Previously I had written about the proliferation of snakes everywhere. As much as I wish snakes made up the totality of the types of negative people, there are unfortunately a menagerie of pests to describe a menagerie of types of negative people. These include: leeches, crabs in a bucket, rats, vultures, and weasels.
1. Leeches
Leeches are people who see others as people to be used, and drain others of their time, money and resources without giving anything back in return. Leeches have a very black and white view of relationships — in the sense unless others are only there to serve their needs. Leeches will take and take and take. Leeches are quite insidious because at first they might seem incredibly harmless at first — asking for small favors — but will continue to push the boundary of what is comfortable or what you can give.
Example: There was an ex-friend of mine who I had not talked to in 3 years since University reach out randomly to me over LinkedIn to ask about my experience in Tech. This ex-friend was looking into transitioning into tech and so I decided to have a video chat with that ex-friend. After my video chat I shared a plethora of computer science resources and gave directions on how to get started.
Fast forward to about a year of chatting with this ex-friend, touching base every now and then, all my ex-friend did was tell me about how she was constantly the victim and nothing she ever did was her fault. She would send me all these “woe is me” types of messages to try and guilt me to help her out more when I made it very clear about my time availabilities. My boundaries weren’t respected. One day she told me she had gotten into a rather competitive (5% acceptance rate) coding boot camp, a few days later told me people were jerks to her and was going to another one.
I advised her to do a bit more research into the programs she was looking into — and she sent me a message along the lines of “I did! I looked into all the different programming languages!” Simply looking into the programming languages shows an incredibly shallow understanding of tech and showed me just how little effort she made into looking into the programs. Additionally, over the course of the entire year my ex-friend had made absolutely zero effort in learning the material I had sent. She made it seem like she wanted me to help hand-hold her step by step through her transition towards tech — all the while making no effort to help herself.
I simply told her that the friendship wasn’t rewarding to me and left. Had I continued the friendship, I imagine myself getting so drained by someone who wasn’t willing to help herself.
2. Crabs in a Bucket
Crabs in a bucket are people who embody the phrase “if I can’t have it, neither can you”. These persons are only comfortable with conformity — all my friends have to be exactly like me in terms of status, in terms of hobbies, in terms of outward success. Crabs in a bucket refers to the phenomena of when one crab trying to escape the bucket all the other crabs pull that crab right back down.
Example: Many friend groups embody crabs in a bucket. Each person in the friend group has to have certain attributes which all more or less conform. The friends will love you if you succeed, as long as you don’t succeed too much.
3. Rats
Rats are people who gossip. Rats are people with loose lips. Rats love to spread gossip and to judge and to shit talk behind people’s back.
I use the term rat because rats are commonly known to spread diseases. I believe gossip and misinformation can be thought of as a type of disease.
4. Vultures
Vultures are people who try and steal credit from others to be perceived as better and be rewarded with outward gain . Vultures are people who are obsessed with how others perceive them. There are many tactics Vultures can use, such as outward flattery, back stabbing deceit — at the end of the day, Vultures have one end goal and that’s to make themselves look better and to get themselves into a better position.
Example: There might be vultures in your work place or even your team. A member of your team might want to take credit for all your work in hopes of landing that next promotion while throwing you under the bus.
5. Weasels
Weasels are people I’d describe as social climbers. The modern phrase to describe a weasel is a “Clout-chaser”. A weasel will selectively choose his or her friends based on the fame they can acquire by association. A weasel is purely focused on gain by association from someone else.
On the Menagerie of Pests
The reality is snakes are everywhere. However, leeches, crabs in a bucket, rats, vultures and weasels are also people you need to watch out for. If you won’t look out for yourself, the menagerie of pests will surely love to take advantage of you.
