Every workplace has a distinct rhythm, an established pattern of how people relate to each other and how they get their jobs done.
That elusive aspect of the office, known as “company culture,” certainly has an effect on how things happen, along with each individual’s approach to their job.
A career coach revealed the 3 ‘buckets’ every employee falls into, based on their work style:
1. Employees who don’t do anything
A career coach and speaker named Tanya declared that people in the workplace fall into one of three buckets, with the first bucket being people who don’t do anything at all.
“We don’t even know how they got the job,” Tanya said of the people in this bucket.
She noted different ways these workers might have landed their jobs, either through nepotism, being personality hires, or just general grifters who know how to talk themselves into higher and higher positions on the corporate ladder.
“At the end of the year, you look at their job description, check off what they’ve done, maybe they’ve given you 50%,” she said. “They always have a story [about] why they can’t come in, they’re gonna be late, there’s something always happening, some drama in their life, but they somehow manage to keep that job without contributing much of anything.”
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Tanya distinguished between these workers and quiet quitters, noting that the people in bucket number one aren’t silently doing less work than they used to as a form of protest, but rather, “They’re lazy, unqualified, or connected.”
People in bucket number one exist “At all levels of the organization,” Tanya explained. “You can have people at entry level [or] on the executive team who don’t do anything but watch Netflix at work all day. They’re in Congress, they’re all over.”
The drag that these people create in terms of workflow most likely means that their co-workers end up with extra assignments, but for whatever reason, people in bucket number one avoid getting fired.
2. Employees who do the bare minimum
Tanya referred to people in the second bucket as “Bare minimum baddies [who] do their job.”
“At the end of the year, look at their job description; you can check off everything on that list. They’ve done it and done it well, but they’re not doing anything extra,” she said, at least not without a raise.
“They’re not staying late, and they’re not coming in early,” she continued.
Workers in bucket number two know the value of their time. They won’t do anything that’s not listed in their job description, but they’ll definitely get those tasks done and done well.
“They could do more,” Tanya said. “They probably used to do more, but they got burned. They’re traumatized from bad work experiences.”
She broke bucket number two down into further categorization, saying that bare minimum workers “Might be baby boomers who are just coasting to retirement.”
“Don’t ask these people to do anything else, but respect that they do what you pay them to do,” Tanya advised.
She described various situations that could lead someone into the territory of doing solely the bare minimum at work, explaining that they “might have a side hustle” or be a new mom who’s figuring out how to split her time between her job and her family.
“There’s a lot of reasons people just do their job and go home,” Tanya said.
All workers deserve at least some amount of grace, as long as they’re not harming other people on the team.
We never know what other people are going through that might shift their focus away from the workplace, and it’s more than okay to treat a job as just a job instead of your life’s passion.
3. High-achieving employees
Tanya put these workers on “Team do-the-most,” saying, “These are your high achievers or people who are just playing a corporate game.”
“Either they’re doing this because they love it or because they’re trying to get ahead and do the political stuff,” she said. “They’ll do their job, they’ll do some of your job, they’ll do some of their boss’s job.”
Tanya believes that the people in bucket three are either happy or on the verge of burning out.
She explained that some members of bucket three are “smarter than others in the group, because they know, ‘It’s not about how much I work, it’s about who I’m connected to.’”
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“The people who do the most work in this group are the ones that end up getting burned and not promoted, and then they become a bare minimum baddie,” she declared.
The amount of energy and dedication someone brings to their job can depend on various factors, some of which have nothing to do with the job itself and more to do with what’s going on in their lives outside work.
The 3 buckets aren’t necessarily static entities. Employees might shift from bucket to bucket, showing more dedication to their jobs in some moments over others.
We can’t pour from an empty cup. Whichever bucket you fall into, setting clear boundaries and doing what you need to care for yourself is always important.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango’s news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
