Office Wildlife

These vicious animals are native to every UK workplace. You’re not just paranoid – they are out to get you…

1. The Only Hot One

There she goes: wafting serenely through your grey little worker hive, causing angelic sunshine and productivity slumps to wherever her tight skirt doth wiggle. Usually a director’s PA – and invariably engaged to a local rugby player – your actions are inevitable. You will stare until she feels uncomfortable. You will awkwardly flirt with her in the office kitchen. You will get that prickly hot forehead sensation. You will crash and burn faster than a Nigerian airline.

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2. The Whipping Boy

At least African slaves got an apology and a memorial; Whipping Boy doesn’t even get bathroom privileges. Instead, as punishment for simply being the newest member of staff, his is a life of shitty tasks, working weekends and inhumane pub humiliation. And that’s on a good day; otherwise he’s blamed for everything from over-ordering paperclips to the global financial crisis. Pray for him. Or what horrifying vengeance he’ll visit upon the next youngster to start…

3. The Fishwife

Nervous and jumpy, they’re the employed equivalent of bug-eyed X-Files conspiracy theorists. And yet, male or female adopt the same attitude: avoid them as you would a rabid dog. Or else be dragged into their spinning vortex of bitchy gossip, pointlessly conspiring against various factions that only exist in their brain. Although did you hear that Dave was seen out with Tom’s wife? Wow. You really should tell him about that.

4. The Bully

Your nemesis. Nothing less than your Burton-suited, Scotch-egg-breathed, spittle-flecked daily despot. Fired by an internal supernova of mindless hate and failed ambition, this middle-management Machiavelli combines sneering satisfaction at your every downfall with, unfortunately, just enough authority to make you do his every bidding. Count yourself lucky: were this the army, it’d involve latrines and toothbrushes. Or bum rape.

5. The Juggernaut

Every office has one: the bossy woman who does, ahem, all the actual work. Always overweight, always overbearing and always over 40, they’re the power-suited powerhouses without whom, let’s be fair, the British economy would collapse. So why isn’t she CEO? Two reasons: one, she looks like the mum in The Goonies. And two: once a year, she gets shitfaced and makes a pass at somebody. NB: Do not let this somebody be you.

6. The Boss

Not, despite conventional wisdom, the man to worry about. He’d never fire anyone; after a lifetime of greasy pole shinning, his salary-addled brain has long since tired of ruthless scheming. Greying and faintly oblivious to external stimuli, he’s more golfer than leader now. Just don’t get drunk at the office party, mistake his benevolent grin and put your arm round hi… oh God.

7. The Long Server

Just like the Nazis, he stands as a chilling warning from history: what happens when a career-for-life really does mean ‘life’. Unlike the Nazis, however, the Long Server never advanced anywhere. Long since excluded from the company’s fast-track jostling, he’s now the office carthorse: smiling forlornly while promotions and younger staffers speed past him, like motorbikes. His reward? A gold carriage clock in, oh, about 20 years. Or possibly that shotgun massacre he’s been meticulously planning since 2003.

8. The Building Supervisor

Like a foreign diplomat, normal employment conventions don’t apply here. For the office is his own personal fiefdom – and him the ageing, gap-toothed, cackling robber baron. Territorially, nowhere is beyond his remit – from the girls’ toilets to your desk drawer – and he’s apparently perfectly entitled to steal any stationery or communal milk that isn’t welded down.

9. The Henchman

Dimly adopting the simplest survival technique known to caveman – ally yourself with the local Alpha Male – he is the Bully’s chittering sidekick. Which translates as: guffawing at his every lame put-down, looming conspicuously whenever you get bollocked, and doing all the Bully’s work. Something the Henchman traditionally realises once a week, while sitting fully clothed in his shower, sobbing “I am a joke” over and over again.

10. The Outsider

Who is he? Why is he here? Why is he totally unaware he should be trying to ingratiate himself with everyone by buying us biscuits? He just seems to sit there… working. Like some sort of worker. What, is he taking notes? Is he a spy, sent by a rival company? Or Christ – is he a management consultant from head office, looking to make cut… what? It’s just Dave from Accounts with a new haircut? Oh.

11. The Surfer

The impervious, charismatic, networking genius. Watch him soar effortlessly over office politics – deftly swerving falling profits, dull meetings and that awkward corporate manslaughter charge. Girls love him; the directors surround him, chuckling, at the pub; even the sour-faced receptionist once baked him a cake. Only a curmudgeon would point out that, upon closer scrutiny, he hasn’t produced any actual work since joining in 1998. But in short? Attempt at any cost to be this man.

12. Mr Negative

“I’m telling you, mate: this company’s screwed. We’re all doomed. Our jobs – nay, our very lives – are hanging by a thread. The directors just dropped us all in the meat-grinder. Sure, they took a pay cut to fund our company trip to Tahiti. And, yeah, I did buy a gold-plated space station with my bonus. But big deal. Look: I’ll let you get back to your wife and kids. But let’s talk about this in excruciating detail again tomorrow. And the next day. And so on, until you want to smash my face to a pulp in the photocopier.”

13. The Plain Jane

The female personification of how boredom and daily proximity distorts the male libido. Because no matter how outwardly unremarkable she may be – how forgettable her features, how shallow her curves, how beige her tops – just give it a few months of working next to her. Suddenly, you’re noticing her bottom and “nice smile”. Suddenly, with nothing else on offer, you’re snogging her at the office party. And suddenly, you’ve been married 25 years. Whoops!

14. The East European Cleaner

Gaunt and thin, her hollow eyes bearing witness to whatever cruel indignities have been visited upon her frail form since she arrived in the UK. You have to sympathise, really: she’s probably a Nobel prize-winning neurosurgeon, or something. And yet due to the peculiarities of the world economy and immigration law, the most intelligent woman to live in your county for several generations is currently scrubbing the men’s shitter. Still missed a spot, mind.

From the August 2010 issue of FHM India.