked over me.  Even as I continued to talk at an elevated volume, they’re talking over me continued. 

It did end up being a short call, but not short enough for me. I was trying to get off the soon after it had began. Both of the other meeting participants seemed to be ignorate to the fact that they had frustrated me.  From the sounds of the wrap of of the meeting, never of them had any thoughts other then this had been a wildly successful meeting.

The Dreaded 8 a.m. Meeting

Office Etiquette rule 1:  Never schedule a meeting before 9 a.m.

It’s the Monday after the long Thanksgiving holiday. We here at the office had a 4 day weekend receiving both Thursday, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday off. The generous amount of holidays given off to employees is one of the things I enjoy about working for this company. Well, I had been enjoying it until I logged into my computer at my usual 8:30 a.m. starting time to see that I had been scheduled to be in a meeting at 8:00 a.m.

This leads into the apparently not so common sense rule of office etiquette, which is that you should NEVER schedule a morning meeting on the Monday following a long holiday weekend.  For that matter, this is a part of the EVEN MORE common sense rule that states you should never schedule ANY meeting before 9 a.m.  Workers have a variety of different schedules of starting and ending times to fit into their life schedules. It is another one of the benefits of working at a white-collar job such as this. Some people like to get a jump on the day and start resolving issues before the official clock has begun, and they work 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Some folks drop their kids off at daycare or school in the morning and it is just not possible for them to be into the office by 8 a.m. Some workers schedule their hours to be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. so that they can cover late in the day emergency issues that arise.

Scheduling 8 a.m. meetings makes assumptions that everyone is working the same 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule as the upper management guy who is out there expecting people will be able to attend. Mind you, this is the same manager who will drop off emergency requests for data on his way out the door at 4 p.m. Data that management needs from you to have ready for his next 8 a.m. meeting scheduled for the next day. The same manager that doesn’t much care how long you have to work in the evening in order to get him his data.

To combat the early morning scheduler, there are a few actions you may want to take depending on how comfortable you are going against management and how badly you need your job.

1) If you share Outlook calendars, mark your drive time on your calendar as either busy or out of office time.
2) Respond to meeting requests with no or tentative responses.
3) If it is an audio meeting, dial in from the road. State to the meeting organizer when you announce yourself that you are currently in the car driving in.
4) If you are a key player at the meeting, ask the meeting organizer if they can reschedule for a time after your start time.

What other actions have you taken to combat early morning meetings?