The office suck-up. Butt kisser. Brown noser.
You know the type:
- Play every angle to get ahead.
- Have zero loyalty to anyone.
- Go over the top to make themselves look good.
- Constantly seek affirmation and pay undo compliments to get it.
- Take credit for everything, regardless of level of involvement.
- Just generally being someone you constantly want to run over in the parking lot or shove down the elevator shaft.
There is at least one in every department. My personal favorite story about the resident brown noser involves this coworker who literally invented the "Look How Busy I Am" game. I think I'll call her Sludge. I've never met anyone who whined and cried and sobbed about how busy she constantly was, when in reality, she maybe had 90 minutes of work to keep her busy each day. She played the game so well that even her boss bought it.
She was a brown noser because she took credit for *everything.* I'm surprised she didn't expect thanks for making the sun rise each morning. Part of what made Sludge the ultimate brown noser was her ability to take on the extra projects and make it seem like a total sacrifice on her end. In reality, she could have taken on every extra project in the building, including cleaning the bathrooms, because she didn't have any work to do.
During one meeting with the publisher, Sludge dominated the conversation for 15 minutes, talking about how her "team" did pretty much everything except run the printing press. The rest of us at the table just stared in disbelief, wondering what kind of alternate universe Sludge actually lived in. I was really wondering which "team" she was referring to. She didn't manage anyone, and we didn't work in "teams," so unless she had a family of mice under her desk, the team reference was quite idiotic.
As luck would have it, Sludge was constantly so busy and overwhelmed with work, that she couldn't find the time to learn the new software that had just been implemented. And during all of her extreme busyness, she never stopped to think that she might just "work" herself right out of a job. Which is exactly what happened. She's probably still convinced that she was wrongfully terminated.
I mean really, how often does the office suck-up get what's coming to them? Unfortunately, not often enough.
1 comment:
We have exactly the same "winner."
I use to work in a law firm with another assistant who literally acted as if she was drowning ever day.
She was always busy, but never got anythiing accomplished. I would do 10x more work in an hour than she did in a day. Her boss was constantly bringing me her "overflow" because she couldn't get it done (and I had my own boss). It was really idiotic.
Thankfully, despite the jokes, lawyers are pretty smart and after two months of working there I got her office and she had to sit at the front desk and look busy. So sometimes it does work out!
I've also worked with the person who claims to be so busy it's stressing them to the max, but this person really only ever worked about a six hour day and during that six hours spent a lot of time complaining about how much work he was doing. Sheesh.
I'm so glad I work from home.
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