Office Behavior

The office is a peculiar thing. A collection of people put there by the people that hired them, sometimes there's more in common than that, but with some people, that's all you've got. I've worked at 3 companies, and on 5 different teams. Inevitably there's always at least 1 of each of the following people:

• The nail clipper - it never freaking fails, on the day you're irritated already because you woke up late, your dog jumped on your khakis with muddy paws, the line at starbucks is longer than the line to see the vatican, and you have a 'surprise' meeting at 8:30, which you're already late for, someone interupts the one moment of silence the office will experience all day with *clip!* *clip!* *clip!* and a senstation runs up your spine that turns you from nice composed co-worker to the devil in heels in a matter of seconds. Seriously people, can't that wait until you get home? I mean, really. Your nails will not grow to unmanageable lengths in the matter of 8 hours at the office. Most of us already knew you were a little off, but this just enforces it.

• The loud phone talker - Guess what? The entire office does not need to hear your business - be it personal or actual business. We know you use company time to make personal phone calls, because we can hear you. Dude, just send and email - it's silent! If you don't have an email address, keep your voice down. Even if something is really funny and it makes you chuckle, there's no reason to project that across the cube farm. Yeah we're all happy you took a minute to laugh today, but we don't know the joke - so we don't care. And it's never someone with a jolly laugh, it's always the high pitched cackler trying to compete with the wicked witch from Oz. Please take it down a notch, so we don't all want to punch you.

• The gossiper - You know who they are, and you encourage them every time you ask them what happened with so and so over there, or why that one guy got fired. While I know you want to know the dirt, it's people like her/him (most likely a her) that cause unnecessary tension in the office. Please stop with the positive reinforcement.

• The real overachiever aka The workaholic - sometimes these people bring a lot to the table, sometimes they just make the average worker look like crap. Sometimes these people do it to keep busy, or have used it to replace empty space in their lives, who knows really? There's always one, and it's probably the same one that set the curve in Differential Equations in college, yeah that guy. No one is supposed to get the 98% on the test - but someone always did. And now that someone works in somebody's office as the CEO fast tracking hopeful. More power to ya, but take it easy on those that really do like work-life balance, like me.

• The fake overachiever aka the resident dumbass - This person is nature's way of combating the workaholic, because if they can fake their hard work well enough, they will outshine the other guy who actually deserves the promotion. This person will get to work early and leave late, but collectively do less work than people who work their standard 8 hours a day. There will be internet surfing, excessive talking to co-workers, long lunches and more breaks in the day than any chain smoker that works there. It's okay to slack sometimes, but to outshine those that are really working hard is uncool.