Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (13 page)

A survey of 2,000 employees by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK found that 20% had experienced some form of workplace bullying or harassment in the last two years.

I cannot stress enough how dangerous this can be, and how important it is not to just wait for it to get better. If you or someone you know is being bullied at work, act now.

Negative people

Got any chronic complainers where you work? It seems like every workplace has them — the people for whom the weather is always too warm or too cold, the boss is a jerk, the food is lousy, work sucks… No matter how good things get, they still only see the bad — and they go to huge lengths to point it out to everyone around them.

I’m not saying we should outlaw complaining; it’s possible to complain constructively. But we need to do something about the chronic, unconstructive complainers, because they tend to make everyone around them unhappy too. Negative people are highly contagious, and one chronic complainer can easily bring an entire department down.

There are several strategies that people typically use around complainers, none of which really work.

1. Cheering them up doesn’t work.

“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” “Come on, cheer up,” or “Time heals all wounds.”

This shows the complainer that you’re not taking their pain seriously. When you downplay a complainer’s pain, they will often complain even harder to convince you that their problems are very serious indeed.

2. Suggesting solutions doesn’t work.

“Why don’t you just…,” “Have you tried…,” or “You really ought to…”

The complainer’s problems are really serious and can’t be solved by a few smart-ass suggestions from you — or so they’ve convinced themselves. The more you try to suggest solutions, the harder they will work to convince you and themselves that these solutions could never possibly work for them.

3. Telling them to pull themselves together doesn’t work.

“Quit complaining and do something about it,” or one of my favourites, “You either want the problem or you want the solution.”

This is telling them that their problems are trivial and they just need to pull themselves together — not a good idea.

4. Complaining about the complainers doesn’t work.

“Damn, that Sally complains a lot doesn’t she?”

Guess what? You just became a complainer.

5. Ignoring/avoiding them doesn’t work.

This makes complainers clamour for attention, which usually makes people ignore them even more, creating a vicious circle.

6. Complaining along with them doesn’t work.

“You know what, you’re right — the boss is a jerk. And the weather sucks. In fact, everything sucks.”

This can seem kind of cosy because it creates bonding and an us-against-the-world feeling. Ultimately, though, it’s a bad idea because the more people complain, the less prone they are to do something about their problems.

I remember one of the first jobs I had where my manager was a complete dolt. My co-workers and I couldn’t start a meeting, go out for a beer, or just meet in the hallway without spending 15–20 minutes complaining about him and his stupid ways. But all those man-hours spent complaining changed nothing, and none of us ever did anything about it. We all just quit the company, one by one.

So what does work? How can we stop chronic complainers from their constant grumbling? Here’s a simple but very effective trick:

A friend of mine who’s a dentist told me about an elderly, grouchy patient of hers who, every time he came in for an appointment, would spend most of his visit complaining about the weather, his children, his car, taxes, society, and any other topic that might come up.

Now you might think, “Hey, she’s a dentist, fill his mouth with gauze and cotton and let’s see him complain then!” but my friend is a naturally happy person and would instead try to cheer him up. It didn’t work, it just made him complain even more.

So, I taught her this simple trick and the next time he came in for an appointment she was ready. Mr. Grouch sat in the chair and, as always, immediately started complaining.

After listening to his usual litany for a while my dentist friend said, with deep sympathy in her voice, “You know, that sounds terrible. I don’t know how you deal with all of these problems.”

Guess what he said?

“Weeeeell, it’s not THAT bad!”

This approach works because it gives the complainer what he’s really after: empathy. No cheering up, no solutions, no cheering on. Just simple, human understanding of what is, for them, a difficult situation.

There are two important things to notice here. First, don’t be sarcastic when you say it. Be sincere. Secondly, you don’t have to agree that these are huge problems. Even if everything the complainer says sounds trivial to you, remember that it feels like a huge problem to them or they wouldn’t go on about it. What seems trivial to one person can be a huge problem for another.

So, you’re not saying, “Yes, I agree that’s a huge problem,” and you’re certainly not saying, “Oh, poor poor you,” in a sarcastic voice. You’re just acknowledging the fact that this is a huge problem for that person.

Does this make the complaining go away? Sometimes. But at the very least it keeps you from being part of a vicious circle of responses that just makes the complainers complain more and more and more. The circle is cut at the point where you take their distress seriously.

Boring tasks

There are no jobs out there in which every single task is fun and exciting. Any job contains boring moments, routine tasks, unpleasant assignments and contact with annoying people. Of course, if your job mostly consists of tasks you really hate to do, then maybe it’s time to move on to a different job.

If your job contains occasional boring tasks, then your approach to these tasks becomes crucial. If you work with a mantra of, “This sucks, man I hate doing this, why do I always have to do it,” running through your head, I can promise you that it will suck. Badly.

If you go to it with a playful attitude instead, you can make it much less unpleasant. Sometimes you can even make it fun. Here are some attitudes you can try:

• Let’s do an awesome job of this.
  
• Let’s do this 10% faster than the last time.
  
• Let’s see if we can make it fun.
  
• Let’s do this with full attention on the task, rather than on grumbling about it.
  

And there’s always one more option: to not do it. Remember that people are different and the task you think is really, really boring might be a lot of fun for one of your co-workers to do. In that case it would be a shame to deprive them of the chance to do it, wouldn’t it? So try to find out if somebody else would like to do the tasks you hate.

