Stealing colleagues’ food worst breach of office etiquette for IT managers

Eating a colleague's food from the fridge or from their desk is the worst breach of office etiquette, according to IT managers.

TheLadders.co.uk online recruitment agency questioned 250 IT managers about office etiquette, and 96% said stealing food was the worst offence imaginable.

The next bugbear was bad hygiene, with smelly breath and dirty clothes cited by 95%. Just behind this was bad habits such as flossing your teeth with a paperclip (89%) and picking your nose.

Other annoyances that scored highly were not offering to share office chores (83%), wastefulness (82%) and loud talking (80%).

Eating smelly food in the office (78%), bad language (75%) and drinking at lunchtime (64%) were deemed slightly less offensive.

74% of IT managers polled said that they had worked alongside a person who offended colleagues with a complete lack of respect.

But only 12% had actually fired anyone for a lack of consideration for other staff.