Brownnosers verse hard workers

August 2008

Imagine you are at a formal dinner at your boss’s house. Seated at the table are other co-workers who are all gunning for a promotion, to be the next senior executive, a job that you have aspired to obtain for a long time. Do you either talk about work issues, showing respect and hard work through your conversation or do you ‘chat-up’ your boss and talk about life, love and personal issues? This question as popped up for me many times, in a sense, it’s actually becoming a major issue in my life.

Throughout my life I have witnessed people who have worked hard and other people who try get further in life and their career by ‘brownnosing’. By ‘brownnosing’ I mean, people who become ‘friendly’ with either their acquaintances or bosses or lecturers to try get further in their university marks, careers or life. In stead of putting their heads down, working hard and showing respect for their bosses, they would rather sit and make friendly conversation to become ‘closer’ with their bosses. The concern I have is - does a person get further in life by being overly friendly or by working hard? In my opinion, I have always believed that when approaching your superior you must show respect for that person and I feel that respect is lost when one tries to be overly friendly. There is a line that should not be crossed. By becoming friends with a superior it is almost like the employee places him or herself on the same level as the superior. In the career world I think there should be boundaries - boundaries that separate business-relationships and friend-relationships.

I am a hard worker, not a brownnoser. I show respect where it needs to be shown and always have a polite hello and goodbye. I feel that getting to close to my superior is inappropriate. But with the experiences I have had recently, I found myself thinking about whether or not I should be a brownnoser rather than a hard worker. Upon speaking to people about this issue, I would ask them whether or not it is actually a good thing to be a brownnoser. Do you get further in life by working hard? Do bosses notice brownnosers more than hard workers or vice versa? Let me explain my experiences more clearly…

I started work as a journalist at a professional company in the beginning of 2008. I would work exceptionally hard, help co-workers out when needed, I would hand in articles before deadlines and always work longer than asked. Yes, I would definitely call myself a hard worker. With my editor, I would not talk about personal matters and always gave the polite hello and goodbye. There were other youngsters working at the company, around the same age as me and I would watch them day after day performing their ‘brownnosing routines’. They would go up to the editor, talk about life, love, personal matters whilst laughing and chatting away. The editor would respond well to this and chat along with them, but I secretly think that she would find it a bit too much sometimes and get annoyed. My young co-workers would spend hours talking to the editor, not even glimpsing at their work. So, there I was, sitting alone at my desk drilling at my work. I began feeling left out as I certainly wasn’t in the ‘click’. Months into my job, I became aware that the editor called my co-workers by their nicknames and gave them more benefits then me. With this awareness I tried to become friendlier with my editor, but couldn’t bring myself to be a brownnoser as I thought it was disrespectful and inappropriate. It irritated me that my co-workers were getting further in their career than I was, hence why I wanted to change from a hard worker to a brownnoser.

In another instance this year, in my journalism lecture at university, I became aware of a few ‘brownnosers’ or ‘suck-ups’, as I would call them. They would continuously talk to the lecturer, laugh, answer all the questions in class and not before long, the lecturer would call them by name. The lecturer would continuously name these ‘suck-ups’ in class and give them awards for their (apparently) good work. Then I started to think… If the lecturer knew them by name, then surely she would now their assignments and tests as their name would be written in the name line. Because she liked these students, then she obviously would give them extra marks. She only focused on these few students and totally disregarded the rest.

I’m sure you have experienced some type of favouritism in school, university or your work place, hey? So, it is better to be a brown noser than a hard worker? I still have no answer to this question… Maybe its about balance?