Sitcomparison
Which sitcom does your workplace most resemble?Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? We have no idea, but we do know that life in HR can seem eerily similar to that of a sitcom at times. In fact, HR is really the sitcom career.
Sitcoms are artificial situations full of dysfunctional people which soon degenerate into farce. Sound familiar? What else is HR other than attempting to manage dysfunctional people, while also secretly laughing about it at the same time? Well, laughing or crying.
We’ve thought about a few of the more popular workplace sitcoms out there (UK bias) and how they divide into office archetypes that may be familiar to you. Are you working at any one of these?
Small and Abusive
e.g. Black Books, Fawlty Towers
They say we hurt the ones we love. Working in a small close-knit office may mean an understanding atmosphere and a family-feel, but more than a few tyrannical decisions. There may or may not be a solitary, bottom-of-the-heap intern onto whom all the worst jobs are piled.
Management is either insane, alcoholic, or both. Grievous HR transgressions may end up getting a free pass, because that’s an awful lot of hassle. To say that things are a little informal would be an understatement.
Miniature breakups and makeups within the staff due to a killer case of cabin fever are inevitable, but generally things are usually back to the status quo for the next episode, or in this case, working day.
Manny: I won’t do it.
Bernard: That is a pity. Well, I hope you enjoy your weekend repricing every single individual book in the shop, because they’ve all just gone up by a penny.
Collaborative
e.g. M*A*S*H, Scrubs
Getting things done with a smile, and only a sprinkling of drama. You’ve ended up in some kind of workplace idyll with co-workers you (mostly) get along extremely well with. You get to help people and feel good about doing it.
Working in a hospital is merely optional.
Half your days end in some kind of heartwarming moral, the other half are filled with strange, otherworldly laughter from no discernible source. All the HR issues revolve around sad accidents and minor incidents rather than malicious intent. Fortunately, things always work out in the end.
J.D.: I want you to know, if I ever need surgery again, I want you inside of me.
Turk: I wanna be the one inside of you.
Confusing Bureaucracy
e.g. The Office, The IT Crowd
Working in a corporate machine and just trying to keep things together. The people upstairs are strange and don’t understand you, or perhaps anything. A lot of surreal things happen that you’re forced to take in your stride, because you have no choice.
You firmly believe Kafka wrote non-fiction, and your IT staff quite possibly live in a secret basement, or in closets. Awkward humour and misunderstanding is your bread and butter. There is a sense that people’s hearts are in the right places, mostly, but most of the time everybody talks past one another.
HR issues may plumb the uncomfortable depths of personal hygiene and basic social skills.
Douglas Reynholm: I like you, Jen. You don’t ask questions. A lot of people would be confused as to why I invited them up here then asked them to leave, not you. A person’s got to have a lot of backbone to allow herself to be ordered around like that. You’ve got spunk and balls, and I like that in a woman.
Political
e.g. The Thick of It, Yes, Minister
Nothing personal — it’s just business. In your office there’s a pole greasier and larger than the ones you get in fire stations. It’s about doing your job right and achieving your ambitions, and if you have to climb over the skulls of your enemies [ed. co-workers], then that’s what you’re going to do.
Fortunes rise and fall all around you, and you just have to keep your eyes front and get through another day.
Your role in HR mostly revolves around tempering the amount of pure evil permissible from staff. Nobody is going to catch you if you trip, so you aren’t there to catch them either. When it comes to questions of “who’s side am I on”, you won’t hesitate to say employer over employee.
Sir Humphrey: What I want is irrelevant, Bernard, it’s up to you – what do you want?
Bernard: I want to have a clear conscience.
Sir Humphrey: A clear conscience?
Bernard: Yes!
Sir Humphrey: I see. And when did you acquire this taste for luxuries?
Incompetent
e.g. Red Dwarf, Only Fools and Horses
The good ship Gainful Employment somehow keeps on floating, despite disasters and wacky occurrences happening with alarming regularity. All your job adverts stress that no day is ever the same, which most people interpret as a dynamic and stimulating role, but is mostly because something ridiculous goes wrong roughly daily and there is a panic to fix it.
You’re taking on water exactly as fast as you can bail out, which leaves you constantly busy, with no time but anything but the basics.
Your HR crises sound mostly made up and may have been lifted straight from a soap opera. Each one is more convoluted than the last, and human beings have sadly lost the ability to surprise you in any way, shape, or form.
Todhunter: Why can’t you two get on?
Lister: You see, I try, sir. I’m not an insubordinate man by nature. I try and respect Rimmer and everything but it’s not easy, ‘cos he’s such a smeghead!
Rimmer: Did you hear that, sir? Lister, do you have any conception of the penalty for describing a superior technician as a smeghead?
Todhunter: [chuckling] Oh, Rimmer… You are a smeghead!
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