Unfairness

It turns out that a desire for fairness and equality is built into us at a biological level. Don’t believe me? Try this experiment: get a bunch of Capuchin monkeys, and train them to give you a small, polished granite rock in exchange for a slice of cucumber. This is tricky in itself, but possible. Soon the monkeys learn that when they hand over the rock, they get their treat.

Then try something new: get two of these monkeys together, and give one of them a better treat. Capuchin monkeys like cucumber fine, but they like grapes even better because they’re sweeter. If one capuchin sees you paying another one in grapes, it will refuse to cooperate, and will no longer hand over the rock in exchange for cucumber. “Listen, buster,” it seems to say, “you’re paying that guy in grapes and my work is at least as good. I want grapes too, or I’m going on strike
¹³
.”

In another experiment using brain-scanning equipment, this time on humans, researchers found a centre in our brains that lights up whenever we believe we’re being treated unfairly. It seems that fairness is not just a nice ideal to strive for — we have a biological need to be treated fairly
¹⁴
.

This explains why one of the most demotivating factors in the workplace is unfairness. People react immediately to any perceived unfairness, especially when they’re not happy at work. Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric, tells this story from early in his career:

“My first boss, I just didn’t like his methods. I thought I was doing well and I got $1,000 more — a 10 per cent raise, and I was quite pleased. I thought I was doing much more than everybody else, I thought I was performing at a different level and everyone came bouncing back with their raise and they all got $1,000. So the raise that sort of pleased me at one point now irritated the hell out of me. And so I quit. I had a baby and no money. I borrowed $1,000 bucks from my mother. I quit.”

It matters less what your salary, your title, your bonus and your perks are. It matters much more whether you think they’re fair. And while fairness in itself is not enough to make us happy at work, unfairness can make us desperately unhappy.

Which reminds me of the New Yorker Magazine cartoon where an employee is turned down for a raise and then promptly asks his boss “Well, if you can’t give me a raise, could you at least give Peterson a pay cut?”

Fear of losing your job

Last year, Jakob, a 37-year-old IT professional, got a job he really likes in a medium-sized IT company. His boss is a great guy, his co-workers are competent and fun, and his clients are all terribly nice people.

There’s only one fly in the ointment: Jakob’s boss’s boss (one of the VPs) is… not nice. He tends to summon all his employees to meetings and chew them over collectively and loudly for whatever problems he sees. He’s abrasive and unpleasant, always complains, and never acknowledges his people for the good work they do. His emails to his underlings are a case study in rudeness. And, of course, he’s known for summarily firing people who cross him in any way.

Now, while Jakob likes his job, he doesn’t need it. He’s independently wealthy and so skilled he can always go out and get another job, and therefore has zero fear of being fired. While other people in the company feel they must watch their tongue for fear of the consequences, he feels free to say and do exactly what he thinks is right.

And here’s the thing: when Jakob stands up to this VP and tells him that he won’t stand for his unpleasant approach and explains exactly why his abrasive style creates problems for the company, he listens. Nobody has ever told any VP at the company these things before, and for the first time the company has an employee that is totally unafraid of doing so.

The result: this particular VP is slowly changing his ways. And he certainly pulls none of his usual attacks on Jakob, who he knows simply won’t stand for it.

The risk of being fired is the biggest axe that a company or manager holds over employees’ heads. It’s a mostly unstated but well-known fact of working life that if an employee gets too far out of line, they’ll be fired/terminated/axed/given the chop — all terms with a dark, violent flavour…

Of course, we’ve all been taught that being fired is a terrible thing that should be avoided at all costs, which is why many of us will accept bad conditions at work and go to extraordinary lengths to keep our jobs. People who live in fear of being fired tend to:

• Put up with bad treatment from management.
  
• Follow unethical or immoral orders.
  
• Stand for bullying or harassment.
  
• Go along to get along.
  
• Mask their real personalities.
  
• Hide their real opinions.
  
• Accept salaries which are too low or unfair.
  
• Kiss butt.
  
• Avoid complaining about any problems they see.
  

It’s time we took the stigma out of being fired. If you can reduce or even rid yourself of that threat then you’re granted much wider latitude at work. When you really think about it, what’s so embarrassing about being fired? Here are some of the most common reasons why people are fired, and why that doesn’t reflect badly on the one being fired:

Personality mismatch — So you didn’t fit in at that one company? There are millions of others. There will be one somewhere that is a good match for you. Besides, who says you were the problem?

Skill mismatch — So you tried out a job, and you didn’t have the skills for it? Big deal. Again, there are millions of other jobs.

Refusing to go along — Good for you. If that’s why you got fired, be proud for standing up for yourself.

Downsizing — Thousands of people are downsized every day.

Unreasonable firing — If you were fired for being pregnant, for telling the truth or any other unreasonable excuse, then there’s certainly no reason to be ashamed.

The exceptions to this list are people who are fired for harassment, abuse, or simply not doing the job. These people need to take a closer look at themselves.

Of course, being fired can create problems, but you can deal constructively with many of them, and thus reduce or eliminate the consequences. Here are some typical problems of being fired and how to mitigate them.

Economic uncertainty

This must be the biggest problem with being fired — how will you pay your bills, your mortgage, and your kids’ college savings?

There are two ways to deal with the financial problems that result from being fired. The first way is to increase your employability and make it easier to find a new job. This is a matter of keeping your personal and professional skills up to date and cultivating a good network. The second way is to keep your private expenses low, so that you’re not 100% dependent upon your paycheque every month. When you’re completely dependent upon bringing home a paycheque (or two) every single month you’re trapped, and that makes things much worse. A bad situation is unpleasant. A bad situation you can’t escape from is excruciating.