Saturday, October 24, 2009

Worker Bees

I recently received an email from my secretary at work. She and a number of other folks are feverishly planning this year's company holiday party. I am not talking about our Halloween party or Thanksgiving party or Virgin of Guadalupe party. I am talking about this year's Christmas party. It seems that the gaggle of secretaries who work on this spend about half of their day planning for parties and gatherings of this sort. In perfect synergistic fashion, CNN published a story about the personalities involved in typical office holiday parties. They start off their story with the following:

The best entertainment, however, comes from the people who attempt to hide the dread on their faces as they realize they're in for several hours of chitchat with people they don't particularly like.

But folks attend these parties as they will take any excuse to get out of doing real work. But my editorial comment here is not the reason for today's post. What I wanted to discuss comes from this same CNN article. They talk about people watching at work, most easily seen during these more informal gatherings. The article is entitled "Four Obnoxious Attitudes in the Office".
  • The suck-up: The boss's lapdog. These folks rely on their buddy-buddy relationship with the boss to attempt to get a leg up on their co-workers and to help their chances for raises and promotions.
  • The naysayer: The person whose sole intent is to shoot down every suggestion or course of action raised by anyone.
  • The drama queen: The person who is overly emotional about every single little thing that occurs. They have no control of their emotions and tend to make every occurrence into the biggest-ever tragedy known to mankind.
  • The star of the show: The person who feels that they are God's gift to mankind. They believe that they should be the focal point of every meeting and every project.
When I was a young buck, I used to consider myself "the star of the show", the genius whiz kid that the world couldn't live without. As I have gotten older, this sharp corner has eroded considerably. At this point in my life, I do not think that I fit into any of the above categories. What about you, what worker bee category do you fall into?