𤯠INCRĂVEL: âMade Me Throw Upâ: 45 Gross And Unhygienic Coworker Stories That Prove Some People Should Never Share A Workspace đ˛
I had been interning at a well-known company for a few months, working hard to make a good impression. Everything was going smoothlyâuntil now.
A coworker has been taking off shoes at work, and the smell is disgusting, it makes me want to throw up. At first, I tried my best to ignore it or mask the smell with perfume, but as the days passed, the strong foot odor became impossible to ignore. Since we shared the same workstation, I could tell others were uncomfortable tooâbut no one said anything. I tried dropping subtle hints. âWow, the AC is strong today! Perfect weather for some warm shoes,â I joked. But she didnât take the hint. I suffered for days then finally decided enough was enough. During a quiet moment, I said to her, âHey, would you mind keeping your shoes on while working? I know heels can be uncomfortable, but thatâs why I wear flats in the office.â She looked at me, confused, âWhy does it matter?â Trying to keep things light, I said, âIt just makes me uncomfortable to see bare feet at work.â She rolled her eyes and told me not to look. I hesitated before adding, âItâs not just that… thereâs a bit of an odor. It might help if you kept your shoes on.â
Thatâs when things took a turn for the worse. When I politely asked her to keep them on, she became defensive, insisting that she would know if her feet smelled. She accused me of harassing her and threatened to involve HR.
The next day, I walked into work thinking the issue had blown overâbut I was wrong. She went straight to our supervisor and reported me. Before I knew it, I was being called out in front of the entire office. My supervisor reprimanded me for being disrespectful and implied that I had overstepped. I felt completely humiliated. I let it go, but a week later I was horrified to see an email from HRâsomeone posted this message on our social media anonymously â âBan barefoot behavior in the office, it stinks.â
I was scared I would be held responsible for it, and as it turns out, I was right. My colleague, convinced that I was behind it, angrily confronted me, asking me why I was trying to humiliate her. I swore I had nothing to do with it, but she didnât believe me. Whoever made the comment deleted it later, but it seemed like everyone was convinced it was me. Just when I thought things couldnât get worse, I was called into a final meeting with HR. They told me they had received some âanonymousâ complaints about my behavior and that I had created a hostile work environment by âmaking unprofessional remarks and harassing female co-workersâ.
So, as an intern, they had decided to end my contract early. They refused to listen to me. I was firedâfor simply asking someone to wear shoes.
Had a co-worker that smelled so bad you could tell he was within 20 feet of you. At some point, a manager had to pull him into a conference room and talk to him about showering and deodorant. The thing is, he was good at his job and a nice guy so everyone felt bad about avoiding him.
Thereâs no need to silently stew over a clueless coworker or assume the only option is to fly the coop. Experts suggest these office annoyances can often be addressed early, before they snowball into bigger issues.
âCandor makes everyone feel better,â Dave Ulrich, professor of business at the Ross School of Business, tells Bored Panda.
âDecades ago, there was an employee who came from a culture and background where bathing was less common and her body odor was strong after some time. Her peers said something to her supervisor who simply explained to her the norms in the current culture. She was embarrassed no one had said something sooner, changed habits, and moved on,â he recalls.
Not me, but a friend worked in the R&D department of a tech company. A few of the guys there could clear the house. When leaving soap and deodorant at their desks regularly did not give them the hint, HR had to get involved and sometimes that didn’t even work.
He said it was pretty awful. Thankfully, he was in a lab, alone, most of the day so he dealt with it only on a limited basis.
Iâve been at my job 1 month now. I love it. Everyone is really nice and I generally enjoy the work I do. We donât have private cubicle areas, us admin share a desk area. Itâs too small for my comfort (weâre all about 1 foot away from each other) and what makes it unbearable is who I sit next to. I call her sick [jerk]. She never covers her mouth when coughing and sneezing (which got nearly the whole office sick last week). Sheâs pretty much Shrek. She stinks, and insists on removing her shoes every day. Sheâs gassy and almost never gets up to go to the restroom in our 8 hour day. And the latest disgusting trait she has displayed is picking her nose and either flicking the booger or wiping it on the inside of her jacket. I have been experiencing crippling anxiety due to worrying if Iâm going to get a booger shot on me or inhale any of her scents at any moment. I donât want to be mean and say something, I also donât want to make waves and complain to my boss. But this is seriously a problem. I have no idea how to deal with her.
