7 Professional 'Turn-Offs' in the Workplace

In the professional world, we can find ourselves meeting and greeting with many new and old connections, digital and face-to-face alike.

Many of us have pet peeves and particular annoyances which can toil at our core, often detracting from what could be a meaningful business or workplace relationship.

1. Offensive Language

Profanity can be funny, sure – just listen to some good old Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy standup; I honestly do enjoy Mr. Murphy’s comedy more as Mu-Shu in Mulan and Donkey from Shrek, but that could just be me. Even so, profane remarks don’t really belong in the workplace and can actually be offensive to some, even if it wasn’t intended this way. If you are going to ‘curse like a sailor’, it’s best to do it on a ship, and only around those who know you really well.

2. Grammar Usage & Misusage

Have you ever completely lost your attention span or comprehension in an email or note from a colleague when your eye hovers over the common ‘their vs. there’ scenario? The basics in elementary writing somehow just don’t always make it to the office. If it feels like the rest of your coworkers are checking their mental bags at the door and you catch yourself proofreading simple correspondence, you may just be a “Grammar Nazi”, and I applaud you. If you are unfamiliar, there is no shame in opening that new tab in your browser and looking up some basic rules before you hit the send button.

3. Jargon & Cliché Remarks

You may have the employer who simply feels the need to preface a declaration with “FYI…” every half hour, or you could have that coworker who responds to greetings with “another day, another dollar” a bit much. Either way, we can all say we have some experience with cliché office speak. In a related matter, organizational Jargon can be useful around those who understand and it and in some circles it can expedite communication on the fly, but it should generally be purged from our vocabulary when communicating among those outside of our organization. 

Did you send Top your 4187?

vs.

Did you send our First Sergeant your signed Personnel Action Form?

4. Millennial Email Abusers (MEAs)

If you find yourself deciphering hieroglyphs derived from punctuation in your inbox (emojis/emoticons), the sender may have been born between 1980 and 2000. Many of us suffer from ‘Millennial Email Abuse’ (my apologies to Michigan Education Association and Lebanese Airline). If you are a millennial and find yourself LOLing, ROFLing, and hashtaging in professional correspondence, try and keep things pre-80’s for the rest of the world; it makes communication for everyone a little smoother and could even give you a leg up among your peers in the business world. If you are like me, you fit in the millennial age group and you know how to communicate with your elders too. Kudos to you for calling this (#) a pound sign and not a hashtag. If you call it an octothorp, well then… You ‘da Man/Ma’am/other!

5. Complainers and ‘Mundaners’ /m?n?de?n?rz/

At times we can be faced with those who really just love to complain about any incident they can. Whether they just love to stir up drama and make everyone’s work day about themselves or they just enjoy playing the “one up” game on who has had a crappier day, these folks can really drag on personnel morale like an infection. Let’s work together to help either get these folks motivated or out of the office.

6. Weekend enthusiasm & workplace anguish

We all love the weekend, or at least you should. Bragging about your weekend and complaining about work all the time on the other hand – that is just a cry for help and says you need a career change. If every day at work is a bad day you probably spend a good 251 days out of the year in a bad mood; nobody wants to work around someone like that. Learn to love what you do and take some pride in your work! As one presidential candidate said: “If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.”

7. Politics

Yes, I quoted Donald Trump a moment ago; the context just works well. The fact that I quote a presidential candidate is neither here nor there; it is not a political endorsement and you won’t find me publicly endorsing either party. Why? Because I keep my political beliefs at home and out of the office, and this is a pretty good way of keeping things professional in the workplace.  

 What are your professional pet peeves?

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