They’ll smile in meetings while setting fires behind the scenes.
Sometimes the biggest threat to your success isn’t a bad boss—it’s the colleague across the aisle pretending to root for you. The coworker who always seems too helpful, oddly informed, or mysteriously passive-aggressive might be quietly working to chip away at your reputation.
You sense something’s off, but it’s subtle enough to make you question yourself. That’s the trick. Sabotage in the workplace isn’t always loud or obvious—it’s slow, strategic, and built to fly under the radar.
1. They casually “forget” to loop you in on key emails.
You’re working hard, checking all the boxes, and still showing up to meetings totally unprepared—because you never even got the memo, according to Áine Cain at Business Insider. When someone repeatedly leaves you off important email threads, it’s not just an oversight. It’s a tactic. They’re controlling information, nudging you toward looking unreliable or uninformed in front of others. Once or twice could be an accident, but when it becomes a pattern, it’s calculated. They know visibility matters, and they’re cutting you out of the loop just enough to make your contributions seem scattershot. It’s like trying to run a race when someone else keeps tying your shoelaces together while smiling to your face.
2. They copy your ideas, then present them as their own.
You share an idea in a brainstorming session or a casual chat—and days later, your coworker repeats it word-for-word in front of the team like they dreamt it up in the shower, as reported by Caroline Mendell at Alot Careers. It’s infuriating and worse, it works. Their theft is subtle enough to pass as coincidence, but consistent enough to be suspicious. They’re not just borrowing—they’re building a reputation on your brainpower. If you don’t document your contributions or speak up quickly, you’ll start fading into the background while they step into the spotlight on your intellectual coattails. It’s strategic plagiarism with a smile.
3. They act overly helpful—right before you’re about to shine.
Supportive coworkers are gold. But some are just rehearsing their sabotage with better PR, as stated by Gillian Jules at The Independent. If a colleague insists on “helping” with your big presentation or project, then magically flubs something crucial—slides missing, bad data, a mistimed handoff—it’s not helpful. It’s harmful in disguise. They get proximity to your win while quietly ensuring it flops. You’re left cleaning up their mess while they shrug and claim they were “just trying to help.” These are the smiling saboteurs, polishing their halo with one hand while holding a wrench in the other.
4. They praise you in public but criticize you behind closed doors.
To your face, they’re warm and encouraging. But behind your back, they’re whispering just enough doubts into the ears of your boss or team. “She’s great, but sometimes she misses the big picture,” they might say, smiling sweetly while planting a seed of distrust. This kind of backhanded betrayal is brutal because it doesn’t leave a paper trail. You feel your credibility slipping but can’t prove why. Meanwhile, they keep their hands clean, manipulating perception while you scramble to fix a reputation they’re quietly unraveling.
5. They disappear when accountability shows up.
When the team’s on the line, they vanish. When credit’s up for grabs, they’re front and center. You’ll find yourself shouldering blame for tasks they “assumed” you’d handle. If something goes wrong, they’re quick to say they were left out of the loop—even if they ghosted the group chat all week. It’s sabotage through absence, a sneaky withdrawal of effort designed to let others fall. They’re the coworkers who let the boat sink while claiming they thought someone else was steering, then critique your rowing when the water hits your knees.
6. They stir up tension between you and others.
You start noticing weird vibes with another colleague, and then realize this one person keeps saying things like, “Oh, I thought you knew she wasn’t happy with how you handled that.” Or, “He said he felt ignored, but maybe I misunderstood.” They’re stirring the pot quietly, playing middleman with bad intel. The goal? Isolate you. Make you second-guess your relationships. While you work to patch things up, they’re solidifying their position as the “neutral” party, the one everyone confides in. But in reality, they’re manufacturing drama to keep you off balance.
7. They always seem to “accidentally” leave in typos, wrong numbers, or outdated links in shared docs.
A little mistake here, a small omission there—enough to erode your credibility without drawing attention to their fingerprints. They know most people won’t notice the quiet errors were theirs, not yours. When they’re in charge of compiling or formatting shared work, they find just the right places to make you look sloppy. You appear disorganized or inattentive, even though the mistakes weren’t yours to begin with. It’s sabotage with plausible deniability and a smirk.
8. They watch your every move—but frame it as “just being thorough.”
They ask oddly specific questions about your work, drop in on meetings you didn’t invite them to, or poke around your project files—always with a friendly excuse. They’re collecting data. Not to help, but to critique or weaponize it later. You start to feel like you’re being monitored, not supported. And when something goes wrong, they’re the first to raise a red flag like they just happened to notice. Their obsession with “details” is less about diligence and more about control.
9. They plant doubt in your boss’s mind—casually and consistently.
A single comment won’t sink you, but repeated, vague remarks can start to rot your standing. They’ll ask your boss questions like, “Have you had a chance to review her work yet?” in a tone that implies concern. Or they’ll mention how you’ve been “under a lot of stress” lately, even if you’re doing just fine. These micro-comments are hard to track but effective at bending perception. Before long, leadership starts questioning your reliability, not because of anything you did, but because of a subtle smear campaign executed with a velvet glove.
10. They overload you with small tasks while hoarding strategic ones.
Need someone to take notes? Schedule the meeting? Summarize everyone else’s ideas? They always suggest you. Meanwhile, they volunteer for the high-visibility projects that actually get noticed. It’s not that you’re unwilling to pitch in—it’s that you’re being typecast into grunt work. They position you as “the reliable one” while carving out the spotlight for themselves. It’s sabotage that looks like flattery, but really just sidelines your potential while they fast-track their own.
11. They pretend to be your friend—until you become competition.
Everything’s great until you get a promotion, land a big project, or earn a shoutout in front of leadership. Then the energy shifts. Suddenly they’re cold, distant, or weirdly critical. They might ghost you in meetings, stop offering input, or even gossip about your “attitude” to others. When you’re no longer beneath them or beside them—but above them in some way—they make their resentment your problem. What looked like friendship was just thinly disguised rivalry, waiting to turn into sabotage the moment you gained traction.