2,000 UK office workers dished on the most maddening office icks their colleagues bring to the workplace in a new tell-all survey by BizSpace.
With hybrid work shifting back to office life, old irritants are resurfacing, from lingering vapour clouds to food aromas that hit you before lunchtime.
Gone are the days when these quirks could fly under the radar—today, they’re top of mind and stirring office tensions. Here’s a look at the biggest office icks of 2024, highlighting habits many workers feel are ready for the boot.
Top Office Icks of 2024
- Dirty Communal Kitchens (25%): The top offender is the shared kitchen, where colleagues leave crumbs, spills, and dirty dishes as if by magic. It’s transformed into a battleground of unspoken frustration for one in four workers.
- Swearing Up a Storm (22%): With a fifth of respondents calling for a cleaner workplace vernacular, excessive swearing takes second place. Many say it disrupts the professional tone they expect in an office environment.
- Indoor Vaping (20%): Vaping indoors gets the thumbs-down from 20% of respondents, with complaints about the lingering mist and unfamiliar smells disrupting focus and air quality.
- Health-Obsessed Colleagues (18%): Nearly one in five workers can’t stand the wellness warriors who insist on sharing every detail of their breathwork routines and health hacks, turning their personal choices into office-wide affairs.
- Personal Calls on Speaker (15%): It’s clear: employees want private calls kept private. Turning the office into an unwanted amphitheatre for personal conversations annoyed 15% of survey participants.
- Overpowering Desk Lunches (12%): Close quarters mean that “what’s for lunch” can’t be ignored. One in eight workers find strong food smells from desk lunches a top pet peeve, which some say breaks their concentration.
- Chewing Gum Left Under Desks (8%): While this one might seem old school, chewing gum under desks rounds off the list as a surprisingly frequent complaint, with workers finding it both unhygienic and disrespectful.
Office Etiquette in a Changing Workplace
The survey also shows a shift in attitudes across age groups: younger workers (18-34) are far more likely to speak up about these grievances, often raising them with HR or management, compared to their more reticent older colleagues.
In response, BizSpace is encouraging companies to rethink workplace etiquette. They suggest hosting “etiquette refreshers” or workshops to foster a harmonious office environment.
A spokesperson from BizSpace commented:
Returning to the office is a chance to reconsider what makes a space comfortable for everyone. This survey sheds light on the small yet significant behaviours that impact colleagues daily.
With workplaces adapting to new expectations, BizSpace’s survey captures a lighthearted yet telling snapshot of how office dynamics have shifted—and what behaviours might finally be called out in 2024.
Joanne is the editor for Workplace Wellbeing Professional and has a keen interest in promoting the safety and wellbeing of the global workforce. After earning a bachelor's degree in English literature and media studies, she taught English in China and Vietnam for two years. Before joining Work Well Pro, Joanne worked as a marketing coordinator for luxury property, where her responsibilities included blog writing, photography, and video creation.