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In the modern workplace, everyone wants to stand out as a leader. Everyone wants to be respected and admired by their coworkers. This is normally achieved through hard work, dedication and good interpersonal skills, but I’m going to give you a few shortcuts based on ancient, unquestionable principles of dominance.
1. Use your appearance to stand out as much as possible.
Have you ever seen a peacock that is wildly successful but also brown and unimpressive-looking? No. You haven’t. Unfortunately, brightly colored clothing is pretty commonly available to humans, so you’re going to need to go one step further if you want to be noticed.
Demonstrate your superiority by wrapping your body in colorful, flashing lights and display your mastery of fire by carrying sparklers with you to important meetings.
Eye contact can be used in a number of ways to assert your dominance. For example, if you make eye contact with a coworker, you must not look away first as that is a sign of submission. Hold their gaze for as long as necessary to make them submit to you.
3. Total lack of eye contact also sends a clear signal
If you cross paths with a subordinate human, you must make every effort not to acknowledge them because they are beneath you. Ignore them and they will know their place.
4. Surprise your rivals with symbolic displays of authority
In the wild, animals often display their dominance by mounting. But in this day of sexual harassment lawsuits, it is best to avoid such a display, no matter how effective it is. Luckily, there are other physical displays of dominance at your disposal. For example, wolves often firmly place a paw on the shoulders of another pack member to show their superiority. You may use this gesture as much as you like to sneak up the workplace hierarchy.
5. Monopolize important resources and use them as bargaining tools
If you control the resources, you have the power.
6. Claim new territory with scent
The size of your territory is directly related to your level of dominance. To acquire new territory as your own, it is important to use a scent marking to alert others that you have staked your claim. Liberally apply your perfume, cologne or favorite Febreze scent to others’ things to show them that the things now belong to you.
So go forth, brave leader. Don’t take “no” or “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” for an answer. You’ve worked hard for this and it’s about time you claimed your rightful position in the workplace hierarchy.
I can’t even explain how hysterically I am laughing right now. People are looking at me funny..
Allie, that blue dress with lights and sparklers — Christmas tree ornament??
I would totally buy that as a Christmas ornament!
yes please!
I would TOTALLY buy that too!
Oh god yes.
Also, make sure you have a clean vagina.
I like to spin around in circles and slobber, while twitching my left shoulder (twitching the right shoulder doesn’t seem to quite have the same effect) and hobbling, slightly favoring the right leg. Yes, people run away screaming; yes, people stare and gasp; yes, the ambulance arrives, but what everyone fails to realize, is that I have declared ultimate dominance. Whatever space I happen to be occupying is ALL MINE!!!! Don’t you see how dominating that is just by the number of exclamation points after the word ‘mine’?
Allie — you should seek a lawyer to defend your prenatal patent rights. Even if the idea was conceived not long after conception!
Allie — you should seek a lawyer to defend your prenatal invention even if it was conceived just after conception!
BTW – I *love* http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/u-b-hatin.html – that is genius
I don’t know what’s funnier – the blog post or the grammar comments from your readers. Nerds!!
INTIMIDATION STARE eeriy resembles the look on Special Dog’s face in your blog. Hmmm, perhaps Special Dog is more equipped than first thought??
(Am I allowed to reference your blog here or is that bad Gloss ettiquette?)
p.s. I hate it when babies crawl up to me at work (on a construction site). I’m all “pffft, whatever, I’m not acknowledging you… and put on your damn hard hat”
You missed a common but always effective tool. No matter who is talking (especially if they think they are your superior) you speak MUCH LOUDER AT ALL TIMES, and when you run out of words, LAUGH VERY LOUDLY so as to effectively drown everyone else out and assert your dominance. Works very well in important meetings with the CEO and other misguided people who think they are your superiors. The best part is, you can add the “cut-in” and stop anyone else who dares to speak in your presence after they get only one or two words out. Add strategic deployment of this tool if you really dislike certain people and you can send so many unspoken messages that you will become God in the eyes of all the others who hate the person too, but are too polite/civilized/normal to do anything about it!
Allie- My mom (who loves your blog btw) keeps a water gun in her desk at work. If anyone lurks, loiters, or shows any signs of trying to be more dominant in her office, she busts it out and squirts them. No joke…people seriously dont know what to do after that.
I don’t know your mom, but I already love her.
omg. im so doing that when someone gets my sharpies. sharpies are like gold boulion in my office.
Oh Allie, I love the intimidation stare and I am dying to try it out at work. I’m a teacher, so it will also work great on children. Does that make me a bad person? Hmmm…
And never underestimate the power of urine in the workplace.
You forgot food dominance. The woman who makes the best dark chocolate cherry cake controls who gets it and gains dominance. We finally got the good flat screen monitors by having said lady refuse to make her cake when the big boss came to visit as long as we were stuck with CRT’s. He caved so fast, he all but laid on the floor tummy up.
Please make a shirt with the intimidation stare. It would be the best ever.
Actually, it is now acceptable (according to the powers-that-be, aka MLA) to split infinitives and use the plural third person pronoun to refer to singular people when their sex is not known. And MLA sprayed Febreze all OVER the English language, so we have to listen to… them? It? Oh, forget it.
Hey, what about in a little less civilized work place? I’m in an all male unit and we work with guns and boats and we use excessive profanity and we eat meals that come out of little bags and live in tents… We fight and wrestle and play fun jokes on each other. I like the concept of the “intimidation stare” however, we already spend a lot of time practicing in the mirror with that and we have graduated to a level where flexing and sometimes knifes are needed to get the desired effect.
In this case, you may need to implement fire. You could also use the boats to battle one another. I think that would be the most awesome option.
Boat jousting seems to be the solution here.
I’ve found that dousing co-workers in gasoline and lighting them on fire is a very effective way of asserting dominance.
Dangerous? Yes. (You have to be careful not getting any gasoline on yourself, especially since you’ll have to use open flame to light up the co-worker). Harsh? Certainly. Insane? Probably. But remember, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Especially so if you’re in the hot dog business.
Using “them” as a singular pronoun in order to avoid specifying gender is an accepted practice. Jennifer.
Allie –
I know you care about grammar Alot. “A subordinate human” is singular. “Them” is plural.
I love your blog.
I know, I know, but the phrase “he or she” seems out of place in my writing style. It feels less jarring to just misuse “they/them” (and in my defense, the use of singular “they/them” is becoming more acceptable due to the lack of a gender-neutral, singular pronoun in the English language.)
While I care a great deal about proper grammar, I often find it necessary to break the rules a little bit in order to stick with my artistic voice. Every now and then an infinitive may be split, a conjunction may be used to start a sentence and a preposition may be used to end one – it’s just how I write.
However, I fully endorse the idea of knowing the rules before breaking them. This makes me feel at least a little less hypocritical for preaching proper grammar while abusing my own :)
Actually, many editors and grammarians have come out in support of using them instead of ‘him or her” as it is both simpler and more politically correct; there are people who don’t consider themselves a him or her, but both or neither.
I avoid this problem simply by making all of my subjects plural. It might not make sense but it’s politically correct and my grammar is impeccable!
;)