Workplace Archetypes - Brown-Noser

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The BROWN-NOSER.  The Brown-noser is a flatterer who has taken flattery just a bit too far.  


Flattery isn't bad.  As a matter of fact, Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People,  explains how you should start every encounter with just a little bit of flattery.  It is when flattery is obviously excessive that we consider it brown-nosing. 

Variations:

• ass kisser
• ass licker
• bootlicker
• crawler
• fawning
• flunky
• groveler
• hanger-on
• kowtowing
• lackey
• lickspittle
• suck up
• toady
• yes man
• apple-polisher
• sycophant

     sycophant (plural sycophants)

1. One who uses compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another.
2. One who seeks to gain through the powerful and influential. 

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Workplace Archetypes - Complainer

I've held a few jobs titles in my life.

Newspaper delivery boy**

Lumber yard gopher**

Chicken catcher/vaccinator

Warehouseman

Sausage maker**

Longshoreman

Handyman

Overnight camp counselor

Grocery clerk

Portrait photographer

MLM sales

Sign maker/erector*

Retail sales

I held one steady full time job for 34 years* (give or take several years off for work related injuries, illness and vacation days).  I have been a photographer on and off part-time for over 40 years.  All the other jobs were held for 6 months or less, several were only for a few weeks**.  If I sat down and counted the total number of people with whom I have worked, it must be in the high hundreds.  When I look back, no matter where I worked or what I did, I found certain workplace archetypes at each and every job.  

The second workplace archetype is  THE COMPLAINER

If there is one archetype at every job, it is THE COMPLAINER.  Every job has a complainer and when that complainer leaves someone steps up to fill that position.  There will always be a complainer in a workplace.

Unknown Source

I am not sure why the complainer complains but I think, they are asking for attention.  Only polite people, or want-to-be-complainers, tolerate the complaining.  The complainer feels superior to them.  Who better to prey upon?  Complainers climb upon the mounds of polite people and want-to-bes to keep their heads above the clouds.  They must always keep site of Mt. Olympus.

Source:HealthyUrbanHabitat

If the reigning complainer is fired, quits, dies or joins Zeus and Hera, a new complainer immediately crawls out from the wiggling mound to fill the void.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  It is just the natural order of the Kosmos.


You just need to learn to deal with the complainers.


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Workplace Archetypes - Topper

I've held a few jobs titles in my life.

Newspaper delivery boy**

Lumber yard gopher**

Chicken catcher/vaccinator

Warehouseman
Sausage maker**

Longshoreman
Handyman

Overnight camp counselor

Grocery clerk

Portrait photographer

MLM sales

Sign maker/erector*

Retail sales

I held one steady full time job for 34 years* (give or take several years off for work related injuries, illness and vacation days).  I have been a photographer on and off part-time for over 40 years.  All the other jobs were held for 6 months or less, several were only for a few weeks**.  If I sat down and counted the total number of people with whom I have worked, it must be in the high hundreds.  When I look back, no matter where I worked or what I did, I found certain workplace archetypes at each and every job.  

I plan on presenting several of those archetypes.  The first archetype is  THE TOPPER.  


THE TOPPER always has a better experience than the one you experienced.


For example, if you hit the lottery, the topper hit it for more money and spent less on lottery tickets.


If you had the worst headache in your life, the topper had a headache so bad it killed him.  Miraculously, he brought himself back to life when his hand serendipitously stabbed him in the eye with a rusty icepick which, just seconds before, he used to kill the largest python ever to slither upon the face of the earth that had wrapped itself around him and was squeezing out his very life force.  Because the python was constricting his body before he killed it, the snake's muscles continued to constrict by reflex, creating extreme pressure in his body.  The intense pressure caused the ice pick to pop out of his eye.  Exiting the wound, some rust particles remained behind which helped coagulate the blood at the site keeping him from bleeding to death and deflating his eyeball.  To this day you can see still see rust stains in the white of his eye.

Source:LookIntoMyEyes

The Topper is difficult to be around when he begins to spout off.  You just need to hold your tongue and pray you don't meet him in purgatory.


More workplace archetypes to come.


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved