It is my belief that the only people who should have a speaker-feature on their desk phone are the people who have an actual office… that can be shut off to the rest of the building with a door.

In past years, I think people in the office used the speaker phone to listen on calls out of pure laziness — they didn’t want to hold the damn receiver up to their ear.  Nowadays though, that’s not an excuse.  A lot of companies will happily purchase a hands free set for their cubicle worker bees.

Our dear friend Speaker Phone Seth uses the speaker phone feature for ALL of his calls…. like he’s the only one in the office and we all want to hear his entire conversation.

PROS: The ability to listen to all of Seth’s calls can help clue you in to handy dandy information that you might not already know or that might be useful to your own functional area.  Seth’s phone calls might also offer some entertainment value to your otherwise boring day.

CONS: Sometimes Seth’s phone calls can be ridiculously loud and can serve as a distraction.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: loud, annoying, entertaining

FRIEND OR FOE? I’m going to vote ‘Friend’ on this one – so that you nicely ask him to lower his speaker volume when you need to concentrate.  A friendly disposition beats out passive aggressiveness any day

We’ve all heard the story of the boy who cried wolf – the one where the villagers didn’t believe the boy because he lied time after time.

Today, I’d like to tell you about the Boy Who Cried “Exclamation Point!!!!”.

The exclamation point in Microsoft Outlook and other popular email programs is strictly reserved for emails of the utmost importance.

It’s also there to be used sparingly.  After all, if EVERY email you send out bears the ever-important exclamation point (!), no one will ever believe that ANY email you send is very important.

Case in point: Today I received not one, but two emails from a guy I will affectionately dub Little Man.

The emails that LM sent me were not life threatening.  The world wouldn’t have stopped.  The company wouldn’t have stopped making money.  The country wouldn’t have come out from our bazillion-million dollar debt if I hadn’t read his emails.

Which made me really think: If everyone sent emails with the Exclamation Point, emails wouldn’t be Important, would they?

So today, I thought it would be really important (!) to go over scenarios that absolutely require the exclamation point:

• A VERY SUPER IMPORTANT FYI. If the information contained in the email would dramatically change the way your recipient would react and/or conduct business
• YOU JUST CLOSED A SUPER BADASS DEAL. By “super badass deal” I mean a MILLION units or more.  Something that would give you a hands-down “Excellence” in your next year review.
• TIME SENSITIVE ISSUE. Somewhat similar to the first point, however, this one requires an answer or action within 2 hours.
• LOSING A BIG DEAL. This is similar to Just Closing a Super Badass Deal, except the opposite
• YOU JUST HEARD THE LATEST MOST JUICIEST GOSSIP ABOUT YOUR BOSS AND HIS/HEAR LOVAH. No further discussion needed, however, I would recommend using your Hotmail account to your colleagues personal email.  That shizz does NOT need to be in the company server for all eternity.  Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo all have their own versions of the Super Duper Important Exclamation Point.

I’ve never had the privilege of working with Dilan but I have heard aaaaaaall about him.

He can’t function without the 10 different meds he takes and he is very open about telling you about every single one.  He tells you all about his bi-polar, multiple personality, anti-depressant medications and all about his OCD tendencies.

He also enjoys talking about what happens when he doesn’t take his meds and is sooooooo dramatic about it… you would think the emo movement was back.

While I think it’s possible Dilan truly does have issues, doesn’t have anyone to talk about them to and so his colleagues are the ones who have to deal with it, I think it’s also possible Dilan might be part-attention whore.

PROS: When you’re around Dilan, you can’t possibly feel bad about the woes in your life because Dilan makes his own life seem so dark and depressing.  It makes even your worst day feel like a day full of sunshine and roses.

CONS: He will talk to anyone who will listen.  You might notice that your other coworkers steer clear of him – that is because once he finds someone who will listen (even if they are just pretending to listen out of politeness) he will FIND THEM every single time he wants to talk about how depressed or sad he is or how he needs to take his medicine or how he forgot to refill his 9832 prescriptions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: dark, depressing, downer

FRIEND OR FOE? FOE.  Being Emo is soooooo 1995.  Let’s not depress everyone around us, shall we?

photo courtesy of Sparktography

First things first: Pat can be a guy or a gal.  Think SNL Pat – it could go either way.

The difference here is that this Pat is way overly promiscuous while the Pat on SNL probably never saw any action at all.

I’ve never been against a little love in the afternoon, but Pat here is more of an eyes wide shut kinda person.  Not only does this person sleep with everyone in their office and/or company, they may even go outside the company and start down the list of those they work with externally.

