Side Stepping Potential Disasters In The Workplace

It’s 7:30am in the morning. Your alarm clock rings. Instinctively, you hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. A fatal mistake.You arrive at work late, for the 12th time this month. Your boss complains about your repeated late comings, conveniently “forgetting” the fact that you are always the last to leave the office, because your colleague quit his job recently and you had to pick up the slack, for no extra pay. You bear with it because you think it’s the wisest course of action.You’re WRONG!

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to avoid unfavorable situations in the workplace without looking like a prick.

How to avoid

* Looking lazy: Always claim your work. Put signatures in Word documents you type, programs you code, pictures you drew etc. This is very important. You may risk getting overshadowed by “louder” workers who do less work then you do. A signature tells your boss, “Hey, I did this!”

* Getting more work then you can handle: If you’ve got your hands full, say so. It is unwise to bite more then what you can chew, and you may jeopardize the company’s reputation by doing a shoddy job.

* Chatty colleagues: Most of us do not have the luxury of having their own room in the office. Among the cubicle using staff, an unlucky few sit beside colleagues that can’t seem to stop talking, whether on the phone, over the internet (skype) or worse, to you. An easy way to avoid talking to your colleagues is to listen to music when you’re working, with a headphone. Works great for music lovers. If this doesn’t work, tactfully explain that you don’t work well with interruptions. Place a sign on your desk which tells people when you’re ok for some chitchat.

(Yes, 100% written by me for an internet marketingworkshop I attended in school.)