Arsehole-jobsworth continuum

Office anthropology™ Go Premium The JC puts on his pith-helmet, grabs his butterfly net and a rucksack full of marmalade sandwiches, and heads into the concrete jungleIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Work anthropology Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

An individual’s relative risk, in a given commercial environment, to a single individual the Oxford English Dictionary might describe as “an unpleasant or stupid person” on one hand, and the sheer weight of 'l’ennuyeux vouchsafed by the massed practitioners of the buttocrtatic oath on the other, is encapsulated by the arsehole-jobsworth continuum.

A small, intimate workplace leaves you greatly exposed to a single tosspot, from whom you cannot hide, whom you are obliged to greet wanly in reception each day, and who can wantonly ruin entire days, weeks and years of your professional existence. This is the arsehole end of the continuum. We like to imagine tech startups (founder and CEO), small restaurants (chefs), and hedge funds (*anyone really) are unusually prone to this experience.

At the other is the massive multinational, full service banking organisation — especially one which used to be a sleepy commercial lender, until it bolted on an anemic investment bank in 2003, when that seemed a good idea, and an asset management division in 2009.