One of my coworkers was a muti-pack a day smoker, was grotesquely obese, did not bathe, did not wash his clothes, and I’m fairly sure he has not washed his shoes since the Berlin Wall was a thing.
I’ve smelled some pretty horrible things in my life, but I have never thrown up from sheer smell alone. He, however, has made me throw up. Multiple times. When he finally left, we had to replace the chair he used.
There was a brief period of time when we were all religiously washing our hands, constantly disinfecting everything, and being mindful of coughing or sneezing in public⌠because our lives literally depended on it. Offices had signs up about basic cleanliness, and hand sanitizers could be found in every corner.
Youâd think after the pandemic people would still be a bit more on their toes about hygiene at work, especially when most people are back in the office full-time.
But sadly, most of these habits have all but faded away â at least for some people.
âI do think thereâs a school of thought that the pandemic made everyone less well socialized and just more self-focused and inconsiderate, and one big way that trait plays out is in an office kitchen,â Alison Green, who runs the âAsk a Managerâ workplace advice column, tells CNBC.
She believes many people who got used to working from home may have simply lost the habit of keeping things tidy in shared office spaces.
A 50 year old guy at my work eats his earwax, bogies, and scabs… He picks with his long dirty nails and then scrapes it on his front teeth. đ¤Ž
If he’s right beside you he will look at you and if he thinks you can’t see him out the corner of your eye he will do it there and then.
Itâs not just the occasional messy coworker, either. Research shows that one of the biggest workplace icks is people not washing their hands after using the bathroom.
A survey found that only 61% of office workers actually wash their hands properly with soap and water. At least 7% admitted to not washing their hands at all and 18% to washing their hands quickly.
Around 26% of employees said they eat at their desk multiple times a week, but very few properly clean up afterward. Most just do a quick wrapper toss and call it a day, which is how crumbs and germs become a shared office experience.
I have a colleague who CLIPS HER NAILS at her desk next to mine. I’ll be working and then hear the loud snip snip echoing throughout the lobby. And to top it off, she doesn’t gather them and throw the clippings away- they just fly around and end up on the floor. I never realized how jarring that activity is when it’s performed in an environment that I never associated with it.
At my last job i was in the women’s restroom and this coworker was in the stall next to me and said outloud “I hate periods!!” Then she didn’t wash her hands. Like, you basically JUST announced to me that you were changing your tampon and then didn’t wash your hands!?? She was always trying to share her candy with me too. Nooo thank you. I know where those hands have been and it wasn’t a sink, that’s for sure.
I was a grocery manager and had an employee that sounds much like many of your stories. The BO was unbearable. He wore the same clothes every day and rarely washed them. He never brushed his teeth so not only were his teeth rotting and brown, but his breath was insanely bad. After a few years of this another grocery manager and I finally had enough. We sent him home and told him he needed to start showering and washing his clothes. But within a few weeks it was back to the way it was. So…we sent him home again. Like with the first time, it lasted a couple weeks and started getting bad again. This dude was in his mid 20’s and didn’t even noticed he had [soiled] his pants. Sent him home for a 3rd time. I guess having your co-workers see something like that embarrassed him enough that from that point on he actually started taking care of himself.
Hot desking in offices, where employees donât have a fixed desk and instead sit wherever thereâs space each day, is also becoming quite common in workplaces.
It means more shared surfaces and less control over how clean or personal a workspace feels day to day.
So if we go by the numbers showing that not everyone washes their hands properly before eating, it means germs picked up from common touchpoints around the office, like door handles or keyboards, can easily end up where food is involved.
Eating at the same desk where you work only adds to it.
A study found that hot desking increased exposure to illness-causing germs by 18%.
These stories are not only a matter of bad etiquette or office pet peeves. They have real-life consequences on a personâs physical and mental health.
Viruses and bacteria can survive for weeks or even months on surfaces like telephones and doorknobs, and spread to other workers via direct or indirect contact.
Research shows that office desks harbor more than 10 million bacteria which is 400 times more germs found on a standard toilet seat.
In a study, 4,800 surfaces across office buildings were swabbed and flagged as âofficially dirty.â Especially high bacterial counts were found on common touch points like tap handles in bathrooms, microwave doors in shared kitchens, computer keyboards, and refrigerator handles.
One of my coworkers has a stench so bad that it lingers all throughout the store no matter where you go. It’s like dirty bath water, baby powder, rotten eggs, and ass. she also has a rotten personality. I just canât understand how people are okay with smelling so bad.
