It is mid-morning on a Thursday and I am sitting hunched in the reception area of my office building. I am trying not to attract attention as I am engaged in espionage – I am spying on people as they come in and out.

Receptionists, I’ve often thought, are an underused resource. They witness the behaviour of people at moments when they think they are unobserved, and can therefore spot the rude and the nasty – as well as the jolly good sort – faster and more accurately than the rest of us.

I have never understood why these impressions are not widely used in hiring, in promotion or in anything where character plays a part.

Last week I heard of a property company in Mayfair that deploys its receptionist in this way. The chief executive has developed a system where the woman at the front desk (who has worked with him for years) greets guests, offers refreshments and then, the minute the visitor has stepped into the lift to meet the boss, fires off an email reporting that Mr X did not say thank you when offered coffee, Mr Y did not meet her eye, or – rudest of all – that Mr Z arrived talking loudly into his phone and barely broke off to give his name.

In property – where a deal can still be clinched on a handshake – such espionage ought to be particularly valuable. There is no scientific evidence that it works, though the company in question appears to be doing very nicely indeed.

Generally civilised

So I sit in the

Financial Times’

reception and wait. Most of the people who go in and out are colleagues; half of whom greet the receptionist as they pass while the rest do not. I note the greeters are the same people whom I have found on long acquaintance to be generally civilised.

Those who march in silence past the desk are a more mixed group, made up of introverts, members of the awkward squad and the odd nasty-piece-of-work.

I am not the first to see this reception test as a good way of sorting out corporate sheep from goats. The senior partner of a City law firm used to make prospective partners mime how they came into the office in the morning, and those whose routine did not include a friendly “good morning” to the receptionist were either turned down for partner or were told they would have to learn better manners.

Of the visitors who arrive at my office, many could do with such a lesson. One man, when asked to spell his last name, rattles off the letters with contempt, his eyes fixed on a point three feet above the receptionist’s head. Imperious, I think. Hierarchical. Another guest peers around to see what the receptionist is typing to ensure the spelling of her name is correct. Control freak, I conclude.

A third man comes in, coldly gives his name and saunters over to sit down, taking off his coat to show how at home he feels. Entitled, I decide. When the person he is seeing greets him, he leaps up, all warmth and charm. I have got his number: he’s political. An operator.

After a while patterns start to emerge. On being told to take a seat, the relaxed do as they are told, while the anxious stand, some uncomfortably close to the desk, or worse, pace up and down the marble floor.

The super-anxious cannot wait more than two minutes without retuning to the desk to ask if the receptionist has forgotten to announce their presence.

The security pass also offers a personality test. When handed the plastic card on a string, the obedient hang it round their necks, while rebels stuff it in a pocket.

When it comes to using it to operate the electronic barrier there is an inverse relationship between seniority and effectiveness. Many of the most important people fail to follow the advice on where to put the card; high marks go to those who laugh off incompetence, lower marks to those who fly into a rage and glare at the receptionists as if it were all their fault.

The final test is when the meeting is over and the guest is on the way out. Most people hand the pass back and say goodbye, but a rude few sling it across at the receptionist without a word.

The terminally scatty leave the building with the passes still in their pockets.

I ask our security guards if they think they can tell a lot about the people in the building from how they enter and leave it; they all say they can.

Character analysis

One tells me he’s had some training in character analysis – he used to work at the magistrates’ court. Defendants would turn up at reception in gangs, scowling and fighting, sometimes with knives in their pockets – only to turn meek once in front of a magistrate. Who was guilty and who was not was pretty clear, he said.

The law may prevent such details being used in court but there is nothing in any corporate code that says rudeness and impatience in the reception area cannot be taken down in evidence and used against us. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited