Jobsworth

So, imagine you have a toy and your friend wants to borrow it. But your mom says, “No, you can’t lend it to them because they might break it and then you’ll be sad.”

Now imagine that your mom is a person who has a job, and her job is to make sure rules are followed. Sometimes, people like your mom can take their job really seriously and enforce rules even when it doesn’t make sense or isn’t very nice.

When someone is a jobsworth, it means they are following rules very strictly, even when it doesn’t make sense or isn’t very nice. They want to feel important and powerful by following the rules, even if it makes people unhappy.

So, a jobsworth might be the person who won’t let you bring your water bottle in to the museum, even if you promise not to spill it or drink from it; or the person who won’t let you take your bike on the train even if there’s plenty of room.

It’s important to follow rules, but sometimes people who are jobsworths take it too far and don’t think about how their strict rule-following can hurt other people.