25 Coworkers So Gross They Made The Whole Office Gag
Every office has that one smell you can’t explain until you unfortunately can. It’s never the trash. It’s always a person. I once worked somewhere where you could tell exactly who was in the break room before you even turned the corner. Not because they were loud. You start timing your breaks differently.
You learn which microwave to avoid and at what hours. You develop a sixth sense for when someone is about to open a container that has absolutely no business being in a shared space. One perk of working from home is if something smells, it’s your fault. Not some guy reheating fish at 9am.
These stories prove some coworkers are just built different. Don’t read this while eating.
What is your “smelly coworker” story? — officerkondo
1.
“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.”
2.
“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.
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.”
3.
“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.”
4.
“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 flip flops 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.”
5.
“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.”
6.
“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.”
7.
“I had been interning at a well-known company for a few months, working hard to make a good impression. Everything was going smoothly—until 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 too—but no one said anything. I tried dropping subtle hints. “Wow, the AC is strong today! Perfect weather for some warm shoes,” I joked. But she didn’t take the hint. I suffered for days then finally decided enough was enough. During a quiet moment, I said to her, “Hey, would you mind keeping your shoes on while working? I know heels can be uncomfortable, but that’s why I wear flats in the office.” She looked at me, confused, “Why does it matter?” Trying to keep things light, I said, “It just makes me uncomfortable to see bare feet at work.” She rolled her eyes and told me not to look. I hesitated before adding, “It’s not just that… there’s a bit of an odor. It might help if you kept your shoes on.”
That’s 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 over—but 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 HR—someone posted this message on our social media anonymously — “Ban barefoot behavior in the office, it stinks.”
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 didn’t believe me. Whoever made the comment deleted it later, but it seemed like everyone was convinced it was me. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I was called into a final meeting with HR. They told me they had received some “anonymous” complaints about my behavior and that I had created a hostile work environment by “making unprofessional remarks and harassing female co-workers”.
So, as an intern, they had decided to end my contract early. They refused to listen to me. I was fired—for simply asking someone to wear shoes.”
8.
“I have a co-worker who didn’t shower for a month in the height of summer…The smell.”
9.
“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.”
10.
“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.”
11.
“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 [bum]. She also has a rotten personality. I just can’t understand how people are okay with smelling so bad.”
12.
“At my last job i was in the women’s restroom and this coworker was in the stall next to me and said out loud ‘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.”
13.
“I’ve been at my job 1 month now. I love it. Everyone is really nice and I generally enjoy the work I do. We don’t have private cubicle areas, us admin share a desk area.
It’s too small for my comfort (we’re all about 1 foot away from each other) and what makes it unbearable is who I sit next to. I call her sick. She never covers her mouth when coughing and sneezing (which got nearly the whole office sick last week). She’s pretty much Shrek.
She stinks, and insists on removing her shoes every day. She’s 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 I’m going to get a booger shot on me or inhale any of her scents at any moment.
I don’t want to be mean and say something, I also don’t want to make waves and complain to my boss. But this is seriously a problem. I have no idea how to deal with her.”
14.
“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.”
15.
“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.”
16.
“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 didn’t 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 “I don’t wanna forget it at home so I just leave it in there.” I ended up getting him fired for the sole reason I didn’t wanna smell him anymore.”
17.
“I once worked with a DOCTOR who took his contacts out, put them in his mouth to clean them off, and put them back in.”
18.
“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.”
19.
“I have several co-workers that do not wash their hands. I have walked by the men’s restroom many times and heard toilets flush and then co workers walks out. I refuse to eat any of the time we’ve had self serve lunches or potluck.”
20.
“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.”
21.
“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.”
22.
“I had a coworker who would clean out her ears just right in front of us while discussing work, or waiting for our lunch, etc. like she just whips out a tissue then start jamming it into her ears and start a whole spin cycle. It was SO WEIRD.”
23.
“Cutting your fingernails at work.”
24.
“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 office smelling like hot feet and if you called her out she’d yell and cry about it.”
25.
“There’s a guy in my office. He uses the urinal, splashes water on his hands, and then walks out of the bathroom leaving the door handle wet…”