Office Etiquette: Sound Like the Ultimate Oxymoron?!?

Bad manners can ruin relationships with co-workers.  Infractions examined individually may seem minor, but if they happen consistently, over the course of time, they may create resentments that will push those offended off the deep-end.  So, as no one wants to be on the business end of a weapon someone had to repress three days of rage to obtain (in polite circles), perhaps it’s best to mind our manners.  Here are some common everyday infractions we think it best to avoid:

1. Placing a PDA Before People
Remember the good old days when “PDA” stood for terms like public display of affection, or pretty darn adorable?  While it’s listed in the American Heritage Dictionary nowadays as “personal digital assistant,” if anyone hears it vibrating on the conference table while you are sweating bullets staring at it, or sees your thumbs developing calluses by rotating the little wheel to check your email in the same meeting, they are more likely to think of it as they think of you – pretty much a dick and an asshole.

2. Food as an Olfactory Nightmare

No one would ever mind that you eat microwave popcorn as long as they don’t have to smell it every day at 4pm.  They will continue to not mind when you ignore their requests to stop making it when they do enough on-line research to find out that yellow stuff that passes for flavoring may as well be known as “Ebola butter.”


3. Divide and Conquer: Or Hallway Meetings Are for Dummies
Yes, it’s lucky you bumped into Traci, especially since you have been avoiding her all week and just had a vague flicker of cognizance regarding the question you’ve been meaning to ask her since Monday.  But be aware that some of your colleagues might just be working in cubes lining the hallway as hanging them from meat-hooks was not an option, and even more importantly, some of them just realized those cheese-steak sliders weren’t the best possible idea for lunch and you and Traci are hindering their ability to confirm this assumption sooner rather than later by debating how to strategize in front of the door to the crapper.

4. 
“Writing” in Text Speak

It wasn’t even cool way back in the previous century when Sinead O’Connor proclaimed, “Nothing compares 2U.”  So, we ask you this: If a chick who was bald by choice, and who had with Prince as her lyricist can’t make it seem hip, what are the odds, REALLY, for the rest of us?  Just the thought that you probably don’t think that analogy is GR8 is making us LOL already, BTW.

Previously published.  We will return live on 7/19.