I had this coworker who was absolutely unbearable. This man would shower once or twice a week, his smell would linger for a solid minute whenever he walked past. We were supplied aprons but were expected to wash them, but he never did⌠not once. Working in a meat department you get tons of raw meat accumulated on it throughout the day, so if you didnât wash it at least once a week it would start to smell. Not only did he never wash it, but HE WOULD LEAVE IT IN HIS CAR TO BAKE because âI donât wanna forget it at home so I just leave it in there.â I ended up getting him fired for the sole reason I didnât wanna smell him anymore.
My old coworker Allison, not only was she disgusting but during the winter she would pop her shoes off and stick her feet right in the space heater under her desk. Had the whole damn office smelling like hot feet and if you called her out sheâd yell and cry about it.
Research shows just how common exposure to workplace-related germs and infections is. A UK-based study covering offices, factories, warehouses, and retail spaces found that 69% of British workers â 21 million â claim their workplace is a health hazard.
Around 35% of workers said they have picked up an illness from their place of work. And 18% claimed to have been struck down with food poisoning or caught a stomach bug because of dirty workplaces.
One person in my department never washed her hands after using the restroom. Every time we had a potluck, she would go through and touch everything. She didn’t eat it, just touched it. She was the boss’s wife. The only one who had the nerve to call her out on it was the boss’s mistress.
I worked in a deli/prepared foods department of a grocery store.
Coworker “L” rarely bathed… And absolutely never laundered her uniform.
Her husband “D” never, ever bathed, had a fingernail fungus issue…
And they both smoked like chimneys.
He didn’t work there, but I see them around town over a decade after, and they still stink. I go out of my way to avoid any and all contact with them in stores.
Anyway, her uniform… When you work with food, the fryers, the deli, the general grease in the air… Permeates everything. My shirt, even laundered frequently, smelled like… meat nitrates and fryer grease.
Hers was years of that and BO.
I cannot believe the health department didn’t fail us because of her.
And no, I don’t shop there anymore and haven’t in a decade.
Workplace conditions are also linked to how people feel, how productive they are, and how much they are able to focus.
Research shows a cluttered or unclean workspace is linked to higher stress levels, and overall reduced job satisfaction. And when the environment feels messy, employees often see it as a sign that the organization doesnât care about their wellbeing. This can lead to lack of motivation and teamwork.
Back when I worked at the golden arches we had a absolutely lovely guy who had terrible body odour. That bad, that when I would swap roles with him and work on the window taking payments (window open, middle of winter, very cold) , I would kindly refuse to wear the designated jacket after him.
When I was hired, my boss said “watch out for Jess. She has no sense of smell”. Jess loves the smell of coffee, but she showers maybe once a week. You can tell when she’s in the office, and you can tell when she’s been in the bathrooms.
One of my ex-coworkers told her that if he was going to work there, he needed her to shower regularly, but that tapered off quickly.
She also doesn’t know how to wash dishes. When she actually does put them into the dish drainer instead of just leaving them in the sink, she just rinses them and puts them face up in the drainer so they still have oily brown water in them from her home-made salad dressing.
Experts usually say itâs better not to confront a coworker directly. Instead, loop in a manager first and frame it around how the issue is affecting work and productivity â rather than just sounding like a complaint.
They also suggest taking a step back and figuring out whether itâs just a bad habit or if itâs something more serious, like a health issue or disability. For example, someone whoâs constantly coughing might actually be dealing with a medical condition.
A bit of empathy goes a long way. There could be many reasons like stress, health issues, or just not realizing it. A gentle approach keeps things respectful while still solving the issue quietly and quickly.
However, if thereâs no underlying issue, it comes down to reminding the person of basic workplace hygiene expectations and the companyâs code of conduct.
On a personal level, the simplest move is to stay on top of basic hygiene yourself by using hand sanitizer and regularly washing hands.
I (19F) have been working at a retail store for about a year. Throughout this year, I have had to interact with one coworker due to our schedules lining up. I donât usually mind since it is just work but over the last few months I have gotten really uncomfortable with my coworker due to his hygiene.
This was not an issue that appeared out of nowhere but has been a known issue by all my other coworkers that this man does not clean up after himself. At first I didnât judge because I didnât know his home life so I would ignore it and chew gum under my mask when near him. However the issue began when he farted in front of my face. I leaned down to pick up a pencil months ago and he farts right in front of me. Obviously I was grossed out and he apologizes, I say itâs alright and move on. I know that sometimes people are gassy so I excused it.
