Why your most annoying colleague is actually good for your health

If you get pissed off as soon as that one unbearable colleague wishes you ‘good morning’ or nods goodbye in the elevator, know this: you should be grateful to him or her.

Because if someone at work gets under your skin, you're really in trouble.

How come? Encountering an annoying person in your work daily life would be good for your brain. According to neuropsychologists, this is because you are somewhat forced to collaborate with that one irritating person. And since it has to happen, you also have to change a bit.

Ha-ha

If you learn to get through the door with that incredibly annoying man or woman, you stimulate your brain to work a little harder. After all: you can't be completely yourself. You adapt. You put on a different front. You laugh at jokes that aren't funny. You ask interested questions about his or her private life while you actually find watching grass grow more interesting. And then it clicks better. Look, that's how you develop yourself, guys; by not seeing the nausea with that person as a problem but by thinking in solutions. This way, you become a lot smarter. Hello, higher IQ.

Moreover, it's good for your performance. Because the more you get really annoyed by that colleague who always takes longer breaks or who always sucks up to the boss, the harder YOU will work. Because you don't want to lose to someone like that. No. Winning in life. It's not about participating. And so you take shorter breaks and suddenly you spontaneously look after the boss's kids and get a soy latte for the entire editorial team. That's just how you are. And you can bet that you won't leave before that one colleague. house Just like the rest packing up their laptops around 5 PM? Ha. Amateurs. Weekends, evenings: bring it on. You love to work overtime, even if it's just to get one over on that busybody.

Only downside: you have no life of your own anymore. But well, luckily you're working better and better with that irritated brain. And for some subtle struggle, you have to give up something, right?

FACTS

• 33 percent of people have physical complaints due to their work.
• Since 2008, there have been more young men than young women unemployed in Europe for the first time.
• At the top of the largest companies in the Netherlands, only 2 percent are women.