Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about

Maxims and arrows Go Premium It’s okay to judge people who lie down for meetings. A hearty collection of the JC’s pithiest adages. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Maxim Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Every girl has her personal problems;
Every boy has character flaws —
But the outlook is fine, since
You don’t care about mine,
And I’m highly dismissive of yours.

— Dangerboy, The Girl at the Bus Stop.

If only people would belt up about their goddamn personal problems every now and then, so this were occasionally true.

The JC is working up a theory, propelled by exasperation at the prevalence of complaint as a latter-day professional occupation, that the moral crisis that engulfed the 20th century has claimed the opportunity cost. So we can have this kind of dreck from (where else?) the public service, helpfully telling inductees about the absolute lack of any standards of behaviour; a mixture of what ought to be the bleeding obvious — things that should and, frankly, do go in any sentient organisation with aspirations of continuing in business — items that will appeal to work-shy teenagers used to having their parents tidy up after them, and items that ought to be utterly out of the question in any organisation fulfilling a service of any commercial or civil importance to anyone in the community.

Here’s the TL;DR. You are a professional. You get paid an unfeasibly large amount of money. For this money, you are expected to turn up, and perform, every day. You are expected to do a superior job, fast, on time. Leave your chaotic private life at the door. If you can’t, expect to be judged by how you present.

The bleeding obvious

Let’s start with the things which any organisation with a brain should expect from all its staff

• Say “I don’t know”: Once, assuming the thing you don’t know or understand isn’t a basic root function of your present role;
• Ask for more clarity: Assuming you have the gumption, at an early point, to stop bothering everyone and use your own common sense;
• Stay at home when you feel ill: Like, actually, contagiously sick, and not just “having an off-day” — see below. This is called sick leave, has been part of workplace regulation for decades, is not an annual entitlement to be used up, and is hardly in need of a patronising poster to encourage people to use it.
• Turn a videoconference into a phone-call: This is a nice idea. Indeed, you would be doing your organisation an even better service persuading whoever convenes these blessed videoconferences to just stop doing so without substitution, but this is an earnest step in the right direction.
• Not check email out of hours: Okay, but who doesn’t doom-scroll their work inbox every now and then? If you are passingly interested in your organisation and your career, you will: in which case this is bad advice.

Ask for help: One of the core functions of any collaborative enterprise, so it should not be a surprise that fellow workers might ask each other for assistance every now and then. But there is proactive collaboration, and there is (non-directed) laziness.

Don’t get carried away

• “Make mistakes” — well, okay. Everyone makes mistakes. But there are mistakes — snap judgments you are forced to make with limited information when dealing with a novel situation which turn out to be sub-optimal — and there are mistakes — basic errors calling into question your competence to carry out your daily function. The former are fine if you own up to them quickly, learn from them, and don’t repeat them. The latter are not okay. Expect to be disciplined if you cannot carry out your basic function.
• “Put your family before your work” — look, look, look: everyone with a brain — well, a heart, at any rate — does this; only a cretin announces it at work. Besides, being a professional means organising your private life so it doesn’t intrude on a reasonable working day. Genuine crises are exceptions: junior has been rushed to A&E, no-one expects you to bravely box on at work. But if your kind of crisis crops up weekly — child minder let you down again — then sort your self out. This is your problem, not your employer’s. Organise your self.
• Talk about it/not talk about it: profound judiciousness is required here. There are some things one absolutely must talk about, and many one absolutely must not. The distinction is critical and is utterly lost on the LinkedIn community which, broadly, witters on publicly about all the things one must not talk about, and has almost nothing to say about the things one must. Now by all means talk about problems with the cross-indemnity structure in that new revolving credit facility. For God’s sake don’t not talk about that: that, we have to get right. But your on-going dispute with your neighbour about your communal parking space? Shut the hell up about it. You’re at work. There’s stuff to do. Your personal circumstances are a topic no-one needs to know, and no-one wants to know. You remake yourself each morning for your employment. You build a stripped-back, unornamented, Spartan machine, comprising only those faculties which you believe will further your organisations commercial goals. These will, of course, include your social skills, your emotional intelligence, your empathy, all those illegible qualities by which you persuade, build consensies deliver the nuanced, ineffable, superior performance your employer asks of you. These do not, by and large, involve your political views, your deep fascination with association football By the way, “dispute with your neighbour” is a deliberately disarming stand-in for a lot of personal issues that people seem certain must be aired in public at all times.
• Not know everything: There’s knowing everything, of course, and then knowing nothing. To be sure: if you are the office apprentice, a basic facility with making tea and deft photocopying is all any one can ask of you, but be a hoover. If, after nine months, tea and xeroxing remain your only qualities, be sure to remember where you put your coat — you may find you need it suddenly. If you have been there, ploughing the same furrow for seven years, then you damn well should know near enough everything there is to know about the BAU. You should be the one people turn to at the moment of tetas arriba, and no-one wants to hear you going, “I don’t know! Don’t ask me!” Earn your paycheck, soldier. Think of something.
• Be confused: Don’t make a habit of being confused. Unavoidable, every now and then, but to be avoided where possible. The bare minimum anyone ought to be able to expect of your years in tertiary education — apparently a vain hope these days — is a basic faculty for the English language and a general ability to reason, think critically, and ask informed questions; all skills calculated to head off confusion in the first place, and dispel it should it arrive unbidden from the moronic actions of another. Your own ongoing confusion is a sure sign that you are, to put not too fine a point on it, useless. Don’t be useless.

Not okay

• Have dodgy wifi: Not okay, at all. In fact, lame. Sort your home office out. If you can’t, go to the actual office.
• Stand, sit or lie down for meetings: Stand if you must — though expect little chicklings to find this a bit aggressive, but if you feel like lying down, — seriously? You want to lie down? — You can always clock-off, go home and do it there, collecting your coat on your way out the door.
• Have your pets, partner, housemates or children gatecrash your video conference: No, just don’t. Close the door. If you don’t have a door, go to the office. You are a professional. You should be mortified if your child invades your Zoom call. And no, filters are not okay either.
• Add some gaps in your day to think and rest: Think, okay; — rest? Look: you’ve been sitting on your chuff all day doing conference calls. What is that if it isn’t rest? Unless we are talking about lunch, and you self-identify as a wimp — do your resting at the end of the day.