At work, I deal with probably 50 or 100 people on a regular basis in various teams and interactions and the department and such. Most of these folks are perfectly pleasant to work with. Sure, everyone has their quirks, but overall our interactions are good. About 4-5 people, however, are different. If you are having a meeting with 14 people and one of these people is there, the character of the whole meeting changes. Suddenly everyone is on eggshells, or the meeting is getting interrupted every three minutes by this person with some inane comment, or whatever. I call these people "the moles" because, I'm sure without realizing it, they sabotage any environment they come into. Everyone can be laughing and having a great time at lunch until The Mole shows up, and all fun dies. A really amazing design meeting can be happening until The Mole arrives, and that's the end of creativity. These people may be hard, productive workers, but they are the collaborative and social equivalent of VX nerve agent. Alternatively, they may be fine in social situations, but as soon as they start "contributing" to your project, everything goes off the rails. Probably the whole organization would run better without The Mole, but since they never do anything too egregious it's impossible to fire them, so you're stuck with them indefinitely. FOCUS: Do you have a Mole or Moles in your life? How do they poison every situation they become involved in? What redeeming qualities do they have that prevent them from becoming totally ostracized?
Yeah, this wasn't a stupid, esoteric thread topic that only got life because it was the idea of a moderator at all.
Since people are just sniping members of the board, I'll actually contribute. The commanding officer of our shop is a fucking nutball. Right now, he's quiet. Really, really quiet. As in, walking around and staring at everything but never talking to anyone or anything. It's gotten to the point where he'll be wandering around the shop and I'll pointedly ask him, "Hey sir, you need anything?" "No... no... just keep working." And he'll watch us while he investigates whatever the hell he's investigating. There are a fair amount of people who got transferred here from his last command; they're saying that he does this for weeks at a time before he goes off-the-wall crazy with micromanagement, taking rank, and gutting the way we do things. So I'll be teaching something to one of my guys, he'll walk in, and suddenly that LCpl is looking behind him at the creeper who's looking at the tool drawer he just counted. I've told them repeatedly that it's my crew, therefore my problem if he has a problem with a way that I run it, but it doesn't keep everything from grinding to a halt when he comes in. Fucking weirdo. Anyway, he has no redeeming traits, but he can't get fired because this is the government.
There was a girl on my team, up until about 3 months ago, who was the epitome of what Frylock described. She was both a productivity killer and a fun sponge. She was unfortunate looking which made it worse. She'd either relentlessly complain about how hard work was and how stressed out she was, or alternatively boast about how good at her job she was. She was mediocre and a drag on every team. To compound matters, when we were out at work functions, she would get absolutely trashed and either cry about how much her life sucked, drag people into mind numbing work conversations, or drunkenly try to make out with every guy in sight, which given her appearance was terrifying. Oh yeah, she once wore a sequined blazer to a client meeting and attempted to talk over 2 different managers a level up from her.