The holidays are now over, and it's finally back to the grind for most of us. Time to reunite with your coworkers, a few of whom may have some pretty obnoxious habits.
There's the guy who constantly microwaves fish and broccoli and stinks up the whole office, or the woman who takes personal calls very loudly in her cubicle.
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No matter what your office pet peeve is, there is a right and wrong way to go about dealing with it in the workplace. To get some advice on how to handle these minor annoyances gracefully, we brought in Emily Yoffe, best known for her Dear Prudence advice column Slate.com.
Interview Highlights:
How do you deal with smells in the workplace without offending somebody:
"Smells are a big office issue from food to body odor to bathrooms. I think with foods, look, it's an office not a restaurant. Eat a salad. Eat a sandwich. I got a letter once from a woman who said her coworker comes in in the morning and heats up a can of tuna fish for breakfast and the rest of the day the office smells like a cat food factory. You don't have to have hot food, if it's hot try not to make it very odiferous. Go out. Go out for lunch if you want that hot dog with hot sauerkraut on it. But especially when you're heating it up in an office microwave and the whole office is going to smell your lunch, just think twice."
How to deal with coworkers' clothing choices:
"This is why HR is helpful. If people are coming to work as if they're going off surfboarding later in the day, then HR needs to put out a, 'Hey, everyone should know we expect this kind of footwear, we expect this amount of coverage.' I often turn to George Washington for this kind of rules. He has a rule that deals exactly with this. 'Put not off your clothes in the presence of others nor go out your chamber half dressed.' So George was right. If you're going to work, get fully dressed. That means probably covering your feet, wearing a bra, the basics."
How to deal with a coworkers annoying personal hygiene habits:
"I actually got a letter from a woman saying in the next cubicle, the guy next to her would clip his toenails and she could hear them pinging, well flying. She made him sound like he was actually a werewolf and this went on every day. Some of these things, you just have to accept, everyone is annoying. That includes you. Obviously, people can't be doing manicures every day. For the nail clipping, there are ten of them, it's got to be over pretty quickly. Just take a walk when your cubicle mate is doing this."
How to deal with people who have loud personal phone calls in the office:
"The loud cubicle mates, the loud chewers, the loud hummers, the people who listen to music without earphones? I don't even know how you get your work done. Again, that's one of those that you actually have to address because studies have shown if your concentration is continuously disruptive, it's not just that moment that's disruptive, it's very hard to get back to where you were. This is making you unproductive. Again, nicely, assume the person is not doing it to annoy you. Say, 'You probably aren't aware, but when you start talking, particularly, to your daughter or your husband, your volume goes up. Could you keep it quiet or maybe if you're taking those personal calls, take them outside because I can hear everything. I'm sure you don't want me to.'"
On what office habits annoys her the most:
"Well, I actually am a recluse who works at home and I talk to my dog all day. I mean, I'm bizarre in my sweat clothes. When I come in to Slate, I mean you talk about sounds, when I come into work at Slate I sit at one of these open desk. Everyone is hunched over. If I sneeze it's like an explosion has gone off in this room. Maybe I have a weird reaction. I'm coming to the office for a little bit of socializing so I think I'm the pest and they're feeling like, "For God's sake, this woman only talks to her dog all day. Shut up." So what I find annoying is my colleagues won't talk to me when I show up."