办公室“讨厌鬼”的价值.docVIP

The Value of Annoying Co-Workers 办公室“讨厌鬼”的价值 James liked his job in the admissions office of a large university. It was interesting, decently paid, useful work, he told me at the holiday gathering where wed met. The only problem: His co-workers agitated his every last nerve. 杰姆斯(James)在一所大型大学的招生办工作，他很喜欢这份工作。他在假期聚会上与我碰面时告诉我，这份工作很有意思，收入丰厚，而且挺有意义。唯一的问题是：他那些同事简直让他烦透了。 There was the social butterfly who spent her days flitting from desk to desk; the workaholic who obsessed over every last detail; the malcontent who subtly belittled anyone who spoke up in a meeting; the passive-aggressive assistant who would only answer calls if you were on her good side that week; and the boss, a hopeless narcissist who inevitably made himself the focus of every task. James came to dread going into the office. (For reasons of privacy, Ive changed his name, as well as the names of others cited here.) 同事中有位交际花，一天到晚穿梭在办公桌之间；有个同事是工作狂，在每个细节上都纠缠不休；有个同事是愤青，会不露痕迹地打击在会上发言的所有人；办公室里有个喜欢消极反抗的助理，你那周讨她开心她才接听电话；而老板是个无可救药的自恋者，凡事都必然要抢占风头。这些人弄得詹姆斯开始害怕进办公室了。（因为事关隐私，所以詹姆斯和本文出现的其他人都为化名。） You rarely get to pick your co-workers, which makes it nearly impossible to predict whether youll be happy at any new job. While exploring life in the modern workplace, Ive heard people grumble again and again not about their job but about their office mates. They were thrown in among the autocrats and the aristocrats; the passives, the aggressives and the passive aggressives; the suck-ups and the backstabbers. This may be why so many of us could relate to the NBC sitcom The Office, with its universal message: The office would be a fine place to work, if it werent for everyone else. 你很少能有机会挑选自己的同事，因此也就几乎没法预料你从事一份新工作时开不开心。在探索现代职场生活的过程中，我听到人们一再抱怨的不是他们的工作，而是同事。他们被扔进一群令他们讨厌的人中间，其中有独裁者和高高在上的贵族；有的人消极被动，有的人咄咄逼人，有的人则喜欢消极抵抗；有些人爱溜须拍马，还有些人爱暗箭伤人。这也许就是许多人看了美国全国广播公司(NBC)的情景剧《办公室》(The Office)之后都深有感触的原因，这部剧的主题思想是：要是没有其他人，办公室会是个不错的工作场所。 But not all disrupters -- the personality types who make it harder to get work done -- harm office life o