It's a jungle out there

Have you ever noticed that your work colleagues are fairly reminiscent of various jungle creatures collaborating against each other to create a corporate hell with fluorescent lighting, just for you to slog through traffic to reach every day.



Sometimes while my boss is talking to me, I try NOT to focus on her goatee wagging furiously and instead, I tune the sound of her shrill out and imagine her crouching down into a puma-like position, sprouting bob cat ears and streaking across the linoleum terrain to break up the office chimpanzees elbowing one another and giggling at the water cooler.


Also, on days when my morning is not completely dominated by unsuccessfully trying to hang my self with a piece of dental floss in one of the 1x1 office toilet cubicles, I like to cruise my Amazon and scope out my jungle brothers letting it all hang out in there respective departments.


Gorilla
Let us begin with the almighty office Gorilla.
Silverbacks are strong, dominant troop leaders. Each, typically leads a troop and is the center of the troop's attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop.
When challenged in the work place this colleague will scream, beat his chest, break computer monitors, bare his teeth, then charge forward.
These pearls of joy are famous for glancing at their watches when you arrive 1 minute late in the morning and knuckle walking through the corridors ferverently searching for ANYTHING to manage. They are also grumpy for the better part of most days because they not so secretly hate themselves for not actually having any kind of life outside of the office so to speak.
They like to spit mumbled snortings at you in the morning as an intended greeting right before they demand how far you are with the Brickfield Joint Venture deal so that they can enjoy watching you clap your gums together with your handbag still draped over your shoulder and your chair not even pulled out yet. All in all, an absolute delight to spend 80% of your week with.


Jaguar
The Jaguar is sleek and seductive and powerful.
This cunning big cat is most certainly the biggest enemy in your career but yet your most trusted confidante and most treasured wing man.
Whilst having been described as the kind of feline that pulverises its Amazon enemies with a deep throat bite and suffocation technique followed by a piercing of the skull and brain, I like to think it rather scrapes marks, urinates or defecates all over the entire office and then walks slowly down the forest path corridors between work stations, stalking conversations between prey.
The office jaguar attacks from cover and usually from a target's blind spot with a quick pounce on your promotion before you even knew you had it. The species' ambushing abilities are considered nearly peerless in both the corporate and animal kingdom because we are all so seduced by her beauty and sincerity that we almost never see her coming. She is the handful of salt at the bottom of your popcorn box and the ninja star in your back, and unfortunately the jaguar's elusive and inaccessible nature make it a difficult predator to detect swooning in for the sabotage, let alone study..


Boa Constrictor
The Boa constrictor is a large, heavy-bodied ambush predator that will often lie in wait for an appropriate prey to come along at which point they will attack.
This colleague is mean as a snake and hisses loudly and strikes repeatedly when threatened or disturbed.
He also bites in defence, and whilst this bite can be painful it is rarely dangerous because snakes don't actually have balls.
That being said unlike his lethal jaguar lunch buddy who will churn out a show stopping smile right before she twists a concealed butter knife into your neck, he is predictable and tired, and we know where we stand with him - which is nowhere. No surprises when he ambushes you in your team meeting or takes credit for your idea. This ssslithering ssssad-ass is ssssimply a ssssssssss LOSER.


Vampire Bats
These messengers of Satan are bats (never...) whose food source is your blood, sweat and tears.
They never actually thrive in the business world because they only just manage to NOT get fired by doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work from 8 to 5, whilst spending most of their time sucking the life out of unsuspecting naive do-gooder types who cruise around the office with blinkers on.
They also (quite cleverly actually) literally leech off of any and all resources at there disposal in the workplace and in life so to speak, and will even go so far as to stuff company toilet paper in the their handbags because it is, after all, FREE.
This corporate cretin is a somnolent animal which sleeps up to 18 hours a day but still manages to somehow run his private home business from his workstation. Like genuine vampire bats that only pluck up the energy to defecate about once a week near the same single tree that they live in and feed off, and then proceed to bury their excreta near the trunk of that tree to help nourish it. So this work parasite, in essence, lives off its own bullshit.

Termites
The termites are a group of eusocial soldiers with anatomical and behavioural specialisations, providing the strength and armour to undertake the labours of foraging, food storage, brood and nest maintenance and some defence duties. These are the worry warts who border on killing themselves for the job because they genuinely believe that the way in which their monthly stationery usage report is presented, makes all the DIFFERENCE. Now whilst Management love these dorks, all they really actually accomplish is making the rest of us regular joes look bad with their RA RA can-do high school musical attitude.
Having said that, they have actually unknowingly mastered the perfect harmonious equilibrium of not being ambitious or street smart enough to ever actually pose any threat of making any real progress in the business, but are yet just ambitious enough to want to OFF themselves if they can't manage to get their Excel spreadsheet columns aligned.
These types usually spend their time with their foot so far up the Manager's butt in an pathetic attempt to try to climb the corporate ladder, that his breath starts to smell like shoe polish.

Me, I think it's ludicrous to behave like Amazon creatures just because we feel we are failing miserably at trying to lead first world lives in a third world country. We are South Africa. Land of  monogamously challenged dancing presidents, the koeksister, and the Tokelosh, and home of the Springboks, Sponge-KNOB Vile-Pants Julius Malema and the BIG 5. If we are to try to emulate ANY animal-like behaviour, let it be that of the African Elephant.

African Elephant
The African Elephant is a symbol of wisdom, luck and loyalty and is THE master of appropriate action. They show tenderness, compassion and sorrow and yet on the rampage, they are protective and aggressive. Although they are known mostly for their size and shape, they also live in extremely advanced social organisations and have evoked a sense of fascination in human beings for centuries.

Perhaps the most enticing quality of the elephant is its undeniable similarity to us, manifested by the close bonds they form with family members, their communication, life span, the care of their young and their emotions. Elephants experience many of the same emotions as people do, ones that are usually restricted to being that of humans’, seldom seen in animals. They are capable of sadness, joy, love, jealousy, fury, grief, compassion and distress.

The elephant’s capacity for sadness and grief is truly unique amongst members of the animal world, as it is particularly complex in terms of emotions. While most animals do not hesitate to leave the weak and young behind to die, elephants are distressed by the situation, and continue to show signs of this grieving for extended periods of time.


Because elephants live in such close-knit herds and live for about as long as humans do, they form strong bonds with those around them. When these ones die, the rest of the herd mourns that death.


They are highly revered for their strength and power and their behaviour can teach us that that wise leadership, selfless discipline and tough unconditional love is the core of any working unit.


5 Business lessons we can learn from elephants

1. An elephant's skin is extremely tough and measures about an inch thick.  Lesson - Develop your own thick skin.
2. Elephants are born with fewer survival instincts than many other animals.  Lesson - Finding a good mentor with experience is critical.
3. Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence.  Lesson - Respect can take time to earn.
4. The elephant is pregnant for 22 months.  Lesson - slow and steady is not necessarily a bad thing.
5. Elephants display a wide variety of behaviours including those associated with music, art, altruism, play, use of tools, compassion and self awareness.  Lesson - a work/life balance is important.

Woodwinked  - over & out
For Noah Nightingale
xx