The behaviour that annoys colleagues more than any other

And the reasons to try to remain calm.

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Surveys of office behaviour are not scientific. In a global poll conducted in 2024 by Kickresume, a firm that helps create CVs, 85 per cent of people said they had experienced an annoying co-worker. That means the remaining 15 per cent are either sole traders or liars. But surveys can still reveal truths about what gets people riled up.

The Kickresume survey put credit-stealing top of the list of irritating colleague behaviour, as did a survey of British workers in 2022 by Perspectus Global, a research firm. Another recent poll, this time of American workers and conducted by BambooHR, crowned taking credit for employees' ideas as the worst managerial trait of all.

You get the picture. Grabbing kudos for someone else's idea makes lots of people angry. In fact, it is seen as unacceptable from a very early age: research has shown that children as young as five disapprove of plagiarism.

Done intentionally and repeatedly, credit-grabbing is not just annoying but bad for the organisation: ideas are hoarded, trust erodes and motivation suffers. A recent paper by Siyuan Chen of Beijing Jiaotong University and his co-authors found that credit-claiming by executives at a large Chinese manufacturing firm was associated with worse job performance by employees.