PROS: If you’re ever going through a dry spell and need a for-sure thing, you can totally count on Pat!  Just kidding of course… that’s way too oogy.

CONS: She/he has a bad rep internally.  Not only do internal people know about their … escapades, but external people do as well, and that can’t be good for a professional appearances.

FRIEND OR FOE? Foe.  You don’t want anything to do with this person.  In business, you are only as good as the people you are associated with and trust me when I say – you don’t want to be associated with this person.

Just about every night when I get home after a long, stressful day at work, I pop open an ice cold Bud Light or pour myself a glass of wine (or two.. or three).   It helps take the edge off and I admit I’ve been more regular with my evening stress-relievers since I’ve moved to an area that it not a dry one.

I’ve never really been the type of gal who drinks with the sole purpose of getting trashed…. ever.  Call me a square or what you want, I just think it’s silly.  I will completely admit to getting a little carried away sometimes – even the best of us have our moments – but our friend Lindsay takes the drinking to the extreme.  Not only does she take the proverbial edge off every night, sometimes she drinks so much that she ends up taking her clothes off at a bar.

Not a good thing.

Our lushy pal also feels the need to chronicle each of her nightly bar crawls and promptly uploads those pictures to her facebook profile the next day.

Also not a good thing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with going out and having a good time, but there is definitely a line that Lindsay seems to cross … every single night.

PROS: Lindsay definitely knows how to have a good time.  She also is a frequent visitor to the bars so there is a high chance she can get you in for free if you hang out with her after the work happy hour is over.

CONS: Lindsay tends to come across as a juvenile rather than a skilled professional to her colleagues because she tends to freely share every detail (that she can remember before she blacked out) of her nightly escapades.

FRIEND OR FOE? FRO.  (combination of the two) The harm she is doing is mainly confined to her career and her liver, but other than that she is pretty harmless. You have to be careful of the extent of your relationship with our befuddled pal- you are who you associate with – and that  holds even more true in the workplace.

Have you ever heard that phrase “everything (s)he touches turns to gold”?  Well, Glenda is kind of like that.. except not really.

For some strange reason everything Glenda touches seems to turn to crap.  She can be given the easiest assignment that is smooth-sailing and an easy win, and yet somehow she manages to f*(# it up.  It might be argued that Glenda just has really bad luck and the accounts turn downwards on their own, but when you look at it from the big picture, there seems to be 1 common denominator, and unfortunately, that’s her.

PROS: She’s REALLY good at turning a profitable account into lost market share.  Other than that, can’t really think of any?

CONS: You can’t sleep at night knowing that all the businesses you give her to manage will go down the tubes in less than a fiscal year, so you might have to spend some extra time and think about which accounts you are OK with letting go before you assign her a role.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Glenda = not a good thing for your business

FRIEND OR FOE: On a personal level, you might want to consider friendship, however, on a business level steer clear because it won’t take long for your numbers to plummet.

 When asked, I will be the first to stand up and say I love girl world.  I love the dresses, the handbags, the shoes and all of the lovely pastels around Spring.

The one thing I do hate about Girl World is that girl or girls in just about every office who can’t mind their own damn business. 

Gossip Girl Greda is a lot like our friend Nancy, but there are some very subtle differences. 

Greda actually comes off as a nice person.  Nancy on the other hand is just outright annoying.  Greda might also actually be one of your work friends, but you hear from others that she is “spilling the beans” on all kinds of other people’s information and it makes you wonder what she’s saying about you. 

Greda might ask you questions about things she’s possibly heard from other people and it almost makes you want to say “uhhhh if I wanted you to know, I would have told you.”  It’s just a lot harder to figure out if she’s asking you out of true concern or she’s just trying to get some more juicy details on what is going on.

PROS:You can always count on Greda to be semi-in-the-know when it comes to info from the other side of the office.  She won’t know all of the nitty gritty details but she shares the tidbits she hears.

CONS: It’s really hard to tell if she is really your friend, or is in league with Nancy.  You have to be super careful what you say because there is a very high possibility that everything you say to her will be spread like wildfire.  She has a very innocent aura about her, but she may be a double-agent.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: ? Too confusing to tell

FRIEND OR FOE: Jury is out.

When you are around a group of people, eventually, you will find someone you admire and want to emulate.  Most smart office folks (*cough*me!*cough) will emulate people by following certain behaviors and mannerisms… because if you do that enough of successful people, you learn from them and it will help you in the future.

Others, however, will emulate those they admire by changing the way they dress, the places they go and the way they talk.

