Whether it’s listening to Christmas songs in July, pinching your packed lunch from the communal fridge (“MY SANDWICH!”) or rambling on about their love life as if they’re doing a VT on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, there’s a smorgasbord of things coworkers can do to rub you up the wrong way. Now, a US survey has revealed the one thing that annoys people in the office more than anything - and you’ve definitely done it.
After interviewing 2,000 working Americans, a team of researchers at Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois found that loudness and complaining were the two things colleagues find most annoying.
So, if you endured a terribly disappointing tuna sandwich at lunch - let’s say the mayo-to-fish ratio was poor - it’s probably best to keep it to yourself.
After loudness and complaining (or just complaining loudly, depending on how you look at it), the most vexatious thing a colleague could do was gossip and bullying (32 per cent), followed by weird eating habits (12 per cent) and email or meeting habits (6 per cent).
For that last one, think avant-garde out of offices (“If you need something while I’m finding myself in an ashram in India, leave me a spiritual voice note”) or subtle twists on intellectual property theft, also known as “hepeating”.
Additional data from the survey revealed that real estate workers have faced the most complaints about colleagues.
Meanwhile, respondents working in communications and journalism are subject to the most gossip.
They also found that 78 per cent of participants had confronted coworkers about their irritating behaviour.
However, just 30 per cent said that this resolved matters.
It also seems that men might be more annoying than women in the workplace, as 65 per cent of those who admitted to being confronted about their annoying behaviour in the office were male.
However, the prevailing statistic was that out of those surveyed, 100 per cent (yes, that means all of them) admitted to being irritated by colleagues at one point or another.
So, if you’ve honestly never felt annoyed by someone in the office, it’s probably because you’re too busy annoying them all yourself.
Original article by Olivia Petter appears on The Independent.
Photo courtesy of Burst
