Our last survey concerned pet peeves. Based on my assumption that negative employees would take the lion's share of votes, I began writing the March editorial. Surprisingly, my assumption was wrong, which has caused a complete rewrite of next month's, "Confessions of a Positive Contrarian."
| Pet Peeve About Work/Employees | Percentage of Total Responding |
| Managers who don't supervise | 32% |
| Negative employees | 19% |
| Employees who dodge responsibilities | 15% |
| Employees who are late/absent (combined) | 14% |
| Managers who won't answer questions | 10% |
| Employees who don't try | 7% |
| Other | 3% |
If those surprised you just a bit, here are the "secondary" or other peeves as rated by our (overwhelmingly managerial) respondents:
| Other Peeves | Percentage of Total Responding |
| Late performance evaluations | 29% |
| Gov't agency bureaucracy & not getting answers | 20% |
| Spam email | 15% |
| Other | 11% |
| Commute/Traffic combined | 10% |
| Policies that don't make sense | 9% |
| Labor codes that don't make sense | 6% |
"Other" was very interesting. One company president said that he's peeved by "people who don't exercise vision in their thinking." I could tell him a story about one individual (in Personnel of all things) who had visions at work. [Don't ever tell anyone you've a degree in psychology. Guess who deals with such visionaries?]
Another "other" wrote, "My other peeve is 'Managers that blatantly ignore employment and wage laws because they know they can get away with it." Amen. A corollary is a client I once had who added, "I put away $100,000 a year for losing such cases. That's cheaper than paying attention, and I doubt if more than five people here know anything about their rights!" And you wonder why I love doing this.
Then, there was one who wrote that her pet peeve was "passive-aggressive behavior." I don't know what the hell you meant by that, but I accept it whole heartedly. Oh, I'm sorry, but isn't this "National Bipolar Week?"
Perhaps one of the most meaningful was this, "Management that does not practice what they preach." Ah, but as we've just seen with Enron, it's do as I say, not as I do. Oddly, I have very little to say about Enron. Maybe that's because I'm up to here with TV and radio Enron reports.
And my friend from my home state combined all known mental genres with, "Know-it-alls and idiots." Some of my best friends are idiots, but none of my friends are know-it-alls. I've found that, when one knows so many idiots, one can assume the know-it-all crown more easily.
Below is another survey brought about by this last Other pet peeve: "The fact that technology is not making our lives easier and giving us more leisure time, as promised. We are simply replacing one type of work with another." And more of it, too. Luddites need not respond.
All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2002. E. A. Winning Associates,
Inc.