~by Haley Lynn Gray~
Honestly, there are so many sure fire ways to piss off colleagues at your job, it’s almost hard to start. There are some sure-fire ways to achieve the goal of royally pissing off your colleagues.
- Never take credit for any problems that arise. This is especially effective if you happen to be in the middle of every conflict that arises in your workplace. Sure, it’s not you, and it’s everyone else’s fault.
- Get upset and royally defensive over everything. I like this when someone asks you how your day is going, and you get upset. That really makes the team gel right together.
- Snip at everyone for their faults. Make sure you blame them publicly every time they make a mistake. Take extra care to point those mistakes out to your boss and highlight them, for special effect. People love to be thrown under the bus, and it makes them super eager to work with you.
- Cry about everything and anything, or be unpleasant whenever the going gets tough. Pick one, or both. Alternate between them.
- Don’t answer your emails. That way your boss wonders if you’ve gotten the assignment or email. Then get super annoyed because they assume you didn’t see the email.
- Drop assignments randomly. Combine this with not answering emails, and you’ll make yourself look super reliable, and like someone your team can rely on!
- If you don’t know how to do an assignment, don’t ask any questions. Just wait until someone notices it didn’t get done, then get defensive.
- Claim credit for other people’s work. The bigger the assignment, the better.
- Suck up to the boss, and make sure that you tell the boss how badly everyone else is doing their jobs.
- Foist off parts of your job on random people, because you can.
- Work three hours a day, and claim 12.
- Answer your phone in an unprofessional manner. The more crass and obnoxious the better. That always sends a great vibe to any potential clients.
- Claim credit for work you haven’t completed. Act surprised when people discover that you haven’t completed a task. Then blame someone else for not doing it.
The uncomfortable version of this list
Read it a second time as a manager rather than as a colleague, and it stops being funny.
Almost every item describes someone protecting themselves. People go quiet on email, get defensive, or claim credit when being wrong feels dangerous. That is usually a reaction to an environment, and the person setting that environment is whoever runs the place.
Which means a team where several of these behaviours show up at once is rarely a team of difficult people. It is more often a team that has learned admitting a mistake costs more than hiding one.
Worth asking, honestly: when someone last got something wrong in your business, what happened to them? The answer to that question is what determines whether this list stays a joke.
Seriously, there are so many ways to annoy colleagues, it’s hard to know where to start. What are your favourite ways that colleagues have annoyed you in the past?
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
