Workplace Personality Types are an often unwanted side effect of going to work. We need work sometimes to generate an income to go travelling. Unfortunately, it can become a necessary evil.
Luckily, most people are pretty decent and pleasant to deal with, making work a sometimes enjoyable experience.
Workplace Personality Types Explained.
However, when you’re stuck in an office cubicle, trapped in a fluorescent prison, sometimes you might come across these following co-workers that drive you completely insane with their Workplace Personality Types, making you want to grab your passport immediately and board the first plane out of the country.
Let me explain.
1. The Egotistical Wanker
These people are so far up themselves they are coming out the other end. They usually dress snappily, talk at Volume 11 on their mobile phone whilst walking around the office (with their ‘clients’), and basically, think they’re God’s gift to everyone.
This person suffers from a severe case of FIGJAM (F*^& I’m Good, Just Ask Me). It’s impossible to stand within 10 metres of this idiot because of the barrier their ego projects from their anus.
To be avoided at all costs.
2. The Psychopath
At first when they join your team, the Psychopath appears to be superficially charming. They work out who’s who in the zoo, and then progressively suck up to others in positions of power (eg such as The Boss – see below).
They milk you for all the information you’ve got, and when they’re finished and determine you’re way past the use by date, won’t have anything to do with you.
The Psychopath is ‘nice’ in front of you when around other people, but belittling in a one on one situation. The Psychopath sends off the odd comment about you behind your back that seeds doubt in others.
Later on, the Psychopath flirts with The Boss – making The Boss incapable of deciphering the Psychopaths manipulative ways.
The Psychopath is usually infected with a terminal dose of FIGJAM which is incurable.
After the carnage, they’re busted and they resign, and Cyclone Psychopath moves onto another poor organisation to cause the same grief all over again like a Corporate Cancer.
3. The Boss
You might be lucky. You could have a great boss who makes the workplace an enjoyable habitat.
Then again you might not be so fortunate. You could land a boss who is infatuated with the previously mentioned Psychopath (because of their continual flirting) and won’t listen to anyone else about their evil ways.
You’ll only come in contact with The Boss around performance appraisal time, of which The Boss has a pre-prepared template of how you’re going – that is, not good enough.
The Boss expects you to work a 70 hour week and only charge 40 hours to the timesheet. If you haven’t moved your bed into the office cubicle, they ask what is wrong with you.
The Boss is a member of the Timesheet Police – if your chargeable hours are less than 110%, that’s grounds for dismissal.
4. The Meeting Addict
Workplace Personality Types One, Two and Three are often members of this category.
This person likes organising meetings that create massive inefficiencies and time-wasters, and also addictively attends other meetings to talk all sorts of verbal diarrhoea.
Since corporations have meetings because they cannot themselves actually masturbate (check out Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four Hour Work Week, for a more detailed explanation of this quote), the Meeting Addict unfortunately has an optimal habitat.
The Meeting Addict is effectively the hand on the corporation’s penis.
5. The Gossiper
Every workplace has one.
They can go from zero to Gossip in under 2.3 seconds.
These idiots without a life want to know EVERYTHING that’s going on, including the colour of your faeces. They may even create a spreadsheet logging the date and time of each snippet of gossip.
The Gossip Workplace Personality usually engages in the practice of prairie dogging (bobbing their head above the cubicle) if any fragment of gossip is heard by their ears that can pick up such conversations from 10 kilometres away.
Summary
So there you are – just a sample of the (thankfully rare, but painful) Workplace Personalities that can drive you completely crazy.
These characters may lead you to the conclusion that work might possibly be overrated, forcing you to sell all your belongings and become a hermit in the hills.
More Workplace Personality Type Stuff
Anyway, if you want to find out more about Office Politics, check out this book on Amazon, or just buy some Dilbert stuff, which is a humourous take on office life.
If you’re lucky, you may be owed four weeks of leave per year – that means 12/13ths of your life is spent at work, sometimes for almost 50 years!
That’s way too much time to spend with these Workplace Personality Types during the prime of your life.
Get out and travel the world and escape this workplace madness, and don’t become a Workplace Personality!
HHHMMMmmm… and what makes you think you won’t encounter any of these personality disorders, sorry ‘types’, on the road??!!
Ha ha! This is hysterical. I was so motivated at my previous job a few years to get out and travel just for these reasons. The meeting maker is my fave though. hysterical! Now I am willing to work 16 hour days just so I don’t have to face this reality every again!
You’re not wrong! But what about The Cat People? They have been in the office for decades, refuse to change their slow and monotonous work methods, and because of basic social ineptitude, never managed to have kids (thankfully) – so instead they adopt a cat as a surrogate child, insisting on talking about what ‘amusing’ things it got up to this week, ho ho. I used to sit between The Boss and The Stupid Sidekick, who were both Gossipers and Cat People. It did actually drive me to sell all my stuff and travel the world, I’m still looking for a quiet hill!!
Ha ha, I’ll add this one to the list!
Being a travel nurse, I pretty much see all of these at every new hospital I work. Luckily, I only work 13 weeks at a time so I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I would like to add pure evils. These people are so rotten you almost think they walked right out of a Hollywood movie. I honestly thought the evil people in movies were always way overblown until I joined the workforce and realized, they’re out there!
I think we’ve all come across them!
Well, you’ve convinced me. I don’t want to be that guy! 😉
This is hilarious! Any time I talk about work and travel in the same sentence it is about how to get off of work to go travel. This is quite the unique post. May I suggest including Type 6: The neurotic mess- the co-worker that is always nervous or crying over something.
So true! Thanks for the comment!