Discussion on:

10 resolutions for reducing annoying behavior in 2012

What annoys you at work? Feel free to add your resolution to the list.

2. I will not monopolize meetings or conference calls - My day always started with two conference calls. By the time the calls were done, a big chunk of my work day was gone. I led one of the conference calls. Had I to do it all over again I would keep the conference call short and sweet. More than half of the time we spent on the phone was wasted with trivialities.

3. I promise not to grumble about the paperwork - If ever there was a legitimate reason to grumble about paperwork it was the daily status updates that we had to provide. Maybe I could have used the time preparing the updates to reflect on my work-day. It provided nothing helpful to my job at hand.

5. I will not push other people's buttons. You know the buttons I am talking about, politics, religion or who is going to win American Idol - whatever issue raises the blood pressure of the intended victim.

6. I will not refuse to help others this year - How is helping others annoying? It isn't. What is annoying is the person you ask to help you and puts you off. There is always urinal-time, but please don't talk to me there. I can only do one thing at a time. And that is definitely out if Junior is of the alternate sex. (I'm really sinking low here - bathroom humor!)

7. I promise not to badmouth Microsoft - Just for the record, I like Vista. It's really annoying though to hear the same person vent the same broken-record complaints while at work.

9. I will not bring the cheap stuff - I admit to eating the sugary donuts and paying the price with a lousy sugar high and sugar crash.

10. I will put off that project again this year - Who knows? Maybe a little reverse psychology will work.

As always, I will be popping in occasionally to answer any questions and add to the discussion when I have something intelligent to say.

You came up with resolutions that were right on target. My particular favorite is #2. I hate meetings as it is, and the last thing I want is a person who has to offer commentary to everything the facilitator says. Usually, the real intent of the commentator is to toot his own horn so that everyone in the meeting can see what a hotshot he is. Let's stick to the agenda, come up with some solutions, and then close so everyone can get back to doing something productive.

thank you so much sir for the list. its timeless!

Some of us old farts wouldn't eat a bran muffin if our life depended on it.

Hell! I ate one of those terrible thing in 1978. I found it in my kitchen cabinet the other day and even mold wouldn't eat it.

Make mine fruitcake!

Happy New Year

I'm good to go on seven out of ten, assuming we transpose #7 and #8:

I promise not to badmouth Linux
I will not extol the virtues of Microsoft

...is quite acceptable. By the way, I commonly see the word "fanboi" used to describe someone who is blindly loyal to Microsoft. Anyone who takes a perfectly good English word and intentionally misspells it just to be "cool" is also quite annoying.

I won't show videos of scary film clips to an unsuspecting audience (tick, tick, tick,...)

Fruitcake is the descendent of what was known as great cake in Shakespeare's time. It also is the traditional wedding cake. It went out of favor and was replaced with the tarted up birthday cake we associate with the bride upon the introduction of the home deep freezer in the mid 1950's. It left the culture about the same time the luxury liner did

Really good fruitcake is really good; even better is Jamaican Black Cake, but you can't serve that for breakfast unless you want the crew to go down for a morning nap. If you have a microwave in the office, you can bake your own muffins in a mug with or without raisins 'n' nuts or whatever you like in your muffin.

Here's a link to a microwave muesli muffin in a mug, which shsuit the techie, geekie gourmet's taste.

http://www.mueslilover.com/2010/11/recipe-apple-or-rhubarb-muffin-in-mug.html