lunch break
AND ONE MORE THING ...
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Account executive Chris Stowell is doing a spot of New Year soul searching
Chris Stowell Account executive
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Am I the village idiot, Mr social butterfly, the unrivalled successor, the class bully or just a nice bloke who gets on with his job and life? Lots of questions indeed. One of my old bosses once said to me: “Chris, it is highly important to profile yourself and think about how people perceive you in any office.” I just smiled because that’s one thing I tend to be good at in these awkward scenarios. So I rattled my mind and took some time to think about this some more: “Is this dude for real? Do I care what other people think of me?” I am a firm believer in ‘you are who you are’. You come into work; you sit with your morning brew of choice and Ready Brek, compile all the crap you need to do for the day and just get on with it. Since when should you put on an act worthy of an Oscar trying to be someone you’re not? However, as I have matured in my working life, I begin to think about what my old boss said to me. I look around the office and, to my absolute horror, you can see what he was talking about. Fred is a nasty kind of scary like a drooling pit bull. Dorris over there is pukka at her job and puts us all to shame. Stacey exposes a lot of flesh, among other things, to get what she wants, and so on. So, I look at myself and think, I must be the class clown. Or am I? I don’t quit on anything, I get the job done yet I am always first in the pub and last to leave. It’s easy to judge individuals, yet surely we are who we are and work is part of who we are. Everybody goes to work to get a good job done, pay the bills and interact with people. Not to think, ‘should I act differently and be a Fred because I think it will give me more power? Or be a floozy Stacy because I believe it will get me anything I want?’ We all have different qualities and not just one ‘profile’. Office profiling is definitely out the window for me.