What's Your Office Personality?

Suggesting that a person may actually find people surrounding him at work awful, a book author has highlighted various ways in which one may have to face bad office behaviour.

"People actually get away with really bad behaviour and they do it all the time," the Courier Mail quoted Michael Stanford, author of Inhuman Resources: A guide to the psychos, misfits and criminally incompetent in every office, as saying.

"They get away with it because human nature is that we sort of accept things after awhile.

"At first we’re shocked and then we start to accept it. Over time, companies and cultures start to accept this sort of behaviour and even reward it," he added.

He believes that his book may help reassure ‘the nice people’ in the office that the bullies, crazies and lazies are actually as bad as they seem.

"I think it’s important that you give people the opportunity to look at behaviour and think ‘that’s just not acceptable,’" he said.

But Stanford, who admits seeing himself in a few of the types, also suggests people not to be too harsh.

"We’ve all done things we probably shouldn’t have in the name of paying the mortgage or thinking ‘I should cover myself here,’" he says.

Here are some of the most common office types, and how to handle them:

1. ‘I’m disappointed in you’ person
"Those sorts of people like to patronise people who are younger, like to lecture them and tell you you’re doing it wrong. They actually do it for their own sake. I think it was like mental harassment, there was one point where I actually had to hide to avoid being mentored," says Stanford.

2. The ‘I’m actually really nice’ person
The author says that this is one the most common office misfits, but also the most toxic. "That’s the person who sort of does something really nasty, like they’ll send an email saying ‘this person didn’t’ do their job’ or ‘this person took a can of Coke from the fridge’ and they’ll blind copy in all of senior management. Then in the next minute they’ll organise a gluten free cake for this person," he says.

3. The ‘I’m just so sick, but I’m too important to go home’ person.
Stanford says that such people worry that "the world with stop, there will be tumbleweeds rolling down the office corridor, the office will shut down," if they call in sick. "They pride themselves on their work ethic but they cut the workforce participation by 20 per cent each year by leaving soggy tissues and coughing all over you," he said.

4. ‘I know stuff before you do’ person
According to Stanford, such people feed off misery, fear of job cuts, and love spreading bad news.
"They kind of love the idea that things aren’t working out, they love problems. They definitely thrive on a bad situation; they love the fact that hey might know a little bite more than anyone else," he said.

5. The ‘I, I ... I’ person.
Stanford says that such people step in at the last minute to swoop in, and claim all the credit, leaving shocked co-workers in their wake. People who claim all the success and cleverly distance themselves from any failure.

6. ‘Let’s have a meeting before the meeting’ person
The writer says that such persons thrive in big offices, where they can spend their days going to meetings instead of actually working.