Everyone, that is, except you, the square-peg-in-the-round-hole new girl who's so eager to please you could scrape the scent off you and sell it in a bottle marked 'Desperation'.
It is, frankly, excruciating. And so horribly, universally familiar that the opening episodes of current C4 hit Ugly Betty - in which a talented yet geeky outsider lands a career-making job on a ruthlessly bitchy fashion magazine - has had us all squirming. What might prove to be a little harder to recognise is what happens next. Betty the misfit walks unguided into the Dragon's Den and, instead of getting eaten alive, manages to tame the dragons. She does this, quite simply, through that hoary old cliché much-loved by fairy tales and the makers of prime-time US TV shows - by being nice.
Which is all very well in the land of cliché-laden feel-good comedy but what about out here in the real world? For most of us, our office life rivals only Westminster as a place of scandal-mongering and political out-manoeuvring. Those who want to get ahead learn quickly that what's needed even more than the requisite thick skin is a willingness to adopt and believe the mantra 'Trust No One' - with bizarre and sometimes frankly laughable results. Take the woman I heard about recently who, while trialling for a new job, phoned her sister from the office cupboard - she was trying to find out how to tackle a tricky spreadsheet rather than let on to her colleagues that she was anything less than up to speed.[quote]
Sure, the office can be where some of your most lasting friendships are made. But it's no coincidence those friendships tend to be stronger the more awful the job is and/or the lower the likelihood of promotion. (There is, after all, solidarity to be had in shared misery.) Lay down a little (un)friendly competition and all bets are off. A spot of backstabbing here, the mild appropriation of someone else's effort or ideas there, and before you know it you've sold your soul for the opportunity to move two or three points up the pay scale.
Which is where Ugly Betty serves a useful function - not so much for the leading lady herself but for the lessons to be learned from those around her. If you take away the botox-ridged glamour, the ambitious, dead-eyed wannabes of 'Mode' magazine are familiar to us all. Consider watching bitchy Wilhelmina and her ilk as the perfect study in getting to know your enemy and how to avoid them.
Nice girls struggle with office politics not because they're doormats but because they expect everyone else to be as nice as them. Once you get your head around the brutal reality of office life and learn how to dodge your colleagues' venom-tipped bullets, the rest is easy. Simply grit your teeth, work hard and trust that your time will come. Nice girls might finish a little later than their more ruthless peers, but the smart ones understand the value of patience and get to have the last laugh.
