Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
The 7 fastest ways to stop driving your colleagues crazy
Studies have shown that our brains are more creative when we're relaxed and distracted, which means we often have "brilliant" ideas while lathering up in the shower, or playing KenKen while lying in bed before sleep.
As tempting as it is to email all your teammates the moment inspiration strikes, it can be frustrating to hear from work-peeps at 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, while trying to wind down yourself. The solution: Use Boomerang, an app that allows you to schedule emails, and have your brilliant idea fly out at the start of the workday.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Sometimes it's tempting to go to work sick. Maybe you're a work-aholic, or maybe you're new and still trying to prove your work ethic. Or maybe you just truly love your job and suffer from debilitating workplace FOMO.
Whatever the case, don't do it. Offices are large, elaborate petri dishes, and germs can survive anywhere from a couple minutes to 48 hours on hard surfaces — which means they can easily travel from door knobs to keyboards to eyeballs to blood streams.
This contagion factor is something we all try to forget about while we're working. So if you're sick, visibly or otherwise, but still absolutely have to work, do it from home.
Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the day’s biggest news and analysis – and the best features from TheWeek.com
3. Consider the tuna
It's a mystery of science: Some foods that taste perfectly good, smell just terrible. Since it's standard office etiquette to try not to smell like crap, it's best to enjoy tuna melts on weekends only. Your cubicle neighbors will thank you.
4. Keep the date
One helpful thing to come out of the government shutdown: A helpful tip from the head of the EPA about office etiquette. In a welcome-back memo to employees, EPA chief Gina McCarthy wrote:
During the shutdown, we made every effort to water accessible plants. And of necessity, the refrigerators were emptied of all perishable foodstuffs last week. The oldest food found? A can of Campbell's soup dated 1997! So, please remember it is everyone's responsibility to keep the refrigerators clean. [Yahoo News]
So, yeah: Get rid of everything in the office kitchen you've had there since the dot com bubble.
5. Practice keyboard compassion
When work gets stressful, it can feel great to hit stuff. That's why the Office Space scene where the gang goes ballistic on a printer is so satisfying:
But many of us don't realize we play this out automatically in tiny ways, like typing aggressively, which is not nearly as satisfying, and makes your co-workers uncomfortable. So, if possible, save the electronics abuse for true emotional breakdowns.
6. Hold the honey
This one's for the old men: Back in Mad Men days, or whenever you first entered the workforce, calling your female officemates "Honey," and "Sweetheart," was probably charming and perfectly professional. Or at least normal. Now it makes you seem kind of weird and skeevy.
