While gathering around the office water cooler for a chat with your colleagues should generally be a fun moment in which you can re-energise while rehydrating, there are some water cooler archetypes that should rather be avoided whenever possible.
How many of the following archetypes can you identify among your colleagues?
The Ranter is the person with a hallowed quest for validation, who begins to talk about some inane office phenomena while laughing at his own jokes, and gaining momentum off his own steam in a rather one-sided dialogue. The ranter is friendly, generally well-liked and probably quite good at his job, but he also represents the pinnacle of wasted potential and should only be engaged, in a group scenario, when absolutely unavoidable.
The Old-Timer is a class-act through and through, from the way he dresses to the way he speaks to everyone as if they are the most important person, and is minimally competent enough to maintain employment. He is your grandfather with whom you would love to sit on the porch and share memories and tea, but he is also a master of the “any plans for the weekend?†and “how ’bout this weather?†dialogue. He may be a bit technologically-challenged, but will give it the good old-boy try. The only thing to do when the old-timer corners you at the water cooler is to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
The Neurotic manically paces about the office with his forehead veins throbbing like he’s just overdosed on Viagra, speaks in incoherent bursts of loosely strung together phonemes, often accompanied by spittle, and virtually always looks as though he is about to have a heart-attack or aneurysm. If The Neurotic approaches you at the water cooler, run away as quickly as possible; failing that, put him off-balance by acting equally neurotic about whatever project you’re working on at the time of his approach.
The Ego Maniac is an aggregate of the negatives of every archetype; he most probably does not know your name, could not care less about what you have to say, will not hesitate to fire you or to get you fired, and is just basically objectionable. Best practice here is to retreat and if you cannot, to just keep very quiet and try to stay under the radar.
Other Water Cooler Archetypes include The Lost Soul, The Superior, The Suck Up, The Subordinate, and The Peer. Which one are you and which ones can you identify among your colleagues?
