Thursday 24 March 2011

It's official, I'm a Peacock



I've done the official test and my personality clearly stated that I'm a Peacock. This isn't just some little quiz that you get on the back of '17' magazine, this is a genuine bonafide test proved by Scientists and everything.

I had another training session yesterday. This one was on Communication Skills and lasted the whole day. We talked about a lot of pretty interesting communication stuff but in the afternoon, we got to have a quiz on our personalities! Yeay!

I like a good personality quiz. The previous ones I had done had told me that the Spice girl I was most like was Baby Spice and Lee is the most likely guy from Blue that would date me (It was Duncan but I went back and changed my answers until I got Lee). Now, as you can probably tell from the topic of these quizzes, the last time I filled one of these in, I was still going through puberty but I remember enjoying them greatly. So you can imagine my excitement when our trainer suggested an actual real life official quiz.

First he made us answer a lot of questions about how we managed our time and what we thought of the people around us, then there was the adding up of points and finally (to prove the high classiness of this quiz) we had to plot our score on a graph in order to get our result.

There were four types of personality that were available to have (I bet you didn't realise it was so limited). Each of these personalities were given a bird name to help identify them.

There was:

The Dove Personality


If you have the dove personality, it means that you

A: Love love
B: Hate indifference
C: Can't cope with conflict

The Owl Personality


If you have the Owl personality, it means that you

A: Love order
B: Hate chaos
C: Can't cope with disorganisation

The Eagle Personality


If you have the Eagle personality, it means that you

A: Love winning
B: Hate losing
C: Can't cope with people's emotions

And then there was the personality I fell under.

The Peacock Personality


For everyone who has this personality it means that you

A: Love attention
B: Hate being ignored
C: Can't organise anything to save your life.

hmmmm.

When I initially heard this, I spent a while trying to work out whether I was offended or not.

As it was, the bottom one simply wasn't true. I'm a PA and thus it is my job to be stupidly organised for myself and the Consultant I assist. What's more, I actually love doing it! Having a spreadsheet and filing system for everything I do literally gives me chills and gets me emotionally through the day. (I find it to be a good outlet for my (L)OCD tendencies as it enables them and also pays me for them at the same time!)

So the third one I dismissed immediately but the first two?

If my family or anyone who knew me at all had been in the room, they would have been nodding fervently in agreement but at the same time... is this how I'm to be defined?

Looking back at my childhood to teenage years I would have to agree entirely that I was an attention seeking... "large character." But over the last couple of years I have mellowed out somewhat. Apparently not enough however to constitute me being anything other than our colourful bird friend.

Just as I was inwardly counselling myself in this shock revelation, the trainer moved onto the next section: "How do you ask a favour from each of these personalities?"

I found this answer easy for the other three personalities and eagerly gave my suggestions.

For the Doves of this world, you have to approach them with a personable nature. Inquire about their day, ask them about their life, treat them nicely and once you've got them in a nice happy place, you weasel in your request.

For the Owls, it's all about going in there prepared with all the facts and information clearly laid out, stressing to them how much you need someone who can solve this issue.

For the Eagles, there is no beating around the bush. You go in, ask the question in the littlest amount of words you can think whilst getting in all the information they need.

For the Peacock though, I had to be told the correct way to approach "us" and when I did hear it, it took all I had not to stand up and protest.

Apparently, in order to get a favour out of a Peacock you need to turn everything into a drama. Using words like "You'll be saving the day if you do this.." and "I will ensure to tell your boss just how well you did if you can do this for me..."

I couldn't quite get my head around it, I refused to believe that I could be so easily manipulated by being told the world was going to end if I didn't help with a task. I was all ready to say that I had never responded positively to someone asking me a favour in that way when something stopped me, it was a memory.

There was a day last week when someone had come to me all in a fluster and asked me to fix something that someone else had messed up. I remembered the feeling of elation as I was told that I was the only one who would be able to fix this mess.

My mind then ran to just the day before when someone had congratulated me for my efficient work and told me that they had never seen it done that fast. That comment had freaking made my day, and why? Because I had felt special and unique. I remembered all this and instead of arguing my case to the trainer, I slumped into my seat, crossed my arms and scowled... I was a sodding Peacock.

I'm not sure why this offended me so much. I guess it just sounds a little superficial but then if I really look at my life seriously, I couldn't be any other bird and here's a list of why.

1. Last week I accidentally deleted one of my 'True Blood' episodes from my series link, leaving me with an unfinished series and I nearly cried at the injustice of it.

2. I quite regularly leave myself dramatic messages on my whiteboard for my own amusement only, as no one else will see them (This is the one exception, here's the one I wrote last night).



3. I wrote this post... and this one... well actually pretty much all of them are fairly Peacockesque.

Fine.

I'm a Peacock.

I'll deal with it.

PS: If you want to have a go yourself it's called the DOPE test and can be found on google, Happy bird matching!

No comments:

Post a Comment