Edel Coffey: Other people's bad office habits can be hard to tolerate

Author Edel Coffey pictured at home in Galway. Photo: Ray Ryan

Hell is other people. So said Jean-Paul Sartre and it seems like he’s not the only one who thought this way. 

While Sartre might not have been talking about the very specific torture of working with irritating colleagues, the phrase came to mind in light of a survey conducted by British job search company, Indeed. 

They found that one-fifth of workers are choosing to work from home in order to avoid irritating co-workers. 

The long-tail effects of the pandemic are still being felt in many areas of our lives it seems and our weakened tolerance for annoying colleagues is just one.

As someone who works alone most of the time, I tend to romanticise office life into a version of Mad Men. 

Chats by the water cooler, gossip in the canteen, trysts in the photocopying room, whiskey on the rocks before conferences. But just as mothers forget the pain of childbirth, I think I have forgotten what it’s really like to share breathing space with people who are not my family.

I worked in offices for a good 15 years, and I do realise it’s not all roses. The way someone’s nose whistles as they breathe. The sound of two fingers pounding loudly on a keyboard. How someone puts on their make-up and paints their nails whilst sitting at their desk...

Other people’s habits can be difficult to tolerate. 

Every office has someone who puts a salmon and broccoli bake in the microwave. 

I remember a colleague who waited until he arrived at his desk every morning to liberally spray Lynx under his armpits, which left a plume of the love-it-or-hate-it scent hanging over our desks for the morning. 

Then there was the chatterbox who stood by your desk talking at you, oblivious of the fact that you were desperately trying to meet a deadline.

When I look back at my experience of offices with a cold eye, I have to admit it was less Mad Men and more The Office, a litany of low-simmering resentments, passive-aggressive swipes and occasional outbursts. 

There was even a standout moment where an ex-colleague smashed their mobile phone by throwing it against a wall. (These were the heady days before the economic crash, when everyone was still high on the helicopter fumes of the Celtic tiger and behaved as if they were playing the lead role in the movie of their own lives.) I think my main bugbear about sharing office space with scores of people was the varying standards of hygiene.

One ex-colleague’s desk was certainly a health hazard, piled high with newspapers upon paper plates with bits of food still left on them, covered over again with more documents and newspapers like an E-Coli millefeuille.

Half-drunk cups of coffee furred over with mould and the computer keyboard was covered with shed skin cells. It was like the office desk version of one of those extreme decluttering programmes. 

I personally saw that desk as a failure of management to step in as much as a failure of hygiene on the colleague’s part. 

For the most part, however, people’s foibles and tics never outweighed the enjoyment of being in work with a group of people, the fun of social engagement and the sense of shared purpose that came with working on putting a newspaper or radio programme together.

Having spent the last few years working from the comfort and isolation of our own homes, being around people, in all sorts of ways is still something we are readjusting to, and sharing space with other people is a challenge we must re-adapt to. 

I try to teach my kids tolerance at all times, to be tolerant of each other, of themselves, of imperfections and mistakes, of getting things wrong and of difference in others. 

I want them to understand others have as much right to be in the world as they do and we must all accommodate and tolerate each other.

This came to mind as I read that Indeed survey. How to tolerate and accommodate others is just part of life, of the human experience, of being members of society. 

Learning how to cope with the irritations of other human beings is just part of being in the world. 

If we want to be part of a community, a workplace and enjoy all of the benefits that go with those things, it’s important that we know how to share space with others. 

Avoiding irritating people feels like a false economy to me. In the same way that avoiding coughs and colds completely might actually make our immune systems weaker, avoiding irritating people completely might also reduce our tolerance.

One thing we learned in the pandemic was there is no substitute for in-person contact. 

Hell might be other people, but other people is also where we find connection, purpose, support, friendship, love and meaning in our lives and I think that’s worth braving a few minor irritations for.