A few weeks ago, I surveyed my friends on their biggest complaint about the office.

Far and away the most consistent response I got was something along the lines of: the office can be disgusting.

I heard about bug infestations, messy breakrooms, co-workers who keep a graveyard of dirty dishes at their desks, people who coughing and sneezing as though we didn't live through a global pandemic that taught us .

And unfortunately it seems to be a canon event to overhear your neighbor clipping their nails at their desk. (If you've never experienced this, I have to assume you were the one doing the clipping.)

To put it simply, from one friend's point of view, "everyone is a slob."

This isn't news to Alison Green, 51, who's run the "" workplace advice column since 2007.

"Certainly, based on my mail, it's always been this way," Green says.

I asked her if more people re-entering the workplace, or young workers joining for the first time, was making the state of office cleanliness more dire.

"I do think there's a school of thought that the pandemic made everyone less well socialized and just more self-focused and inconsiderate, and one big way that trait plays out is in an office kitchen," Green says.

A lot of people who got used to working from home and may have lost the social muscle to keep tidy in a shared space, she says.

Plus, given today's economy, businesses may be cutting costs around their cleaning staff or janitorial services, or at least not bringing them back to the same level they had before lockdowns, Green says.

"But it is true that offices have always been kind of gross," Green adds. "I think we used to take it more as a given, but we were away from it for a while, and then coming back to it, you see with fresh eyes."

Mess in the workplace

That's the case for Kiara Jackson, 27, in Miami.

She used to work from home but transitioned to being full-time in the office for a new bank job last year, and then hybrid with a three-days-in policy six months ago. The move meant sharing a space and dealing with different personalities again, she says.

One big issue is when colleagues come into work sick, she says. She understands people don't want lose while being out, but hearing people cough and sneeze all day makes her uneasy. It doesn't help that staff share unassigned seats using , so Jackson says she often spends her morning disinfecting the space before she settles in.

The office kitchen is another caution area. "I try not to even use the breakroom," Jackson says, adding that she prefers to eat in her car. "You open the microwave and there's remains of other people's food."

"We do have a good janitorial staff, I just think we don't have enough for the amount of people who are in the office," Jackson says.

Carla Shellis says office cleanliness has always been the biggest source of complaints from her roughly 30 employees over the years. Shellis, 55, in Dallas, co-owns a roofing company with her husband and has endless stories about office hygiene faux pas she's had to deal with over the years.

"It was almost like refereeing amongst children, because you have a bunch of people that work for you, and they're all fighting and arguing" about the state of shared spaces, Shellis says. "As the boss, you have to navigate and say, "OK everybody, let's try to figure this out."

Some extreme infractions: staffers who regularly left their lunch out uncovered for hours "so the odor would just take over the whole office," Shellis says, and even open food containers found in desk drawers "that had been there for days."

Rules for keeping the office clean

These days, Shellis has helpful guidelines for keeping neat around the office:

In the kitchen: At minimum, make sure to keep the space as clean as when you walked in, if not better, Shellis says. Clean your mug and put it back where it belongs, pick up your trash, take your food home every day and bring back your food containers clean instead of stacking them in a sink, she adds.

At your desk: They key is to keep tidy and be aware that the appearance of your space does in fact impact your neighbors and their image of you. "It's really never about what anyone sees, it's about the essence you leave," Shellis says.

"If you're in the office and you can't even clean up after yourself, you're prolonging your success in your advancement. If you can't do little things in the small places, you can't handle the big things in the big spaces."

As far as those open-office manicures, "grooming at the office should be taken to the private place of a restroom or a bathroom, and even there, think about how you clean up after yourself," says Daniel Post Senning, who conducts workplace etiquette trainings and is the co-author of the upcoming "" handbook.

And one more from Shellis: Don't keep food at your desk unless it's in an airtight container.

To confront a coworker's messy behavior, Shellis recommends using a compliment sandwich: First, prime them for a potentially uncomfortable situation, then lead with a compliment, point out the grievance using "I" and "we" statements, and end with stating that you want to find an agreeable solution for the both of you.

Take a colleague who keeps perishable food at their desk all day: First, you might let them know you'd like to chat with them about something that's potentially awkward. Then you can get into how you value them as a colleague and enjoy sitting next to them; but, smelling their food all day is distracting to you, or you've noticed it's created a bug problem. Can your colleague remember to store their food away so you can both enjoy a clean space?

If you hate the idea of having to raise the issue, consider what Senning calls the "broccoli on the tooth" approach, "where you can help someone avoid further awkwardness or future embarrassment by taking the hit and letting them know" before the issue becomes a topic of gossip, or worse, gets escalated to HR or the boss.

Finally, when it comes to cleaning messes that might not be yours, consider the law of reciprocity, Shellis says.

"If you're in an office space and somebody else has left something behind, go the extra mile and clean up as a favor not to the person, but to you" and the office environment, Shellis says.

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