My Personality Type: Threatening

How Actively Using My Sense of Humour in The Workplace Generates Paranoia in Figures With Authority.

Aside from my extreme hyperbolic discourse to catch your attention on the internet, I actually have something to say. This is an article written for anyone who is a highly aspiring, young professional who is attempting to find their feet in whatever industry they wish to pursue. This isn’t written with any particular person or institution in mind, it is an accumulation of all of my experiences and friends’ experiences within the corporate workplace. Challenging the ideologies presented in this article (or a similar article here: Quarter-life Blues?) and concluding that the following themes I have written about are present catalysts in the professional environment, which- if left untreated- can ignite a quarter-life crisis and make you question what you identify with (mine being humour and creativity).

I have discovered that regardless of a particular situation at work, ultimately the issue exists between person to person. Most commonly: how you are perceived. Your reputation is generated by how you choose to think of yourself and the reaction you receive is a product of your own perception. This is true in any aspects of life, but for this article, I am applying this to the workplace. By this knowledge, I’m shifting the blame back onto myself, but when you have power in the workplace you have responsibility, and therefore a choice.

I have always considered myself to be a troubled soul. I am — quite frankly — the funniest person I know (ironically, I wish I was joking. But until I am friends with Ricky Gervais then this will remain a statement of fact). Fake ego aside, by troubled I mean I have had trouble finding the right balance between being professional and being myself in the workplace — whatever and where-ever (“Ladies and Gentlemen… Shakira!”) the workplace may be. The previous sentence isn’t sitting well with me because both of those divides are me and this is what I am challenging.

I believe that it is in human nature to put people into categories; I don’t agree with it, but I definitely do it. If you don’t fit one category then more likely than not, you’ll probably experience some form of social/office-political interaction, where the underlying motive will be to either sit you on the outside of the social circle in the work place or to pressure you to conform to the unspoken office values. When you are gifted enough to have great people skills in addition to fulfilling the necessary skill-set for your job (what every company look for and actively seek) but to put it quite simply — you become a threat.

To who? In some respects everyone (by ‘threat’ I don’t mean ISIS and by ‘who’ I don’t mean your countries national security(or your pets)) however, most of the negativity in this scenario comes from a line manager or authoritative figure. In corporate terms, you can see quite clearly why this person would be threatened — you are younger, eager to please and full of new and influential ideas that higher management will love. On top of this, your line manager is the middle man. Most of the time the line manager is 10–15 years older than you and it is their first time managing a small team.

This inexperience to harvest the potential of individuals to not only better the productivity of the team, but the entire pyramid (themselves, their management, the company) often leads to an attack on the individual starting from their professional self, ending with their personal self or character. This comes from a lack of understanding and also a selfish place. Rather than working together, the line managers first instinctive thought is self preservation. Now, there could be many reasons why — accumulative pressure from above, they’ve learnt from equally as inexperienced managers, but more often than not, their approach to progression is twisted and backwards. I like to believe they have worked their way up in true TV Apprentice-Who’s-the-Project-Manager? *Cue tense music*-I’d-like-to-be-Project-Manager-But-to-be-fair-Sir-Alan-at-the-end-of-the-day-it’s-my-decision-ENUF-You’re-both-givin’-me-a-bleedin’-‘eadache-You’re-fired!- style.

(On a rather large side-note I believe I could write an interesting piece on my observations of women in the workplace- perhaps: “How Women Are Their Own Glass Attic To The Glass Ceiling” and the movement towards gender equality that so desperately needs to happen.)

I digress, however, if (on top of being the ideal worker with great people and professional skills) you have a great sense of humour and you also actively express that you would like to pursue turning a hobby into a career (lets just say, randomly… observational comedy?) outside of the workplace, immediately things change. Not so much in your colleague-level circle (because they love and admire how funny you are “Oh stop, please, you’re making me blush” “not really because I’m amazing”), but absolutely from above. I can almost physically see the lens change, and you know what? It’s a macro lens and it is analysing my every move. They see the unspoken alliance between you and your colleagues.

No one really knows why we laugh but it is thought that in it’s most scientific definition (by which I mean ignoring that laughter is the best thing in the world) it is a social tool to show unison and comprehension within a group — by its very nature it is to show you are unthreatening to those around you. So why is humour and therefore, the root of the humour in the office (*ding!* “Michael come on down!”) threatening to your line manager? Well, there’s no other way to put it…

Coz dey ain’t in da group. Soz.

This may not necessarily be their fault, they are forever separated by the structure of the modern office, but at some point they make a choice. In addition to this — you young, hilarious, talented professionals reading this — if your line manager does not get your sense of humour (or… if they don’t… have one…) you are pretty much walking the plank and it is only a matter of time before you are shaken off by You-Know-Who (In this instance I wish I was talking about The (rather tame-in-comparison) Dark Lord).

Now before you and your ideas walk the plank (I’ve physically seen power-points of my work with someone else’s name on it) you’ll soon discover that whilst you’re submerged and sinking deeper and deeper into the Sea of Corporation, with a gentle Tide of Unemployment pulling you under (temperatures rose by 0.1% in 2014), there is a tear in your Personality Life Jacket because the captain of the ship has attacked the only thing keeping you afloat: you.

I have had my character unfairly assassinated in nearly every big corporate job I have had — it reflects the same behavioural formulas you see in the playground. Working extremely hard and being undoubtedly committed to any job is irrelevant here; it whittles down to the refusal to repress my character and be sculpted into a grey yes man (I realise this sounds like I’m a riot in the office, I am actually quite shy and very tuned-in to how humour varies in appropriateness). I have an additional unthreatening skill of making people laugh; because I have shared that I have aspirations outside of work, somehow it becomes acceptable in the minds of others to silence me and try to hurt me by lashing out at my personality. It’s bullying in the adult world and I want to raise the issue so that every young person who experiences prejudice because of their age, every creative who has nearly broken their physical self because they are 100% committed to an idea mentally — who have not only spent thousands of pounds on their education to hone their talent, but upon graduating are expected to work for free, for anyone who is negatively tarnished as ‘the office clown’, is aware that bullying doesn’t stop, and it takes strength of character to see the funny side.

Closing thought — You would think there would be more comfort in knowing that you are a bigger person than someone who attacks you, but to be honest, it is frustrating and isolating when you are tying to build a future.