Workplace bad habits, attitudes

Fredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions 
The workplace is where most of us spend most of our time. I have observed some bad habits that we exhibit at the workplace. These are bad habits that we should try and correct to make our work places more productive. Below are some areas where employees exhibit bad habits.
(1) Greetings:

I will start with greetings. Greetings bring us together, they make us feel we are one and belong together. It is important in the workplace to do basics like greeting each other with a smile, “good morning. . . , good afternoon . . . ” and so on. Some people don’t just greet others, why –I do not really know. Some people do not greet others because they think that they are special in one way or the other. Greeting each other must be reciprocal, you don’t want your peers to always greet you and you don’t greet them. Seniority also comes in with greetings. If someone is senior to you in the work place, senior in terms of grade or age; the natural thing is that you greet them first when you meet. This is our African culture actually. At times we have senior people in the work place that might be in lower grades, for example drivers, security and cleaners. You find that young people want these senior people to greet them first just because they are higher than them in terms of grade, this is very unAfrican.

(2) Moodiness:
Some people are given to moodiness. They just wake up one morning and they are not talking to anyone. They are sulking and very irritable. This is a very bad habit which I think also comes with immaturity. If things have not gone well at home, do not bring them to the workplace, as it were, to punish those people who have nothing to with the issues. How do your colleagues work with you when you are on “voicemail” (you are not talking)? We all work through communication and so if you feel like you don’t want to talk to workmates I suggest you stay at home until you are ready to talk to people rather spoil the workplace atmosphere.

(3) Uncleanliness
Uncleanliness is a very bad workplace habit. It is very important to dress appropriately for the type of office or trade one is in. If the office demands formal dressing so be it. Do not dress informally when your office demands formal dressing. Cleanliness is not wearing new attire every day; cleanliness is keeping even those two shirts clean. I have a problem with men who wear a shirt until a collar is visibly dirty. In fact a shirt is meant to be worn once before it’s washed again especially in this hot weather.

Some adults will not bathe or brush their teeth when going to work and I am not exaggerating. Even with the national water problems the country is facing this is not acceptable. Some people do not bother using roll on and deodorants. We sweat in this hot weather and when we go about with smelly armpits it’s really unfair on our colleagues especially if we share offices. It is unfair on the students if you are a teacher/lecturer and you go around the class showing them how things are done and you are killing them with your smelly mouth and arm pits.

For those of us in front offices let us represent our organisations well. The person who visits your organisation for the first time gets the first impression of your organisation by the way you look. Let us not have one red neck tie which we wear throughout the week with any shirt even the day we wear our yellow shirt. There is the bad habit of wearing funny hats especially by the men. Someone is fairly dressed and he throws on the head a “ghetto hat” and the whole dressing is disturbed. For the ladies, let’s not scare clients away with make–up that resembles the ghosts from Friday The 13th movies. Front office make-up must always be toned down. These things are so critical especially in the corporate world and organisations must not hesitate to engage image consultants to help employees with issues of appearance.

(4) Poor Public Relations
This is a very crucial skill for all employees. We all deal with fellow human beings in our businesses and the need to talk properly and appropriately with them need not be over emphasised. Do our clients feel welcome when they visit our organisations? When we discuss business with them do they feel that they are partners and that they are accepted? For bosses, just make sure you have the right person in the front offices and by the telephone switch board. When you have someone who asks clients “What do you want?” then your business is dying. Make sure the person in the front office has the right telephone manners and the right skills of welcoming clients. There are formal training programmes for all this. We do not lose anything by being nice to our clients. Smiling is one activity which doesn’t take as much energy from your system as does frowning.

(5) Bad Eating Habits
Some people have an insatiable urge of eating throughout the day in the office. They will “chew the cud” like cows the whole day in the office. Half the time they are eating unhealthy junk food. There are times to eat and that is why most organisations have stipulated times of eating, that is “tea break” and “lunch break”. Imagine phoning an organisation and the person who answers your call is busy munching and you can hardly hear what they are saying. Such things, minor as they may appear discredit the organisation.
There are also the people who when the organisation has workshops, they get to the conference room first and pour all the sweets on the tables in their pockets and hand bags. After the conference or any other such function they remain behind clearing the tables of all the food leftovers.

They bring their own containers to put the leftovers including drinks. They do this so religiously. In one organisation I once worked, they operated  like a club, well organised and well co-ordinated to the extent that they had been given a name, the FCC (The Food Clearing Committee). Is it worth it losing your dignity by ambushing a plate of mints that cost one rand for 10?

(6) Bad Punctuality
A certain friend of mine said he changed departments in his workplace and there he was given a new secretary. He tells me that work begins at 8am but his secretary has never arrived at work before 8.15am. Now this is bad. Getting to work late can easily become a habit and habits easily turn to cultures. When being late for work becomes a habit this is a sign of poor self-management. Bad punctuality is just a sign of many other inadequacies an employee has. If you are a manager, a supervisor or head of department (HOD) and you are always late for work, how do you discipline your subordinates? If as a head of department you can’t manage yourself how do you manage other people? Personally, if I notice an HOD who is always late for work I normally conclude that they are generally a poor leader who lacks self-discipline.

(7) Truancy at work
Just as much as students bunk lessons some adults bunk work. Some employees are specialists in sneaking out of the workplace and disappearing into thin air? They are busy with their own businesses elsewhere. These normally don’t come on time, they are late but still as if they don’t have a conscience and around 10/11am, they will disappear and be seen after lunch. Even after lunch they might not knock off at the right time. They are the last to arrive at the workplace and the first to leave. If by some chance they are in the office until knock off time, they are closing their windows and packing their bags 10 minutes before time. This is bad.

(8) Drinking at the workplace
Drinking at work is one of the worst work place bad habits. Some 10 or so years ago I was a teacher at a prominent high school in Bulawayo. I discovered that there was a lot of on-the–job boozing. First there was this Woodwork teacher and a Science teacher who kept their alcohol in their store rooms since they had the liberty of being located slightly out of site from the centre of the school. They would be sipping as they teach and by the time we went for break, they will be singing in the staffroom.

There was also this group of Science teachers, very young men, who would have coke while the rest of us were having tea at break. I later discovered that it wasn’t coke; it was coke and something else. They also would be singing by lunch time. The worst thing about these two scenarios is that pupils had come to know about it. I always found teachers of technical subjects an interesting lot, very innovative as their courses demanded. Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways, and can affect the way the brain looks and works. These disruptions can change mood and behaviour, and make it harder to think clearly and move with co-ordination. With this effect alcohol does on the body I will not over emphasise the need to avoid drinking at the workplace at all costs.

To be continued in the next issue