Office Ying And Yang

The other day, following my poison ivy-induced trip to the emergency room, I had to drop some papers off at an office and fill out a couple of forms. Now, the woman I had talked to on the phone beforehand made it sound as though it was a very informal thing, would take four minutes and I could pretty much show up at my earliest convenience whenever I had a free couple of minutes. So, I wandered into the office a couple days after the phone call and first saw a woman who was sitting in poorly-lit room with her head hunched down. When I approached her to inquire about the forms I was supposed to fill out she snapped at me, "Did you make an appointment? You can't just walk in here, you know." (As it would turn out, I'm living proof you can do just that.) I now think she was sitting in the dark room with her head down because she didn't want to do any work and thought by laying low people wouldn't see her in the office.

Fairly annoyed at her tone, I started to walk out of the office when I ran into one of her co-workers. This woman started chatting with me, invited me into her (well-lit) office, knew exactly what I was there for, had the forms ready for me, made small talk about my neighborhood, then got my business done and had me on my way in about ten minutes. She was very nice and personable. As I was walking out I passed the first woman out on a smoking break. "Did you get everything handled?" she asked. "Yes, but no thanks to you," I thought. (Outwardly I was still very polite, cause I'm a wuss like that.) Anyways this got me to thinking about the balance that you often see in office settings. It feels like this dynamic is always in play.

It seems as though in every office, no matter the industry, there is always one person who is cheerful, ready, willing, able and wanting to help people get their stuff done. Then there is always one person with the bad attitude who just wants to clock in and hide until it's time for lunch, a smoking break or to go home. Thinking back to office jobs I have had in the past, I can immediately remember who falls into which category. I'm just wondering if HR people do this on purpose. I imagine that someone who pays closer attention to this sort of thing (after all, you can major in HR) would treat it like a battery, in that two positive people would cancel each other out and two negative people would never get any work done. It can't be an accident that it comes into play just about everywhere.