Noisy eaters, loud sniffers and colleagues with lax standards of personal hygiene may be part and parcel of office life, but the days of putting up and shutting up are long gone, says a leading employment lawyer.

Managements who dismiss genuine complaints over antisocial or irritating behaviour as “trivial” could be putting themselves in the firing line if the persistent sweet-sucking, intimate scratching or drifting BO prevents other staff from carrying out their duties, says Simon Whysall, senior associate at the law firm Denton Wilde Sapte.

“All complaints about colleagues and workmates must be treated seriously, as with all potential grievances, and this is particularly true if they concern a particular person in an office,” says Whysall.

“While there are always some staff who cannot eat without loudly sucking their fingers, or persist in picking their noses in front of colleagues, the majority of them will desist if they are gently taken aside by a line manager and informed that there have been complaints. Those that don’t, or who persist in being irritating precisely because they enjoy the effect, may need to be disciplined under a Dignity At Work policy or may even trigger internal anti-bullying procedures if they continue to harm staff morale,” he adds.

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Occupational psychologist Lynda Greene believes that the fashion for open-plan offices has exacerbated tensions, but that we must be careful not to overreact.

“With PCs instead of typewriters and many people working with the aid of headphones, the average modern office is very quiet,” says Green.

“If you add to that the ever- increasing burden of e-mails and text messages that require concentration, you have an atmosphere in which even a pin dropping can sound loud.

“But one person’s annoying habit is someone else’s ‘haven’t noticed’ and I would advise against telling tales about a serial sniffer if you yourself have a persistently loud laugh.”

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