Nine Office Habits to Avoid
It should go without saying that it's important to get along with your coworkers, considering they are the people you spend the majority of your days with. With that in mind, here are some bad habits to avoid around the office, courtesy of theMuse.com.
Doing the Bare Minimum
It can be easy to just come into work every day, punch the clock and leave. But this can lead to the bad habit of doing the bare minimum.
An office environment is collaborative and requires all members of the team to pull their own weight. If coworkers see you barely doing any work and leaving them to pick up the slack, it won't be long before you find yourself making enemies. If your work becomes too much to handle, ask someone for help before it leads to you earning a bad reputation.
Finger Pointing
People are quick to take credit for an idea that paid off, but far fewer will readily hold themselves accountable when things don't go well in the office. If you're unwilling to take credit for your missteps, it could lead to another bad habit: finger-pointing. This solves nothing while overlooking or delaying the positive approach of problem solving to avoid the same mistake in the future.
Gossip
This one is hard to avoid, but let's try to anyway. Instead, focus your time and energy on more productive things. The article on theMuse.com quotes Eleanor Roosevelt, who perhaps had the best take on this topic. She said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
While there are many other bad habits that can set you back in the workplace, these nine cover many of the problem areas.