Drunk with Power/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A newly-promoted person begins throwing their weight around and acting arrogant to their colleagues, with bad results.

  • Straight: Alice gets a promotion and immediately begins treating Bob and Carol like dirt.
  • Exaggerated: Alice gets a promotion and immediately begins treating Bob and Carol like slaves, expecting them to carry her around on a throne and whipping them when they step out of line.
  • Downplayed: Alice gets a promotion and becomes kind of a jerk, but otherwise still the same.
  • Justified: Alice has never had any authority or power over anyone else before, and has gotten a little over-excited with it.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice, previously a bullying supervisor to Bob and Carol, is demoted, thus forcing her to develop humility.
    • Alternatively: Alice gets a promotion, and suddenly everyone starts treating her like dirt.
    • Alternatively: Alice, a Jerkass - but skilled - worker, is promoted and becomes a nicer person, since a supervisor would have to be polite.
  • Subverted: Alice is promoted, and everyone expects her to start throwing her weight around; instead, she acts as nice and friendly as she always has been.
  • Double Subverted: Alice is promoted, and everyone expects her to start throwing her weight around; instead, she acts as nice and friendly as she always has been. Because she's secretly plotting to screw everyone over in order to get herself more power and influence.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice is given an extremely minor and insignificant promotion, causing her to throw her weight around to a ridiculous degree.
    • Alternatively, Alice becomes literally drunk with power... In addition to being pushy and egotistical, her speech becomes slurred and she can't walk in a straight line. After she's demoted, she has a hangover.
    • Alice's promotion results in her developing a God complex.
    • It turns out that "throwing your weight around" is actually in her new job description and she apologizes for it.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's behaviour gradually isolates everyone she cared about and who cared about her, leaving her with nothing but her career success to validate her life. She soon discovers that it's Lonely at the Top and that she is miserable and alone, a failure despite her success.
  • Reconstructed: Her success brings her a lot of money and power, and that's all she really cares about, so she's happy enough.
  • Averted: Alice gets a promotion. Things continue much as they always have.
  • Enforced: "Wouldn't it be funny to see Alice become a complete tyrant? Let's give her a promotion!"
  • Lampshaded: "Who exactly thought promoting Alice was a good idea? She always goes mad with power whenever she's promoted."
  • Invoked: "Now that I've been promoted, I can finally do whatever I want around here!"
  • Defied: "Come on, it's just a slightly different job; why would I let it change me that much?"
  • Discussed: "I don't care how sweet Alice usually is; this whole 'promotion' business is only going to end in tears for all of us."
  • Conversed: "Geez, is anyone in these stories capable of getting a promotion without turning into a complete asshat?"

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