If work was sex, I’d be giving Sienna Miller a very very good run for her money.

Without blowing my own trumpet and inflating my ego to the size of David Beckham’s greatest asset, his family, in the space of one year, I have stared and scarred nine very different workplaces.

So while I don’t claim to be able to do things like decipher your gender, especially if you’re a world champion athlete, I can help demystify the complexities of workplace personalities.

Think back to the first time you walked into the office. You could smell her Channel number five perfume from The Reject Shop, you could feel the floor shake as others tried to run away form her – and you could most definitely hear her hyena-like laugh. Yep, it’s the classic loud workplace slut. When everyone came over to your desk during lunch to say, “welcome”, she was opening up (in more ways than one) about come of a different kind. And when news came out about Bill Clinton’s affair, she said, “I would never screw someone in a blue dress.”

Then there’s the office clown who can’t tone it down. He probably has the same breakfast as Kyle Sandilands every morning. No, not a double bacon and cheese muffin with hash browns and hotcakes – I mean, two over-sized servings of stupidity. If there’s a button to be pushed or statement to disagree with, trust potty-mouthed spoilt child to be all over it. In this kid’s world, making the managing director grind his teeth is like winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And to him, since the Nobel Peace Prize is all about peace – why don’t beauty pageant entrants go in it too?

A day-to-a-page diary, a week-to-a-page diary and a financial year diary are what our next character has in her handbag without fail. She’s the workaholic. She spends more time in the office than with her online boyfriend from Botswana and she blushes every time someone says “over time”. As the world stopped in 1945 to witness the nuclear bomb drop on Nagasaki, this little bookworm marvelled at the invention of the microwave and what this meant to cutting down lunch time.

Finally, unless you worked on the cast of Seinfeld, every workplace has a token hottie. She’s the reason guys crash into walls when perving and walking and he’s the reason girls are refreshing their facebook pages for the latest stalker info. Let’s face it. We hate these types. They distract us from our work, they remind us of what we don’t have and they probably slept with the boss to get the job. Second thought, not so jealous. They are the workplace porn stars: leave nothing to the imagination, rely on their looks, you can find them on the internet and they tend to start looking generic.

So when it comes to these typical workplace characters, it’s easy to dismiss them as boring and one-dimensional. But weren’t they also the easiest to rack up conversation with? All you had to do was mention booze, a prank, deadlines or diets. After all, we’ve come to know what to expect from them and some how value this consistency. The clichés become our safe go-to people. Why else do you think Mel and Kochie still have their jobs after all these years?