Do thoughts create karma? This question is about a very specific situation, but there might hopefully be a more general answer. 

We've had conflicts at work, to the extent that we had to get a psychologist help us! There are many reasons for the conflicts, but for me the problem is that many of my co-workers are kind of lazy, not very competent and spend their time not doing their job but knitting, chit-chatting, complaining about everything etc. This situation leads to conflict and I have spent too much time being annoyed and tried to change the situation. 

Still, I sometimes think negative thoughts about these people. When I catch myself thinking negative ("lazy, incompetent people") I try to take a look at myself and see what causes the thoughts and what I really am thinking. This strategy also helps me to not take it out on them. 

But the question is, does the thoughts in themselves create bad karma?
There is karma that is intention (an omnipresent mental factor) and karma that is intended actions.

Intended actions are defined by Je Tsongkhapa as:


  The actions of body and speech that are motivated by that intention.



Afflictions such as anger, jealousy, covetousness, and so forth are not the intention mental factor - but have their own entity as mental factors - therefore they are not karma. Anger manifests from a seed of anger and that seed is not a karmic seed, because it was "deposited" by a previous instance of anger (not by a previous karma - that is intention or intended action).

However, some qualify the afflictions as 'karmic path' or 'paths of actions' because they are likely to lead one to engage in negative actions (karma).