Rants

I've started writing down a list of things that really annoy me, most are related to office etiquette and corporate cultural ills.

So here goes the first group.

1. Preemptive "Excuse me"

This happens in the cube farm I work in all the time. Americans love to say "excuse me" even when it's completely unnecessary. For example, I see a guy walking down the hallway about 20 feet away. As I wait to get water at the water cooler, he passes me and says "Excuse me". Dude, I saw you coming from 20 feet away and I was stationary this entire time. There was no probability of us ever running into each. And, why do you need to apologize for walking on a shared hallway? Americans are so afraid of touching another human body that even the 1% probability scares them enough to preemptively say "Excuse me"!

2. Holding the door open for you when you are 20 feet away

This unfortunately also happens quite often at my office. Between 8AM and 9AM when people rush into the office, I'm bound to have someone holding the building door open for me when I'm barely out of my car. Sometimes this happens when I'm a good 20 feet away. I'm not one to run towards work, so I walk at a medium pace. But those determined folks will hold the door open and look at me smilingly for a good two minutes. In fact, they look so friendly that I feel obligated to half-run up to the door and say "Thanks". Maybe one day my triceps will shrink because I never open doors anymore. Good grief!

3. Phone messages that say "I just wanted to touch base with you...."

No one calls and leaves a message if they want nothing. Yet in America, the most common way to start a voice mail message in the office is called "touching base". I get it's a baseball reference, but what does touching base have anything to do with asking me to change the requirements spec for you? That's called a request, NOT touching base. Say what you want and do what you said you were going to do, world peace achieved.

4. The equaling of "being engaged" and carbon copying someone in email.

If you work in an office environment, I'm sure you've been asked to get someone "engaged" in the project that you are working on. Perhaps it's a corporate virus, but the most common way I've observed people complying to that request is CC'ing the person in question on mass emails and meeting invites. Yeah, flood them with this ambiguous electronic communication and wait for synergy to sparkle!

More to come in the near future.