There are thousands of ways to get to know your colleagues, some fun, and some mundane, some forced, some purely sporadic. In reality, very few of us have the real time and patience to get to really know our colleagues, having to work with them is taxing enough, so learn to classify people, and fast, because like it or not they’ve already done it to you.

Also come to understand the dynamics or lack of them between two types of colleagues. As an example, take Permanent Staff vs. Temporary Staff (including contingent and contractors). They work well together, are complimentary, and exist in a strange paradox: Each envies the benefits of the other, but given the chance to swap they would choose to remain in their respective slots. It’s a case of job security vs. it’s my time: a sacrifice of one or the other depending on the side of the fence you work on.

Permanents seem to have a better deal: they are harder to dismiss, can receive holiday, sick and severance pay and bonuses, and promotions, but they have to abide by employers’ conditions. Conditions equals restrictions, causing resentment, so it’s no time that permanents are likely to work the system. Meanwhile, temporary staff are paid by the hour to do the work the permanents have learnt to tactfully avoid. Temporary staff are the safest option for all the demanding and/or banal jobs; temps are easy to hire (except for the expensive and their expertise), are malleable to tasks, and if they aren’t of any use, dismissible in a matter of minutes, proof that slavery is far from extinct, it has simply evolved into a lucrative business re-branded as ‘recruitment’. In the office permanents are probably there for the long run, until retirement with all its benefits, whereas temps are there for the day, and if they tow the line, they may work tomorrow. However, permanent staff, though smugly enjoying their job security (thanks to new laws they’re not so dismissible as in yesteryear, hence it’s safer to hire disposable temps), are restricted to a fixed amount of holiday time per year based on their status. In retaliation, some permanents treat their job as a second holiday; tasks can be stretched out to fill the time available until some higher authority kicks them in the shins. Permanents have the time and mental space to play political in the workplace for the long run, until of course, the higher authority instigates a purging of the dead wood. Now call in the temps to carry the load.