3 Pet Peeves to Avoid at Work

Career-minded individuals always want to present their best version. Deliberate self-awareness comes as a result of the habits you practice day in and day out.

The essence of a professional changes and adapts. Professionalism, or unprofessionalism, manifests when dealing with unfamiliar customers or co-workers. Developing an authentic persona in these situations is easy if you know what to avoid.  

1. Interpersonal unprofessionalism

Swearing is a big deal to some people. Others use profanity like Bob Ross touches up a landscape with a fine brush.  In most situations foul-mouthing at work paints you as a crude lummox with a limited vocabulary. Pick your adjectives wisely.

Locker room talk has its perils as we learned in this election cycle. It gets to be a slippery slope in technical professions like software development, where males comprise nine out of ten of those employed in the workforce. Conduct yourself like a gentleman in an all-male environment and carry those habits wherever you go.

Sex, politics, and religion are a no-go when talking in professional settings; leave those opinions at home or on discussion boards where nobody at work knows your username.

Subtle transgressions like saying “I don’t know, man” to a female colleague can come off as boorish or immature. It’s all contextual. Remember, professionalism comes out when dealing with unfamiliar people.

2. Organizational unprofessionalism

Don’t skip levels in communications is common etiquette, especially within the department. Talk to your manager; talk to those who report to you; talk to your peers. Do not communicate over your boss to upper management. There are rare exceptions; the safe bet is to run any correspondence by your direct manager before engaging the next level.

Managers playing favorites is validated only by performance. When rewarding a standout employee, managers need to make this crystal clear. It is OK to favor someone who goes the extra mile. It is never OK to favor someone who shares politics, interests, vices, social background-- anything other than job performance should go unrecognized.

Closed mindedness to new approaches sabotages innovation and employee morale. A good manager will genuinely assess and respond to proposals and ideas brought by the team. Failing to do so calls into question managerial competency--if you don’t trust your hires, why did you bring them on board?

Abusing the Internet on company time is on par with stealing cash out of the register. Checking your feeds a couple times a day or perusing job-related content is fine, but blowing eight hours on YouTube is another story. Unless IT blocks social media sites the honor system prevails--you know what a professional would do.

Letting off-hours affect your workday. Root access on a production server while still messed up from last night’s bender? Careful there, buddy. Linux doesn’t ask “are you sure?” before you trash a critical file. Mistakes happen to professionals; unprofessional mistakes happen in context.

3. Commonly disputed etiquette

Professionalism is not always cut-and-dried. Hedge your bets with common sense.

Asking about salary in the first interview. The jury is out on this. It is definitely important to know your professional worth, so why wouldn’t you ask? Here’s one good reason: salary data is published and easily accessible thus you should have an idea before taking the interview. Just play it safe until the conversation presents itself.

Interviewee thank-you notes seem to walk the line between useless kissing up, and the deciding factor between two equally matched candidates. My advice? Thank you doesn’t cost anything. Send a note.

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Adam Lovinus is a technical copywriter and corporate politeness ambassador in Orange County, California