Toxic work colleagues: every office has them. They’re the managers who don’t know how to manage and the slackers that are happy to watch you do their work.
But as this latest research from Brother.co.uk shows, the toxic coworkers you have to deal with might not be as bad as you think.
Brother.co.uk used an AI-powered sentiment software called HuggingFace to analyse over 1million tweets mentioning coworkers. Then it grouped the data by location to see which UK and US cities have the most toxic coworkers.
See how your town or city compares in the maps below.
You’ll also find a guide on dealing with these super-annoying people.
UK cities with the worst coworkers
Southend-On-Sea is the UK city that has the worst people to work with, according to Twitter sentiment. Nearly 1 in 3 (30.27%) Southenders use Twitter to vent about work colleagues.
Workers in Telford are (almost) as unhappy with the people they’re forced to spend 40+ hours a week with; 30.06% of their related tweets had only negative things to say about coworkers.
More worker disharmony in the UK
There’s some serious workplace disharmony north of the border. The three UK counties with the highest proportion of angry coworker tweets are all in Scotland; they are South Ayrshire (32.89%), Inverclyde (32.83%) and West Dunbartonshire (32.7%).
The USA: A workplace divided
Things are even worse across the Atlantic.
Around half (41.4%) of workers in Mesa, Arizona, use Twitter to express their frustration about the people they see in the office five days a week.
Roughly the same number of people in Detroit, Michigan, hate their coworkers. Motor City has a negative coworker tweet ratio of 40.58%. That means almost half of the workforce can’t stand the other half. Those must be some tense Christmas work parties.
A nation divided
From east to west, from north to south, US workers are having a hard time getting along.
Nearly every US state had a negative tweet ratio of at least 30%. Alaska scored highest of all (43.21%.)
Texas is the exception. Just 19.6% of tweets in the Lone Star State complain about working with other people. Cooperation and loving (or at least respecting) your neighbour are central to the Texan way of life; it says so in the state motto. Texas changed it to ‘Friendship’ back in 1930.
The worst types of coworkers…and how to deal with them
1 in 3 people have thought about leaving a job because of bad coworkers. Not good. But these toxic colleagues are actually not hard to deal with. You just need to understand how they operate.
Workplace bullies thrive off fear. Making a stand is the only way to get them off your back. But you don’t have to go full psycho in the breakout area. A firm conversation or visit to HR is the best (and safest) option. Follow work rules, not prison rules.
Workplace gossips are really easy to nullify. Just don’t tell them anything. A gossip without information is like a fire without oxygen.
Grown-ups don’t tweet about work problems; they deal with them.
You can find a breakdown of managing every type of difficult coworker in the infographic below.
