Hi All
I would like to check with you how my observations at a new workplace look to people outside the context. I would appreciate your honest comments.
Everyone readily admits that the organisation is 'politicised'; there is a strongly marked pecking order. Here are some of the way it manifests itself:
- In emails, writing the names of subordinates starting with a lower-case letter.
- Playing around with the word 'stuff', so that you're never sure if 'good stuff' is the post-junkie jargon or good staff meaning you; speaking to managers with an opening, empty phrase e.g. "Jack, your stuff...", never sure if this is "your" or "your're". The very repetitions can feel very insidious after a while; somehow, it starts to irritate more and more.
- when you do not like something being said, it is said more often, used both as punishment and as pastimes, more colleagues are shared the knowledge, etc.
- on the surface, the organisational culture is easy-going and relaxed, but after a while you find out that whatever you say about yourself is repeated to managers and to other colleagues; your values, interests and anything that is you is put to action to influence you. At the same time, you are not allowed to keep things to yourself. You are required to share about your private life, and the way you do it is subject to evaluation. Thus, you may find out that it is unexciting to hear you have done nothing special for the third weekend in a row. If you go somewhere really nice, you may have have been too extravagant, for example, etc.
At the same time, the learning process is being misguided; brings to mind the term double bind - no matter what you do or say, this time you were wrong - but you have to keep trying.
- showing middle finger has become mainstream. Like most of the other puns, it is done in a low-key manner, just under the radar. Once I looked back from sharing my screen on teams , and I saw my colleague keeping a middle finger next to his face, as if this was the most natural thing to do. As I spoke, I raised the whole palm to the camera, showing 5 fingers, so to speak; next meeting, as he spoke, he showed middle finger and afterwards five fingers. This one is very peculiar, feedback is fed back again. Feels like baroque of interpersonal communications - pretentious, overabundant in forms to the level of absurd.
- pushing buttons by senior management is legitimised by the rhetoric of helping staff get better; honestly, I do not feel like I have any choice here, and have doubts if this helps me at all.
- sometimes, the settings resemble group psychotherapy - and you can not opt out. if you try, you are met with social rejection, and before the resulting mental state wears off, you're hearing stories of personal transformation. Never in my life have I felt so much nearly derailed as after such 'interventions' - to the extent that I started to protest increasingly more abruptly. I don't know what was happening, but once that stopped, I started to feel better.
- operand conditioning - or something similar. In practical terms, very strong feedback from managers nearly all the time. They know what my aspirations and fears are, and whatever I do, I am getting either the former or the latter stimuli - pushing buttons again. This is a very tiring process, and the worst thing is that the wait it is administered feels humiliating, the oppressors show pleasure, almost some quiet, soft affection. Feels like mental rape, and the fact that sometimes this is done context-free (right after hello) increases overall confusion.
Overall, the situation at work feels dystopian, and I am considering quitting. Before I do, I will have a chance to speak with the higher HR, and I wonder if it is worth trying to check if this should be raised.
We are a charity helping people get back to normal life after abuse, neglect, prison etc; I don't know how we perform in the field, but paradoxically, I feel that the skills of my colleagues and managers misused against me consciously are just about to drive me off-road.
That was quite a bit more detail than I would speak about with HR. I wonder if the comments above sound reasonable, intact and sane.
The key issues I would communicate to HR are:
abusive use of psychological tricks
microaggressions
double-bind impairing the leading and relation-building process
public flogging
making one feel stupid, inadequate
manipulating perception of colleagues regarding staff performance
sudden moving probation meeting 1 month forward
undermining social standing with colleagues
I think they will be readily understood, but is that something senior HR want to hear of at all?