The week after that, he farted in front of me again. This time, my manager was there and said âThank you for letting me be over here when you farted.â My coworker shrugged and went back to work. I got extremely uncomfortable. Not only was my manager acknowledging what happened and how it has happened before, but my coworker had no consequences from it. After that second incident, I tried to spend as much time as I could away from this coworker. However he always wanted to talk and even when I was physically uncomfortable, he would keep talking. This week was my breaking point with my coworker. He farted twice, and once I was right behind him. I asked him why he did that, and he said he does it at home. I do not care that he does it at home, but at work it is a different setting.
The second fart is what got me. I was trying to pitch a sale to a customer and he farted right near the customer. The customer got uncomfortable, denied the sale and left. Not only that, she called the store an hour later to talk to our manager to complain about my coworker. I was overwhelmed that day so I went to our HR and reported that I was not comfortable working with my coworker unless he showered and did not fart in front of me, or customers. Now, my coworker has been giving me the stink eye and I feel terrible for tattling on him like a child, but I no longer felt comfortable.
Getting told you have a hygiene issue can feel awkward and embarrassing, and you may even get a bit defensive at first. Thatâs pretty normal.
Most experts believe that the key is not to panic or shut down, but to actually listen. Often, people donât even realize thereâs a problem until someone gently points it out.
Small changes, like adjusting routines or being a bit more mindful in shared spaces, are usually enough to sort it out and get things back to normal.
I had a boss with an eating disorder. She was such a horrible person that I never felt bad for her, just seriously grossed out. She would chew food and then spit it out in a napkin in front of everyone. Sometimes she would binge and eat a whole large pizza and then go home and puke it up for the rest of the day. Her teeth were black. Everything about her was gross.
At the end of the day, itâs important to remember that youâre not at home, and what you do and donât do at work does in fact impact your colleagues and their image of you.
Your single habit, which you think is seemingly harmless, might be being discussed at this very moment in water cooler gossip sessions, in group chats, and even on public online forums.
So make sure to wash your hands and keep your shoes on in a shared work space.
I have a co-worker who didn’t shower for a month in the height of summer…The smell.
Stinky Jay. Worked at Starbucks and during holiday season he would drink three venti cold cups of straight eggnog. Then fart the most sulfury silent but deadly farts i have ever smelled that trailed after him for minutes. All my coworkers were pretty chill, everyone farts right? We all kind of had a fart intervention with him and very politely told him we knew it was him and if he had to fart to drop it somewhere else. He got super defensive and said it wasn’t him that it was someone else. But dude, your drinking 72 ounces of egg fat a day! I cannot drink nog anymore without thinking of Stinky Jays SBDs.
I had a male coworker at the desk next to mine who just constantly farted. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was constant. We’re talking maybe one long blast every five minutes or so. I’m not sure if he thought I couldn’t hear them. The chair muffled the noise, but not enough. The gross noises were bad enough, but these had this rank musty odor that customers never seem to recognize as emanating from a human being. Customers who commented about the smell of the branch had descriptions ranging through: “It smells like my grandmother’s sofa in here.” “Did someone leave a used bath towel out?” “Do you have old pennies around here or something?” It was bad enough that our branch manager confronted him about it one day, and he insisted he had no idea what she was talking about. One time he audited the vault, and hours later I took a customer in to open his safe deposit box. We almost threw up. He thought it was a deceased rat.
Had a manager that would lick his finger anytime he was dealing with paperwork. So gross to touch paper with your saliva.
Have had more than one person casually tell me they only brush their teeth like once or twice a week as if that’s normal and not gross.
I used to have a coworker who would air out his sweaty yoga towel on the back of his office chair (it was a company that encouraged physical activity and we had an open office concept).
LONG FING nails on men. I have a coworker who never cut his nails….its disgusting. Long nails and dirt under….when he gives me something I do everything in my power not to touch him.
A coworker told me she shares a toothbrush with her boyfriend because âthe other one is going to get lost in the apartment anywaysâ what are you doing? Why are you losing toothbrushes and how?! Also she once dropped something on the floor at work and then picked it up and ate it. And told me âthe floors are probably cleaner than in my apartment.â
One of my coworkers leaves a heavy sweet and flowery trail behind her. You can tell if she has had coffee in the morning several minutes after she has left the break room.
