by Jake Betz

Created on: August 09, 2009

Some people act as though making the workplace as unpleasant as possible for their co-workers is their mission on earth. They work overtime to be as annoying as humanly possible. Indeed, if they devoted as much attention to their jobs as they do to bothering others, they'd be running the organization.

Here are the top 10 methods they use to annoy co-workers:

10. Personal phone calls. They chatter on the phone all day long, talking loud enough so people clear across the room know their business. The ring tones they download for their cell phones grates on co-workers' nerves like chalk on a blackboard.

9. Office manicures. They sit at their desk, dig out their nail clippers and cut their finger nails. If they want to take this annoying habit up a notch, they will prolong the procedure with some vigorous nail-filing.

8. They constantly complain. Nothing at work pleases them, it seems, and they never suffer in silence. Every workplace grievance, real or imagined, monumental or slight, merits hours of kvetching and grumbling to anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

7. Personal questions. It doesn't matter whether they have known the co-worker for 25 years or 25 minutes. They believe that sharing an office entitles them to know as much as possible about the co-worker's personal life. They demand to know things you wouldn't tell your mother, and possibly not even your closest friend.

6. All-day concert. They play the radio all day as loud as they can. They claim they can only work with music in the background, and they don't care whether the music is distracting to others. They sometimes take this annoying habit up a notch when they persist in singing along.

5. Temperature control. They take control of the heating system and air conditioning unit. They're invariably cold when everyone else is hot and sweltering when others are shivering. If you adjust the dials to more comfortable settings while they're away from their desk, they turn them back to their desired temperatures when they return.

4. Gossip central. They make it their business to find out what's going on with everybody in the office, and what they don't know, they make up. They rejoice in sowing distrust among co-workers.

3. That special aura. They believe that a little perfume and cologne smells good, a lot of perfume and cologne smells so much better. When they enter a room, sneezing and headaches are bound to follow.

2. Brown-nosing and back-stabbing. They decide the only way to get ahead is to ingratiate themselves with the boss. As extra insurance, they go out of their way to make co-workers look bad.

1. If all else fails, the guaranteed best way of all time to annoy co-workers: They never do any actual work!

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