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Too much talking at work
Soundbox
Posts: 6,247 Forum Member
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How strict is where you work with regards to chatting and not working? I agree that having a less formal feel is good but where I am working now the constant chatting and laughing is stopping me from concentrating and hearing customers on the telephone. It's louder than my local pub sometimes. Today the chatting is so loud I amg getting a headache.
I'm not really into the social life at work vibe - I'd rather get the work done and go home. How is your workplace?
I'm not really into the social life at work vibe - I'd rather get the work done and go home. How is your workplace?
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The office manager at my work just silently disapproves, then randomly clamps down on individuals.
Here we chat crap all day long. There's only two of us in this office and we discuss TV, our relationships, politics etc. we get others come in as well.
It was just all the other phone operatives talking though she told me, they wear headphones.
I talk to everyone, customers, colleagues, management, contractors, myself...
Quite often I lose my voice due to this.
It sounds like you didn't work particularly well there and it was right for the manager to raise it.
Most conversations in our offices revolve around projects, clients and work gossip. Once in a while, a little verbal war in sarcasm or cock-waving between two rival colleagues, who try to slap each other down.
I think fun chit-chat is generally restricted to rooms where we relax, or at a pub nearby after work. They really do talk a lot and loudly in the pub.
I don't talk much at work. When I do, it's usually about films, work, betting and whatever interests them. My personal life is strictly off-limits at work, though. In fact, most still don't know that I'm married with three children. Some assume I'm single with zero interest in office romance and flirting. Some assume I'm gay.
One person, I've heard allegedly, has moaned about the noise in the office, to which the general reply was 'What noise!?'
I have never ever let talking or socialising affect my working. My line managers has never raised it before either. The production manager in question later on got sacked for bullying.
Don't get me wrong I like a good natter as much as the next person but I don't disturb people or allow it to affect my productivity.
I'm lucky if I get a ten minute break on a six hour shift.
I have learned to zone out and it just washes over me now, but some of my colleagues are reaching breaking point
A friend of mine runs a small factory of about a dozen people, mostly younger, mostly male.
He now deliberately employs staff from Eastern Europe, precisely because they can be relied upon to turn up on time and do a full day's work. On the other hand, he finds most younger Brits he's employed do the bare minimum they can possibly get away with and spend much of the day gossiping about irrelevant rubbish like celebrity culture, computer games, the gym and football.
Every once in a while, he'll treat me to his favourite lecture about how today's young Brits are mollycoddled by their parents, have a poor work ethic and how many think the whole world owes them a favour.
By the way, they do get 45 minutes for lunch and two 15 minute breaks for tea/cigarettes, so it's not as though it's non-stop work on an eight hour shift.
And the government wonders why we've got a productivity problem in this country.....
Maybe your friend just wants a workforce he can pay less, but dresses it up as employing Eastern Europeans because they're better workers - because praising their 'work ethic' sounds better than admitting that he employs them because he can pay them less .
Incidentally, I thought discrimination was illegal?