The Workplace can be wonderful, insidious, or something in between.

 

At the beginning, the workplace welcomes us with a smile and open arms; we don’t envision that the dynamic might change.

 

As we work and grow in the new culture, we quickly learn the innate quirks, habits and preferences of new colleagues.

 

We enjoy our given workplace perks (casual dress, short commute) and adjust to things that make us uncomfortable (i.e. excessive communal time, inappropriate jokes, exclusion).

 

But as weeks become months, despite a short commute, those nine-hour days with fixed colleague-communal lunches start to feel exhausting. It’s not the workload that’s become tedious - it’s the culture. As the days become longer, you put the discomfort down to ‘an adjustment period’, soldiering on with a smile.

 

Three months have passed and you’re past the home stretch. You’ve passed probation and are officially culturally integrated! Unfortunately, a formerly foreign cigarette craving has returned, but you have one-day a week for lunch alone, where you can eat and smoke without forced laughter or smiling. A small victory.

 

 

You put the stress and smoking down to an adjustment period, but you’ve lost any enthusiasm for efficiency, so start taking work home with you. When you get home, you don’t have energy to laugh with your spouse because you spent your (forced) laughs on the office clown who insists on validation and communal laughter every hour.

 

 

Eventually you can’t hide your frustration anymore. You ask the office clown to keep his dirty jokes to himself and tell the team you need to get out of the office for lunch more than once a week. Suddenly you’re not being involved with bigger decision-making processes and communal lunches are had with a snigger and smirk between all knowing parties. You’ve rejected them – so now they are rejecting you.

 

It comes finally – the decision day. You or them. But someone has to end it. They do it for you – and you’re grateful. You pack your things and get out of there. But what about the people and places that don’t take action and don’t end something that stinks. What happens to them? Do they eventually become version 2.0 of themselves? Someone removed from who they were, for the worse? Do they speak up and try to promote change and be isolated? Do they silently look for work on job search engines and wait for something better to come along?

 

I say, if something stinks – don’t suck it up. Don’t throw the towel in too soon, give it time, communicate your thoughts/needs/aversions. But if you can see that nothing will change soon – accept your bad feelings (and possible bad habits), then go. Whether they tell you to – or you tell them you’re going – it’s best for both. After-all, no-one likes a stink that follows you everywhere, and work is one thing we cannot get away from. So we might as well work somewhere that doesn’t stink, or, that is at least open to stinking less.

 

 

Written by Abby Kempe for AK Services LTD.