Business Opportunities Weblog

May 22, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Inc.:

Frequent interruptions, cell-phone use, and a lack of bathroom breaks are among the many complaints employees have.

Whether it’s a cell phone ringing or your co-workers whispering next to you, there’s no shortage of annoying meeting behavior. And now there’s evidence to back it up.

Disorganization tops the list as the biggest frustration for meeting attendees, according to a new “Ouch Point” study by Opinion Research USA that measured the tolerance thresholds of U.S. workers at business meetings.

Surprisingly, respondents considered BlackBerry use less intrusive than people falling asleep during a meeting — 9 percent of respondents were bothered by co-workers nodding off, compared to just 5 percent who said they get frustrated by others checking e-mail. Respondents also cited cell-phone interruptions (16 percent) and meetings without refreshments (6 percent) as more annoying than the much-maligned BlackBerry.

Among the other “ouch points” ranked by respondents were: meetings without bathroom breaks (8 percent) and people leaving the meeting early or arriving late (5 percent). Only 4 percent of respondents said they were most frustrated by meetings that start late and those that end without distributing a written recap.

Photo by MSDesigns.

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Tags: Employees, Productivity