5 Office Personality Types You’ll Work with At Some Point in Your Life

1,848
Parks and Recreation — Pictured: Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope — Photo Credit: Colleen Hayes/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

We break down a few annoying personality types that we’ve encountered in the workplace that you also may have had interaction with.

We break down a few annoying personality types that we’ve encountered in the workplace that you also may have had interaction with.

The Office Personality Short List

The Brown-noser

He’s easily one of the most annoying individuals on this list—and he likely knows it… Constantly piling on healthy doses of highly-generic outbursts of kiss a**ery to anyone above him—and doing it with the consistency of a well-tuned timepiece.

You’re just trying not to crack your keyboard in half—listening to this crap everyday.

This is the same guy who volunteers to zip Mr. Kirk’s fly when he leaves the restroom and is also the very first to dangle from his scrotum when he walks into the building.

“Hey Mr. Kirk! You don’t see many bosses getting in there and showing the employees how it’s done, ya know? You’re a real class act!”

The Delegator

Don’t we all just love a good delegator?

They literally do no work but they make sharing tasks with you sound so noble. They have this keen way of coaxing you into feeling trusted—trusted to do the really tough, important work. Like that one time you added all the art and formatting to their company PowerPoint presentation and they let you be the clicker when they presented. Dope! You’re a valuable asset to the company, Jamal.

You’re a step above the trash receptacle. You’re like, the paper shredder or that weird drawer on the file cabinet with all the pens and stuff from people’s old desks! #worth

The Re-doer

This person is often anal retentive but can also be very passive aggressive. They are a sadistic kind of perfectionist, and are very fond of their way of doing things.

Let me map out a scenario for you. Chances are you know this person very well.

So let’s say you have been working for 2 days on an integration of your company’s Outlook contacts into the new phone system. You’ve just about gotten it seamed up. Friday hits and you send out an email to small group of coworkers to test your dope new integration out. One of the recipients is your buddy Gavin (enter Re-doer). He, over the weekend, notices the integration works a lot like the system he set up at his friend’s mom’s bingo buddy’s church. He now wants to “help” you by redoing the whole f***in’ thing. He knows you won’t mind because he is Gavin the church IT expert.

Like the pro he is, he logs into the system, giving no f***s, and completely reworks the integration. Because, why not?!

Now your company and the Greater Missionary Green Valley Hope Grove Baptist Church have the same directory setup. Sweet!

The good thing is, as far as outcome, nothing has changed. It’s actually EXACTLY the same result, like exactly.

Gavin sends a company-wide email detailing his great deed—oh, and he doesn’t forget you—he slides in a special thanks to you at the end for helping him get it all done.

The Expert Corner-cutter

Bill Gates once said: “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

This expert corner-cutter may or may not be a genius.

They can show you the easy way to fill out your timesheet. They know which doors are unmonitored in the morning for those clandestine late-morning entries into the office. They can show you how to game the receptionist for the good pens and the key to the snack drawer. They can show you how to cut 50% of the time off of those monthly reports—something about templates and merge data.

They are gurus of laziness but the good kinda lazy.

Ultimately they save the company a lot of money. They never take overtime because they finish their job early. They’re efficient. They’re smart enough to do the job right, just lazier. Sure, they never get employee of the month but they’ve been with the company for 20 years. Well done sir/ma’am, well done.

The “Nepotee”

This guy shares a last name with the president of the company. He works 2 days in the office from 10:30 – 3:30 and the rest of the week from home. He calls the IT department when his computer goes into sleep-mode and he talks down to the supervisor because—you know—dad. This guy has his own corner office and hasn’t even been outta college for more than a few months. He has ZERO experience. He only knows like 3 people’s names (one of which is his dad) and his paycheck has more distance between the first and last digit than yours.

Want a little more of everything cool?

Get the weekly digest when you sign up for our "Everything cool" mailing list.

Share your thoughts.