Rude Co-Workers Are the Worst.

Bring your own lunch and keep your hands to yourself.

To this day, just always treat people the way you want to be treated. Whether it’s family or friends or co-workers, I think it’s the most important thing. Whether you have success or don’t have it, whether you’re a good person is all that matters.

Brenda Song

Do you share your workspace with other people? If so, don’t be a jerk.

Rude co-workers are the worst, aren’t they? I mean, it has been a long time since I had a job outside my home, but I remember. There are some people who must think the world actually revolves around them.

There is the guy who steals grapes or cookies out of other people’s lunches. Hey, Jack! Did you think I forgot there were grapes in my lunch bag this morning? Who do you think packed it?

Then there is the one who tells you all about their aunt’s colonoscopy. None of us have met your aunt. I’m sure she is a nice person, but do you think she wants strangers to know about her polyps?

There used to be the office Romeo. After the Me, too movement, I hope these are now few and far between. This guy is out to score with anyone he can talk into a drink. Sometimes he is handsy before the drinks. He is the worst but for the purposes of my rant, let’s say he isn’t.

I witnessed particularly rude behavior this morning. I had forgotten this was even a thing, but it took me back to my last office job. I was in a cubical: one among about a dozen.

Cubicles don’t have actual office doors.

Some of the managers around me only used their cubical when they were in town. When they were sitting at their desk, they needed to contact their staff in other locations.

Unfortunately, a few seemed to forget they didn’t have an actual office door. Cubicles don’t have actual office doors.

They would turn their phone’s speaker on and start dialing. The rest of us would silently listen to him punch in a long-distance number, then speak to his subordinate. Instead of hearing one side of the conversation, we all heard both.

Very little work was done on my computer as these phone calls took place. Concentrating on paperwork isn’t easy when someone’s inventory issues are being shouted nearby. I also couldn’t focus on my own phone calls. I never came up with a polite way to address this with an employee who outranked me in the office.

Today I was at my doctor’s office. The office is set up with four cubicles in a row. They are numbered, one through four. You sign in at the first or second. Then you are called to the third to complete paperwork. After that, you wait to be called into an examination room.

I don’t know what the fourth individual oversees. I never ended up there. I was very aware, however, of the person sitting in the number four cube.

I bet you can guess why. Yes, she dialed, then talked to someone on speakerphone. At a desk open to the waiting room and sharing an area with three other cube-mates.

At first, I was alarmed that the phone call would be confidential. This was a medical office. It didn’t seem to be. I’ve forgotten what they were talking about. Their conversation wasn’t the point.

I wanted to walk up and ask her to take the call off speakerphone. I am in my fifties. Maybe by the time I have made it to my 60s, I won’t care anymore and will just say it.

To my shame, I said nothing. This is why people get away with poor behavior. We don’t call them on it enough. If this phone call was disturbing me, how must the people behind numbers one through three have felt?

Maybe this person is the office manager and they don’t feel they can say anything. I guarantee you, they care. It isn’t possible that none of the three cared. It was LOUD.

If you are reading this, I hope you aren’t the “speakerphone in a cubical” type. If you are, I hope my words will cause you to re-evaluate the practice. If you don’t have an office door and you share your workspace with others, don’t be that guy.

Don’t be that other guy either. Leave your co-worker’s grapes alone.

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