How Not to Be an Asshole at Work

The first post by Free Radical.

I've held a great number of vocations over the last ten years. I helped customers find books on Thoreau, made grilled-cheese sandwiches for whiny children, arranged art on gallery walls, cleaned out buckets of human feces and urine, and served dinner to hundreds of guests. At each job, I worked as hard as possible--not because my goal in life was to be the world’s best bookstore employee/nanny/gallery assistant/companion for the elderly (and as it turns out, also the deranged) all while catering on the weekends. No, my goal was something simple. Work hard to succeed.

My mother raised me to believe that the way to success in life is through hard work. Now I know that lady luck sometimes throws her hand in the equation, and certain people end up on top of the game while others who toil their whole lives never get anywhere. We all know this, but it’s not an excuse to be lazy. Luck does play a role in success, but hard work is the vehicle that carries us to the end.

So while there are a great many of you who share the same philosophy about the working life, there is a percentage of the population that feels so entitled and deserving that even hearing that one syllable word, work, is slightly insulting. These are the lovely coworkers who infuriate you with their insistence on the mediocre. They collect 40 hour paychecks on 20 hours of work, play games on the computer while you hash it out with the boss, take twenty cigarette breaks in 45 minutes, and cause an imbalance in work flow to the point where the rest of the team has to pick up the slack.

Now, it may be that these lazy colleagues are simply unaware of how their actions (or lackthereof) affect others. Frankly, I think they just don’t give a damn.

In an effort to honor the top three, most memorable assholes at work, I have compiled the following list:

1. When you are in charge of 50 screaming, tired, dirty campers do not, I repeat--DO NOT fall asleep and leave your fellow colleagues, who are also screaming, tired, and dirty to take care of the kids you can’t handle. You’re an asshole.

2. At the end of the night, when the wedding guests are falling over in various drunken states and actually dancing to Rod Stewart (…and think they’re sexy), now is the perfect time to clear those tables so that we can pack up and go home. But, wait, what’s that you say? You need to sit down and take a break. You feel faint, your feet hurt, your back aches. Pick up that damn basket and pile it high with dishes. Carry that basket full of dishes (yes, it is heavy) all by your lonesome to the hard working people who are washing the fucking dishes and want to go home some time tonight! You really are an asshole.

3. And most recently…to the princess in her cubicle kingdom to my left, yes organizing your child’s birthday party, ordering dresses, and talking to your husband is pretty tiring, so it’s a good thing you have so much free time. Oh, wait--I forgot, you’re at work, sitting in a cubicle. And the real kicker? You only work part time!!

So you see ladies and gentleman, even when you think no one else at work cares or even notices that “punching in” means absolutely nothing to you, the laziness you emit affects us all.
Your laziness causes others to work twice as hard, which leads to resentment, which leads to you not being invited to drinks after work. Let me break it down for you in simple mathematical terms:

Lazy + resentful coworkers = nobody likes you

Harsh as it may seem, there is a way to reverse the equation. I just don’t feel like putting in the effort to explain it.