The seven habits of highly anal employees

July 8, 12:52 AMLife in the Cubicle ExaminerDudley B. Dawson

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Anal-eaze is also a language spoken
by anal employees.

Every office has an overly orderly employee.  A person who is compulsive to a fault.  They mystify colleagues, and their behavior is often driven by imaginary fears.

If you fall into more than three of the habits below, Dr. Dawson recommends a visit to your primary care physician. 

1. Trial commutes. 
Anal employees need everything in perfect order.  This means showing up to work at the same time everyday.  But how do you show up at exactly 8am on your first day of work?  After all, work commutes can be highly variable depending on traffic.  Anal employees figured out long ago that you give yourself several days between jobs.  These days are specifically reserved for new job preparation.  Among other preparation, an anal employee will actually perform several "trial run commutes" to their new job location before determining the optimal departure time.

2. Hand sanitizer displayed prominently in their cube. 
Anal employees cannot operate without clean hands.  A few wipes distributed for free during the H1N1 scare will last most employees an eternity.  An anal employee buys hand sanitizer in bulk-sized jars that are only comparable to the Sam's Club Utz cheese ball container.

3. Proofreading emails multiple times before sending. 
There are very few scenarios at the workplace in which emails require any proofreading.  Perhaps one review is acceptable in the right context. Anal employees think otherwise.  They worry about everything and seek perfection to a fault.  They'll spend hours drafting an email that should take 3-5 minutes.  These habits only boost the importance of highly effective slackers.

4. Opening computer applications in the same order each day. 
Anal employees are similar to infants.  To remain content, they require repetition and consistency.  One of the more bizarre habits of anal employees is a fixation on having commonly used applications appear in the same order on their task bar each day.  They must have Outlook as the first application in the task bar followed by a set of bizarre internal rules that define the order in which the applications should appear.  Upon accidentally opening an application in the wrong order, an anal employee will close down every application and start over.  One can only imagine how many complaints Microsoft has received from anal employees because Windows lacks a feature to drag and drop the position of open applications in the task bar.

5. Parking their car crooked in the parking lot. 
Anal employees typically have an unhealthy distrust of all their colleagues. Taking up 2-3 spots in the parking lot by parking crooked is just one example.  Anal employees took the advice of Smokey the Bear and extended it to all scenarios in their life, including the prevention of door dings.  A door ding is a complete loss for anal employees, resulting in the purchase of a new car within a couple of weeks.  

6. Speaking anal-eaze. 
When more than one anal employee is involved in a meeting, the results are disastrous.  Business meetings only come to a successful end when the participants are willing to say "OK" while in the back of your mind thinking "This is completely BS but I really don't give a [expletive] anymore." Anal employees are incapable of doing so.  Their disorder results in a series of comments known as anal-eaze.  These comments typically evoke silent cursing among all participants who were anxiously anticipating an end to the meeting.

7. Scripted conference calls. 
The fear of not having a conference call organized down to the sentence is enough to drive an anal employee to the loony bin.  The difficult aspect for anal employees is that scripting a conference call can often take as long as drafting a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel.  When participants ask questions that sway from the drafted script, you can usually hear them rapidly flipping through notebook paper.  There's a sign post ahead.  Next stop: The Anal Meltdown Zone.

Are you aware of additional habits typical of anal employees?  Add them in the comments section below.

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'Seven Habits' is a recurring article appearing in Dudley B. Dawson's Life in the Cubicle column at completely random moments.
View the Seven Habits of: Highly Effective Slackers | Highly Annoying Emailers | Disrespectful Work Poopers | Morbidly Obese Coworkers | Typical Bad Managers | Highly Effective Interns | Defective Conference Call Leaders | Incapable Technotards | Highly Anal Employees | Highly Arrogant Employees | Highly Disengaged Employees

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