Picture this: You saunter to the office microwave or refrigerator, open the door, and are walloped by a stench normally reserved for garden compost piles. You catch a glimpse of something runny and fetid before slamming the door with one hand and clutching your stomach with the other.
Sound disgustingly familiar? You’re hardly alone. Dirty common areas are among the top office-worker pet peeves in Australia, according to a worldwide survey commissioned by LinkedIn.
The top three Australian peevers were:
- People not taking ownership of their actions
- Dirty common areas (still can smell the stink …)
- Constant complainers
There were gender differences in the findings. For example, 61% of women surveyed in Australia were bothered by “clothing that’s too revealing for the workplace,” while only 23% of Australian men — clearly thinking with something other than their brains — said that wasn’t a problem. (The Swedes are the most tolerant of this issue; only 35% of women and 12% of men cited it as a peeve.)
And a special note to Australian job-seekers: managers with hiring powers are much more cheesed-off than non-hiring managers about people who show up late for meetings.
Sixteen nations and 17,000 people took part in the survey. Worldwide, people shirking personal responsibility was the top peeve, cited by 78% of the respondents. India has the largest number of pet peeves and Italy the fewest; Australia ranked seventh.
“It is common for professionals to have a few pet peeves,” said Samuel Day, a workplace expert from HappeningPeople.com who was quoted in the LinkedIn information. “However, it is important to be aware that you may also be unknowingly disrupting your colleagues. There is a fine line between having a quirk and displaying disrespectful workplace habits. Left unchecked, these bad habits can go on to have negative effects on your career.”
Image by Quinn Dombrowski
