The Road Not Taken: I Don't Like The Soup Here

Instead of letting workplace complaints tilt the balance of the workplace to a negative environment, we can indulge in the immediate gratification of a good workplace complaint, but don’t let it consume you.

Ahh, complaining, we all do it. We all derive some pleasure from it, and it is not automatically negative. Joint complaining brings people together against a common enemy.  It provides a vehicle to identify and articulate opportunities for improvement. It builds camaraderie and gives the complainer(s) a false sense of control and superiority, if only for a brief moment.

Even better than complaining about life in general is complaining about work. There are so many wonderful things to complain about regarding work: our coworkers, the boss, the work itself, how much work there is, how many hours we have to work, the blandness of the décor, the too loud sneezes of our neighbor. Complaining at work gives us something to talk to each other about and lets us know who we can trust and who to watch out for.

Here’s the thing about complaining: complaining is like having wine and Cheetos for breakfast. It feels really good doing it, but a regular habit of it isn’t going to improve your day. Much like wine and Cheetos, a little complaining at work is fine, but too much of it means you have a larger problem.

Too much complaining taints the office atmosphere with negativity and colors how people see you at work. Even worse, complaining can create the false belief that you are helpless against your circumstances. Perpetual complaining can create an environment where negativity festers. When all you talk about is how awful things are, without ever finding a way to improve your lot, you eventually start to believe it’s true. If your own words bring you down, what do you think they do to other people?

Lawyers are in a particularly delicate position regarding complaining. We are supposed to see the risks in everything. We look at the world through a negative lens, seeing all the ways the decisions and actions of others can cause us harm (or simply annoyance). In our professional lives, we are rewarded for complaining; we air grievances for a living and pursue them to their life’s end. We find things to complain about on behalf of our clients, often before our clients even realize they had a complaint. We usually call these matters “issues,” but the concept is the same — we are doing our job well when we find something we don’t like and speak up about it.

It is so easy to let the nit-pickyness of our professional lives creep into our personal lives. There are plenty of commenters out there who bemoan the lack of civility of lawyers.  Lawyers are jerks for as many reasons as people are jerks, but as a profession, I think we have a propensity for being a pain in the rear because we are rewarded for that behavior in a significant part of our lives. Turning that off for colleagues, friends, loved ones, or the cashier at Bed Bath & Beyond doesn’t always feel as good as keeping it on. And, truth be told, we are frequently rewarded by the civilian world when we complain chronically, vociferously, and with our oversized vocabularies.

Unlike the generic business advice that recommends quitting workplace complaining cold turkey, I don’t think it is necessary to eliminate complaining from your repertoire altogether. Of the litany of evils that can be wrought at the office, complaining is not the worst on that list. Gossip, disrespectful behavior to colleagues, malaise, and contributing to negative corporate morale are all more damaging to productivity than complaining.

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Most of us have learned how to complain effectively as part of our profession. We identify issues, articulate them, then take action towards a resolution. Instead of letting complaining become the daily breakfast of wine and Cheetos, we can use our complaining skills as a way to improve our own working environment. Instead of letting workplace complaints tilt the balance of the workplace to a negative environment, we can indulge in the immediate gratification of a good workplace complaint, but don’t let it consume you. Find your issues, and if the same ones keep cropping up, figure out if it is a problem worth solving.

For example, if the toilet paper at the office is unbearable, you could complain about it to your colleagues, but your colleagues aren’t the people who can solve the TP problem. You might be able to bring your complaint to the facilities administrator for the building, but there might be a required vendor or budget for the toilet paper. At this point, you can keep complaining, or bring in an “Orange Is the New Black” theme and bring your own supplies.

If you decide the problem isn’t worth solving (or the toilet paper is uncomfortable, but bearable), then it might be time to think about quitting complaining in the office, or at least move on to a different complaint. I hear the soup in the cafeteria is too salty.


Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly atC.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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