The Office Jerk

There are three kinds of people who work in offices. First, there is a tiny minority who are the honest and sincere workers trying to do their job as well as they can. The second group, which actually is the vast majority, consists of people who just go through the day to day life without putting too much of an effort into their jobs. And then somewhere in between (in terms of numbers) lies the third group whom I like to call the office jerks.

You know the type; these guys act as if they are carrying the entire business on their shoulders. Whenever they meet you in the office, which is generally when they sneak into your cube with a cup of coffee in their hands, they never fail to tell you how challenging and difficult their job is (even if the only work they do is to make sure that the code is properly formatted). Then they give you that look of complete disdain and loathing, when you tell them about your work (even if you are managing a product that contributes several millions of dollars to company’s top line).

If you are saying that you have never met such a person in office, then it means either you are working from home since you have been employed or you work as a night watchman in a cemetery.

Here is an example of how a typical conversation between the office jerk (hereafter called OJ) and an honest worker (whom we'll call...ummmmm.... say.. M) would look like. (This, of course, is a completely hypothetical example)

OJ: Hey M, saw your blog. Nice work man.

M: Thanks OJ

OJ: So, have they not given you a project yet?

M: I beg your pardon?

OJ: I mean, you must be having a lot of free time to write blogs like this.

M: (takes several deep breaths and counts up to 5 before speaking) I write the blog in my off hours; that is generally late evenings or weekends.

OJ: Oh! No wonder you get free time in the evening. I think you leave office very early.. around 7 pm. Whereas I stay here till 9pm. Almost two hours more than you. I don’t get much free time in the evenings.

M: (thinks for a while whether to maintain a calm dignity or point out the obvious flaw in the argument. After couple of milliseconds of deep thinking decides “to hell with dignity”) But OJ, don’t you come to office around lunch hours and even then you don’t go to your desk till 1:30 pm. Whereas I come to office around 8:30am. So if you do the math, actually I work 3 hours more than you everyday.

OJ: Come on M. It’s not the number of hours you work that matters; what matters is how much work you put into those hours (a rip off from the employee guide.. OJs are not capable of coming up with statements like that on their own)

M: I think you started the comparison of work hours.

OJ: You shouldn’t take my words literally. By the way I never see you in the office in weekends. Seems like your project is a pretty easy one.

M: No, I think what it means is I manage my work well and make sure that my team doesn’t have to work on weekends.

OJ: Ah! But see I look at it differently. I always come to office in weekends, just to make myself available.

M: To whom? Nobody else is there.

OJ: You know just in case of some emergency.

M: But isn’t there a different team that handles the emergency situation in production servers. Your role doesn’t even come in that escalation path.

OJ: But no harm being there for the team.

M: (decides not to bring up the free lunch angle) So when you are just “being there”, what exactly do you do?

OJ: You know surf net, download movies, chat with friends.

M: And you think that’s more creative than writing blog? Anyway, what are you trying to tell me is you spend so many hours in the office doing nothing and you think you deserve credit for that?

OJ: See, I don’t think you get my point. It doesn’t matter whether you work or not, what matters is how many hours you are in the office… .err what happened? Why are you looking at me like that?

M: Never mind…