With my stunted sense of smell, I think I could follow her with a blindfold at a distance of 30ft.
She had BO. a couple of years ago due to some medicine, but is now overcompensating by bathing in perfumes and deodorants. Sharing an office with her can be headache inducing, and no talking to her can make her change her mind.
Coworker is MORBIDLY obese. As such, I think it’s hard for her to physically maintain good hygiene. During the summer her body odor is TERRIBLE, hair is always greasy, leaves behind sticky smears at the stations she works at but the WORST part is her feet. She wears flipflops all year long as she admittedly struggles with putting on most other shoes due to her size. Her feet have absolute LAYERS of skin and warts!! I cannot be the only one who finds this unprofessional and straight up gross?? Management are being WUSSES about addressing it. God forgive me but sharing space and air with this person can be straight up GROSS.
Or how about someone in the same clothes for 3 days so far 12 hour shifts rancid smell in the office I have to relieve for breaks.
Iâve got 2 younger guys on my shift that donât shower hardly ever. They stink on the 1st day of the week when they get there and smell really bad by the end of the week. They usually rock the same clothes all week too.
I contacted HR about a woman that constantly smelled like a sanitary bin, and would only eat tuna drowned in vinegar at her desk every day. I didn’t know her very well and she wasn’t in my team, had no idea who her manager was but she was sat next to me. HR must’ve spoken to her manager as she soon started eating in the kitchen and wearing perfume.
No idea how they handled the situation though.
We had a very obese fork truck driver. He only wore sweat pants. Dude stunk up his trucks seat to where it smelled like feces and sweat. Nobody uses that fork truck anymore.
I shared a cubicle with a woman who ate a full-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos every single day for the two years I worked there. It doesn’t sound that gross, but it was. To smell that artificial cheese every morning starting at 10am was a special kind of torture. I once asked her if she liked any other flavours or any other chips, but she just shook her head and continued feeding herself those cheesy triangles. Every day between 10 and noon. I can’t ever eat one again. Just the sight of that blue bag and that crinkle sound is enough to make me sick.
I have a coworker who has a less than pleasant smell. It’s really a smell like one of those habanero jelly beans tastes. We work in a blue collar job, so hygiene is a must when it comes to this, especially as it begins to warm up.
“Stinky Tony”. Just this disgusting, greasy stupid jerk. He would never shower because he said soap irritates his skin. He also subsisted almost entirely on tuna salad and I swear there was probably half a can of tuna stuck in his gross fucking beard all the time. He was taken to HR no less 3 times because people couldn’t stand his overwhelming stench of BO and rotting tuna. To top it off, he was weird too. I probably only talked to him twice and he told me the same story about how he caught a possum with his bare hands when he was a kid and his mom wouldn’t cook “that greasy rat” and he was apparently pretty disappointed.
Worked next to a guy who contributed the following to the office: Ate the worst smelling kimchi with every meal, rarely showered, farted constantly. I couldn’t tolerate that shit and ended up quitting shortly after starting.
I worked at one of the big box hardware stores for way too long and there was a fairly old dude (I think in his 80s) who looke more like a bum than a working class citizen. His skin was incredibly dry, with his hands being the worst. They were always very dirty, rough, cracked, peeling etc. he was one of our main lot associates who would also collect soda cans from all the trash cans so he could take them to the recycling center in his own time. He never wore gloves when digging through the trash. But it this that really bothered everyone. If ANY pretty lady of any age, but probably the younger the better, would come in he would find a reason to get VERY close to them and shake their hand and stand there holding it. It made everyone cringe.
Thereâs this one new guy who smells like gross armpits. I can smell him from across the room!! & whatâs worse is that Iâm pregnant so the smells are making me literally sick.
Iâve been working in this office for the last year and I half and I canât stand it anymore. One of my coworkers has some kind of pathological cough illness that sounds all over the office and everyone thinks itâs disgusting (she even sometimes makes gag noises) but our managers donât take action because sheâs been here for 10 years and donât want to get into trouble. She just burped in my face, has lunch on her desk chewing out loud and leaves the smell of her food all over the place. Not to mention that she usually tells scatological jokes about her Crohn disease.
She also tends to cry when something goes wrong and is always arguing with our other coworker (who is insufferable as well).
The only action the company has taken has been moving temporarily our department to another office to free our other coworkers from her, but we are still 4 people in this office that have to stand her and we canât do it anymore.
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