I’m going to be honest here and say I’ve been completely guilty of this at one time or another.  My older sister always had the coolest clothes growing up.  I remember when I was in middle school my older sister had the COOLEST plastic jacket ever!  It sounds really weird, but trust me, this jacket was COOL.  I wanted one too!!  Unfortunately I could never find another one, and I didn’t fit in hers b/c I was a chunky monkey, so I found other ways to copy her.  I asked my mom to buy me clear plastic purses, and those Jelly shoes of the 1980’s fame.  She bought a black purse that looked like a little TV… so I found one in white.  I’m sure I annoyed the bejeezus out of her, but I couldn’t help myself!  She was so cool and I wanted to be cool too!

Of course back then we were little kids.  Since then we’ve both found our own fashion identities.

I think it’s a little different to copy someone like that when you’re a full-grown adult.  Our friend Cathy is in her 30’s and she copies people like she is 12.  It doesn’t happen all at once… it’s a gradual thing.  She goes once into the store you normally shop, and before you know it, you find yourself desperately hoping you don’t show up in the same sweater on the same day at the office.  You might even start moving on to different stores because the very thought of you both wearing the same skirt weirds you out.

PROS: Imitation is the best form of flattery, right?

CONS: THIS IS ANNOYING AS HECK!  Be prepared to be followed around like a little puppy.  Cathy will also start wanting to go everywhere you go.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Same sweaters, same labels, same places, same phrases.  Yes, she will copy your catch phrases too!

FRIEND OR FOE? Friend.  Even though she’s annoying, she’s only doing it because she admires you.  Maybe she never had any siblings to copy?  You should feel honored!

There is a saying that tells us “knowledge is power” and our friend Nancy takes that phrase to the extreme.  I agree that being informed is a vital part of keeping your head afloat, but I firmly believe there are some limitations to it.

Nancy, on the other hand, knows no boundaries when it comes to information.  She will befriend anyone and everyone who will talk to her.  Even if someone doesn’t want to talk to her, she doesn’t take the hint and presses on with questions for information.  She takes these informative tidbits of both your private and professional life, tucks them in her back pocket, and brings them out to share them with anyone who will listen.  I haven’t figured out why she does this.  I think having all this knowledge makes her feel important or something? 

PROS: Nancy will have all kinds of juicy tidbits to keep you entertained when you’re hanging out in the break room.  It’s not first-hand knowledge, but there’s a good chance she might mention something you didn’t already know.  When that happens, take that information to a more reliable source to get more information. (e.g. “Hey, I heard Bob is going to make us start doing a new kind of TPS report… what’s the deal with that?”)

CONS: Nancy is a double-agent.  In order to receive, you have to give.  To accomplish this, you need to tell her only the most bland things in the world.  Tell her about the nice brisk walk you took with your dog… or the report that you are dreading to start.  She’s happy with any and all info she receives. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS: blah blah blah blah blah.  She’s a human tape recorder.

FRIEND OR FOE:  Foe.  Don’t trust Nancy.  Not with anything.  She is definitely a nice person, but given the opportunity she will throw out any information about you just to make herself look like the All-Knowing-Of-CubeLand.

Casey is quite possibly the coolest person in your office.  She tends to be the self-appointed Happy Hour Coordinator and Event Maker-Upper.  She believes in the whole “make lemonade out of lemons” theory: If you’re being forced to spend the majority of your waking hours with these people, why not do something fun every once in awhile instead of secretly wishing they could shove those reports somewhere unpleasant all the time?

When she knows one of her Office Amigos is having a rough day or week, she’ll send out a mandatory Outlook meeting request for an off-site lunch or leave a funny post-it message on their monitor when they aren’t looking.

Though she probably does go out a lot on her own, she isn’t a lush.  She knows her limits and won’t be THAT GIRL (you all know who I’m talking about…).  Casey’s job in the office place is to help those around her deal with work, because deep down, most people would rather be doing something else.

And if it takes a monthly happy hour and 3 Jack & Coke’s… then so be it.

PROS: Casey is fun and she makes people in the office feel better about having to be there.  She tries (though sometimes unsuccessfully) to get everyone involved in different projects or different events to forge some bonds between the groups that will ultimately help when those people have to work together to get the job done.

CONS:Some people may mistake her for being a closet drunk because she’s carefree and likes to have fun.  That’s not always necessarily the case.

FRIEND OR FOE: Friend.  She’s cool.  Who wouldn’t want to be her friend?

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Nice, fun & drama-free!