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WORKPLACE SURVIVAL
The Office Spook
They’re watching you
They work among us, though we’d rather they didn’t. In our dreams, they resign, rage-quit, or retire. They’re the snitches. Rats. Spies. Moles. Informers. Narcs. Sneaks. We’ve all known at least one. Most of us spend our days at work, heads down, doing the jobs we are paid to do. Not these people. Smug, self-appointed, and self-righteous with a jumbo side of gaslighting, they live for the gotcha. They’re waiting for you to mess up so they can rat you out and enjoy the inevitable fireworks. If they can get you reprimanded or, better yet, fired, their day’s made.
If you’ve never had the pleasure, you’re one of a fortunate few.
To engage with them is to feed their lust for domination over you. Like trolls, they thrive when fed. Though they take many forms, a single strategy will send them packing. Be a grey rock, so unsatisfying that they move on in search of better targets. In an ideal world, after tripping over too many grey rocks, they’d get frustrated and quit. That’s not reality, so we’re mostly stuck with them.
If you are to survive, you have to spot them.
The narc
He’s looking for violations of the company handbook or any policy, no matter how outdated or obscure. Gift policy is $50 or…
