Kick those colleagues asses … or not.

An issue free work environment doesn’t exist, lets face it, everybody has some issues on what his colleagues do or what is happing within 3 feet from your desk.

Some have the most obvious laughter, others have to tap on your desk every time they pass by, I even heard my brother in law go completely crazy on a sound his colleague made if they where talking too loud. It’s funny to watch those things or hear those stories on how people get irritated by others. This is not something new, everybody hates the habits of others, and what might be something stupid in the beginning and might end up as being the reason to beat up the guy (or girl, girls have those habits too you know, I never meet any on my work as I’m a it-nerd, the root of all evil).

Improving your working environment isn’t easy at all but there might be some things you can do:

Buy yourself a stress ball

Every time you hear or see something that irritates you, start squeezing the damn thing like it’s the dudes head.
Another thing you can do, and is a more common method, is counting to 10 very slowly. This might end up in counting number all day long, but hey, better counting than smashing someones face in I guess.

Start smoking

This might not be the most healthy way, but as I was a smoker once, many moons ago, it got me a little distressed on the funkiest, deadline moments. I used to always go for this excuse to get away for a five minute break (7 actually, as this is the average time of smoking a cigarette) and from the moment I stopped smoking this was the most difficult habit to get rid of. But hey, I did it and am now already more then 2 years smoke free.<

So actually, don’t start smoking, and to all the smokers out there, stop smoking and buy yourself a stress ball.
I know that there are 10 000 friends and relatives that tried to convince you on the health issue, but hey, try these reasons:

• On a yearly base if you stop smoking your pack a day you save (following Belgium prices)  about 1700 €. Common man, that’s almost 3 days of work (just kidding).
• Your 7 minutes you smoke per cigarette, for 20 times a day takes you about 51100 minutes in a year you are inhaling toxic air and being unproductive, man that’s  851 hours or 35 days!!!
• if you’re young it looks cool to smoke, but as the Editors say, have you ever seen those smokers outside of hospital doors, they are the saddest thing in the world…

I guess I made my point here

Just… let it go

Stop trying to make it a better world, you will be doing this the rest of your life trying to improve people, just face it, it’s not worth the time. Pick the people you need to change carefully…

Report it to your boss

Let him do the dirty job of facing the person with the problem. You need a reason why?
- Well he won’t get beaten up, as he is the boss and can say whatever he wants to his employees (in the right way off course)
- He has the actual power of changing people, and probably or hopefully the correct people skills to do this.

Make sure that, if you choose this way, that the person doesn’t know that you are the one that started nagging to the boss, otherwise you might end up getting beaten after all

Deal with it yourself

This might be the best option after all, but be careful when doing so, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings on this. Be gentle and try bringing this on as something that isn’t the worst thing in the world, but is just getting on your nerves. Be prepared for some reactions, for example:

- He might give you a list of things that bother him about you, and those can also hurt your feelings. But I believe this reaction only comes back to you if you got too confronting in the first place.

- He says ‘ok man, thanks for telling me this, I’ll try to do something about it, didn’t know it was a problem’, deals with it, and never does it again. This is off course the best one, yeeey, you win, fatality, flawless victory!

- You get a positive reaction in the first place, but after a few days the other guy explodes inside because he cannot stand you anymore and then you’ll end up sitting at the bosses desk explaining why the guy gave his resignation.

This is delicate matter for everyone, be careful how to tell it to your colleague…

As you can see, there are some options and I bet you that you can find tons of other ways to deal with this. Just remember that after all, it is only some thing that is happening, it’s not world war 3, it’s not Nagasaki, nobody died, try to deal with it or try to find a good solution.

And until you found a solution, watch out for flying staplers of irritated colleagues…