This Seemingly Harmless Work Habit Could Make You Look Incompetent

“I’ve just been so stressed lately with this big project!”

You may think you are bonding with colleagues over your demanding work load, but if you are constantly boasting about how hard your job is, you are “stress bragging,” according to management researchers. And it could be harming your professional reputation.

In a recent study published in Personnel Psychology, Jessica Rodell, a researcher from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, along with her colleagues, found that people who brag about feeling stressed at work are seen as less competent and likable by their co-workers.

“We want other people to like us and think that we’re smart. But if we say it directly, then we innately kind of know it’s not going to work,” Rodell told HuffPost, adding that stress bragging can be an indirect attempt to communicate that you are a valuable hard worker, “but it doesn’t work.”

If you work long enough, you will encounter a stress bragger who needs to impress you with their challenging, tough job ― or you might be the stress bragger yourself.

“A large reason why stress bragging commonly happens is that we still live in a society that glorifies being busy,” said Shannon Garcia, a psychotherapist at States of Wellness Counseling based in Illinois and Wisconsin. “If we are pushing ourselves to the max and beyond at work, we want people to know about it.”

Why stress bragging backfires at work

In an experiment part of Rodell’s study, 360 participants were asked to read different scenarios about a fictional colleague who had just returned from a work conference, with one of the scenarios being about a stress bragger. This co-worker complained that the conference was “just one more thing on my full plate. And I was