If you are brought in as CEO of a company, no one is going to place a whoopee cushion on your chair at the next management committee meeting and wait for you to make the appropriate noises. The new vice-president, finance, may not be so lucky. Toilet rolls sometimes vanish or (strictly for techies) the computer starts giving weird messages and making odd noises — a digital version of the whoopee cushion. If you are lower down the ladder, however, flatulent humour and situations where your butt is the butt are far more common. It is part of the initiation process.

In a sense, this is equivalent to the ragging that goes on when a new batch joins a college. In the workplace, it is called bullying and most companies have strict rules to control it. Bullying not only affects the victim, it creates monsters who are difficult to control later. The man who pulls your leg metaphorically can move to doing so physically if not checked.

Workplace bullying can be very costly; in the US, the damage in terms of lost productivity is estimated to be in billions of dollars. A study by the Productivity Council in Australia puts the cost of bullying in that country at $15 billion annually. In India, according to an Assocham Workplace Survey, around 42 per cent of employees have been victims of workplace bullying. The villain of the piece is normally the boss; almost 56 per cent are bullied by their boss.

Even if these start as mere initiation rites, the danger is that certain staff members become classified under stereotypes. The newbie categorises the head of the motor vehicles department as Monster Type A; no transport is ever available for him. The motor vehicles manager may have had a genuine problem a couple of times, but you categorise it as a form of bullying. You communicate that view to other newbies. In a dynamic organisation, such “bullying” characteristics become writ in stone. Yet another office monster is created.

One such example is “The Boss from Hell”. Talk to people in the corporate world and you will discover lots of them. You might find your closest friend – who you always thought was a meek and undemanding person – figuring in these lists. He wasn’t born that way; his colleagues have created hellish characteristics out of whole cloth. But it suits everybody. His subordinates have a bogey to blame; you always need an emotional safety valve. His superiors see a martinet to impose discipline (and a scapegoat when there are labour issues). And he himself has a sense of identity — the ability to tell his wife that he is not henpecked everywhere.

All office bullies are not necessarily fire-breathing dragons. Some of them can be meek-as-milk matrons. But in terms of productivity loss and time wasted, they can outdo the bosses from hell. The bullying boss, after all, often extracts much more work out of you. It is only later that you start facing health problems. Who are these office monsters? “Cubicle creatures” (see box) gives a list of the relatively harmless variety. Psychologist Leanne Faraday-Brash has a different way of classifying them. Her monsters include The Narcissist — they believes the world exists for them and protect their perilously inflated egos at all costs; The Withholder — they know a lot but decide it would weaken their position if they shared their knowledge; The Socialised Psychopath — they are devoid of conscience and have little desire to be liked or fit in; The Egomaniac — they need ego “strokes” and recognition all the time; The Bully — telling the bully very early that the behaviour is unacceptable may nip things in the bud; The Control Freak — They can be supercritical and authoritarian; and The Sleaze — these people are dinosaurs and we know what happened to the dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, the common-or-garden office monster doesn’t disappear along with All Fools’ Day.

CUBICLE CREATURES

Which office monster are you?

Shoulder Curse

They feed on other people’s computer screens, stealthily appearing behind your chair without the faintest whisper. They like to comment on anything that is happening on other people’s systems.

Idea Murderer

A scornful smile adorns their face almost every day. They kill every idea that anybody comes up with. Their favourite phrase is “It’s been done”.

Frenzy Devil

Their power is the pain they give co-workers by completing assignments before the deadline. They are first-degree panic houses who get alarmed on the first note of any minor mishap.

No Basic Instinct

Harmless devils with no purpose as they struggle with their own all the time. They are dumb demons who don’t know how to zip a file, or use their smart phone for anything except texting.

Nasty Accent Speakers

They thrive on unfathomable vocal gibberish. They get into their accent, especially when giving briefs or talking about something sensitive.

Sugary Witch

They live on their sweetness. Wearing baby pink clothes and talking to you like they are your parents, they literally kill with their sweet tooth.

Source: Edited from The CareerMuse, ‘Which office monster are you?’