One of the posts in the Past Favorites list on the Creating Passionate Users blog is Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain. I keep coming back to this article. In fact, I read it almost every week.
As you can tell from pretty much every post I’ve made on my blog, I am an angry negative person. I have good reasons to be angry and negative. I work in a field that I love and feel is useful, but that is dumped on at almost every company I’ve worked (this statement warrants another post). I work intensely, putting a lot of myself, both time and energy-wise, into my job and feel pretty much invisible and unappreciated. In fact, when asking for a discussion on my role in a company that was reorganizing, requesting more responsibility, and earnestly wanting to gain the trust of an employer I had worked 4+ years for – and many extra hours – I got fired for not fitting into the new direction of the company (obviously, I’m still really really angry about this – another post-worthy topic).
Still, I want to be a valuable co-worker. I don’t want to be toxic. Everywhere I look there are articles on toxic friends and toxic co-workers. They raise stress. All the advice reads, it is better to have a less talented, smiley employee than a talented, toxic employee; avoid your toxic co-workers; dump your toxic friends; add years to your life!
Am I a toxic co-worker and friend? My stomach knots up everytime I read the Creating Passionate Users article. Should I be avoided? Here are the things I do to try to avoid becoming the avoided one (by the way, I have no idea if this is working or not):
1. I believe that I only have the right to bitch about things I’ve tried to do something about. If I’m upset that my job is chaotic and that my boss provides no direction – I create a sample task list. I put it on the wiki. I go over this with my boss and tell him why I like it and why it makes me a more efficient employee. If he tells me to take it down, that he believes that a good employee knows what to do without being told — then I have a right to bitch. If he likes my concept and expands upon it – then I’m happier and don’t need to bitch. If I just do nothing at all – I have no right to bitch. We all at least have enough control over our destiny to try to constructively solve a problem. If we don’t at least go that far, then we have no right to complain.
2. I try to make my co-workers laugh at least once a day. Currently, my favorite thing is to instant message a co-worker who sits in the cube corral next to me. My office consists of a cube-farm that is split in to 3 corrals of 4 cubes each. Basically, 4 open desks exist in an area that is walled-off by 3/4 high walls from the adjacent 4 desk area. What I love is I’ll IM her a sarcastic comment, a joke, or a pun and then I can hear her laugh when she gets the message. I think making her laugh improves her day and hearing her laugh improves my day.
3. I make sure to listen to the bitching of any co-worker I bitch to – and really listen – then try to do something to make it better. For instance, a co-worker really needed to vent and asked me if I’d listen to him. We went for a walk and he told me he really feels out of the loop. He gets no information and is isolated. I realized that I never copy him on any of my informational emails – just because his work is more automated testing while mine is more black-box. I assumed he didn’t want to know – but what I heard is that he really does want to know. I started copying him on my emails, and later he told me he really appreciated it.
4. I hold the door open for people. I work in a 30 story building downtown, filled with all kinds of different businesses, from financial to software, to shops. There are lots of well-dressed, serious, grumpy, harried, frowny-faced people who dash in and out of this building. I’ve noticed that when I hold the door for them, they look up in surprise and usually smile. When they smile, they become people – not fast-moving objects of discontent. When they smile, I feel happier.
5. I ask service people how they are. I’ve noticed that when you go to a store or restaurant, or coffee shop the person at the counter always asks “How are you today,” usually in a robotic voice that says “I’m required to ask this but really couldn’t give a shit.” I’ve taken to replying, “Fine, and how is your day going?” So far, I’d say 95% of the time this snaps the service person out of robot mode. It is like noone has asked them all day long how they actually are. The service person usually looks up at me and tells me how they are. One guy at Lunchtime Shanty Town told me all about how his day had been disappointing because he got in early to work on his new recipe he wants to introduce. He didn’t have time to complete it, though. He told me all about the recipe and what inspired it. Frankly, I’d just had a really shitty conversation with my boss and was walking around with a little thunder-cloud over my head. After hearing about this man’s morning and his recipe and how excited he was to introduce it to his customers – I felt really good. It was like 3 minutes of really listening to someone else, without thinking at all about my day, completely erased the emotions I was having. I went back to work refreshed. The guy also seemed refreshed. He indicated it was nice to chat with me and he felt better. Of course, he invited me to come back and try the new recipe.
So, I don’t know. I’m trying to take tiny moments to be positive and impact someone else in a positive way for just a tiny moment. Maybe enough tiny moments will link together to make a whole hour good, then a whole day!