The problem

One of my colleagues has an intensely annoying cough, which is riling all those who sit near her. Normally there would be sympathy but she insists on continuing to smoke, in spite of my light-hearted suggestion that she knock it on the head during her malaise. She is interrupting our work, and causing rising levels of stress in the team.

How can I address this before someone in the office snaps and verbally explodes?

Trader, male, 32

Lucy's answer

There is absolutely nothing you can do about this woman's cough.

You say that your light-hearted little quips about her smoking haven't made any difference. Of course they haven't – smoking is an addiction. It's also practically illegal now, and anyone smoking must be truly dedicated to it to put up with being treated like a criminal or a pariah.

The cough is something that she has little control over. It is a reflex and is probably disturbing her even more than it is annoying you.

You imply that what annoys you isn't the cough itself but the fact that she smokes. It's kind of you to worry about the health of other workers, but I suggest that you stop now. That way madness lies.

Being in an office means sitting in close proximity with other people. And other people can be dementing if you let them be.

The state of being annoyed is like being itchy – you have to scratch. If it wasn't this woman's cough, you would be being driven mad by something else: by the way someone clears their throat or eats their yoghurt.

To survive at work you must learn to turn this irritable facility off, or at least turn it down.

The trouble is that giving up being annoyed is almost as hard as giving up smoking. You need to make an enormous act of will not to let it get to you.

Ignore it, or think of the cough as background noise – if not as the sound of waves lapping on the shore, then as a dog barking.

The thing that troubles me most about your message is your fear that unless you do something, someone (else?) will snap and verbally explode. I can't see why this would be such a calamity.

When I used to work in a trading room many years ago barely an hour went by without various people snapping and exploding into a foul-mouthed shouting fit. Have things really got so much more restrained in the past two decades? And is that a good thing?

If there were more opportunities for letting off the steam that builds up in stressful, dysfunctional trading jobs, then the sound of a woman coughing would be much easier to ignore.

Your advice

I too have a smoking, coughing colleague. I have noticed that when she is deeply engaged in a task the coughing attenuates and even ceases completely.

When the task is finished, or she takes a break, the coughing returns as if by magic.

Was it Benjamin Franklin who said: “The art of acting consists of stopping people from coughing”? Perhaps the same could be said of good management.

Anon, male

Cough in unison when she coughs.

Interpreter, semi-retired

Off with her head

In I Claudius, the Emperor Caligula sends a centurion to investigate the sound of annoying coughing from his nephew's room. The centurion returns, holding the boy's severed head. Perhaps you could consider this?

Journalist, male, 46