The office characters we all know and love – which are you?

Written for LinkedIn: view the original here.

 I’ve met quite a few people in my life who tell me with unshakable conviction that “I could never work in an office!” Why ever not? I find myself wondering.

I suspect that they think offices are boring. If only they knew the rich tapestry of characters and personalities that I guarantee will be a part of life in an office of any significant size, no matter the sector or type of work undertaken.

Let’s celebrate these fantastic individuals and all that they bring to our offices. Which are you?

1. The happy soul

This is the person that comes in at 7 in the morning, beaming from ear to ear and greeting everyone with unfailing cheeriness.

In many ways, they make you feel utterly baffled, as you ponder what their secret must be, having been delayed on a train for an hour because a leaf fell on a line several thousand miles away and having already been daft enough to get your iPhone out on said journey and seen more than enough emails to make you grumpy.

Yet they somehow make you smile too, so we love them for their enthusiasm.

2. The chatterbox

This is someone (yes probably me) who thinks that work is made more bearable if you can have a good old chat with your mates whilst cracking on with scheduling the umpteenth meeting or combing through your third spreadsheet by 10 a.m.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. The chatterbox doesn’t do subtle, take it from me. If you have ever watched the Catherine Tate Show, you may recall the office sketch featuring 2 colleagues. One seeks to get on with her work quietly, whilst the other tries to goad her into guessing the answer to a trivial question. When frustration and nerves lead her to make a stupid guess, this only makes her situation worse.

The chatterbox won’t give up, so please don’t be subtle in your pursuit of quiet.

3. The super quiet person

The absolute opposite of the chatterbox, this colleague is seen but never heard.

They are particularly intriguing to me as a blind person. Whilst my colleagues seem certain that this person does in fact exist because they can see them silently working away, I am often less convinced and left to wonder if my colleagues have conspired to make someone up to see whether I will question their existence or not. Given that, as a chatterbox, I find the concept of a person being so quiet nearly impossible to grasp, there could be some mileage in playing this game.

4. The mugger

Picture the scene. You’ve been stood up. Your team member has ignored your carefully crafted meeting invite and you now sit alone, papers spread out, staring at the window wondering where it all went wrong.

As you begin to open the HR policy, convinced that this is surely grounds for gross misconduct dismissal at the very least, I would urge you to hold your horses and consider that missing an email is very easy when it is buried amid a dozen alerts warning all to beware: the mugger has struck again!

The mysterious mugger is a serious office menace! Admittedly, handbags, credit cards and most vaguely important possessions are safe. Your much-treasured, deeply sentimental, 99p coffee mug, however, is not! The mugger’s insatiable appetite for caffeinated beverages make any suitable vessel lurking around fair gain.

The angry emails or intranet notices that follow a mugging alert the mugger to the fact that they are under investigation and will be public enemy number one should they ever be identified. In any case, another mugger may be operating in the building, so the loot cannot be returned safely.

Perhaps we should have a loose change collection to buy the mugger their own cup, or better still mercilessly hunt them down and tell them in no uncertain terms to mugger off!

5. The feeder

We face an obesity crisis, in case you didn’t know. The office feeder is solely to blame. This is a superhuman who, unlike the rest of us mere mortals, somehow finds the time to bake each evening. Why is this person not running the timekeeping training course, I ask Learning and Development?

If this isn’t grounds enough to hate them, their produce is invariably absolutely delicious.

6. The mother hen

The mother hen is a must around the place. You’ll know them, first because at least one draw is stocked with medicines for every eventuality, and a seemingly never-ending supply of wipes and other cleaning products – all of which, bless them, they are more than happy to share.

Second, you will see them head to the kitchen armed with soup or something frightfully healthy and later find that the once-filthy kitchen is now spotless and everything washed up.

Sure, an angry rebuke to the entire floor may circulate later on and you may momentarily realise what a dirty, lazy creature you are as you stare at the crumbs you’ve made tucking in to feeder’s latest offering, but at least everything got washed up!

7. The oversharer

You’ve never actually asked this person what they do, but you could probably write their CV for them. This person emits noise at random: frequent is the loud laugh, or an exclamation of “Why the hell have you done that!”

Sweet and innocent newbies will inquire earnestly what is wrong with this colleague, only to be told in great detail what a disgrace it is that someone else has failed to read something they wrote in line 56 of this morning’s email and asked the question again. An outburst and commentary follow most minor ups and downs in this person’s life, and as the bewildered newbie sits taking this in, more seasoned colleagues smile at their naivety. You’ll learn!

8. The technophobe

This is someone for whom the IT department has set up a special ringtone. Complaints tend to be that the machine is far too slow, and continues to be after a never-ending range of solutions have been tried by a rather distressed junior technician.

Alternatively, the technophobe protests that all work has been lost when, in an attempt to resolve difficulties, that lovely on-off button that never lets you down has been pressed and held.

This person is convinced that, no matter where you go, IT presents a perpetual and unmitigated disaster which the professionals just can’t understand.

9. The passer by

This is someone who makes only occasional appearances in the office. Inevitably they will not be seen sitting down or hunched mournfully over a screen like the rest of us, but chatting enthusiastically to someone else who, unlike us, apparently knows who the hell they are!

Whether these people work offsite, are extraordinarily part-time or are simply very familiar guests, we will never know, because 3.5 years later we’re way passed the point where we can ask their name and purpose in this place without aching embarrassment. *See awkward smiles and hurried hellos*

10. The socialite

This is the lovely person who can always be counted on to organise the social calendar. Nights out, Christmas parties, birthday celebrations are all in a day’s work for this person. They are a vital part of the fabric of the office because they remind us that, most of the time, we actually like each other.

Indeed, we should! These characters are to be celebrated, appreciated in all their glory for what they bring to the culture of our offices. Without a mountain of calories, cup woes, clunky computers and even more clunky people, our working environments would, like our waistlines when the feeder goes off sick, be greatly diminished. Let’s learn to enjoy and be thankful for every one!