
How faking your feelings at work can be damaging - NoB4Mouth
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180619-why-suppressing-anger-at-work-is-bad
======
mlthoughts2018
The classic book _Moral Mazes_ talks at length about emotional labor in
organizational management.

One of its primary claims is that HR and marketing function essentially purely
as emotional labor (the book would treat legal compliance as a distinct
category), and has a whole chapter called, "Dexterity with Symbols" that is a
breakdown of how management and executives need to communicate with vague,
symbolic language that can never been pinned down to specific claims or
specific requirements, so as to allow virtually anything that is said to be
reinterpreted as-needed to retrospectively imply whatever is expedient for the
executives, particularly from an emotional labor point of view.

I think this is a huge component of why software companies use open-plan
offices, and in fact sometimes _pay higher prices_ just to have an open-plan
office (not even talking about any of the arguments about lost productivity or
reduced communication in open-plan spaces, just purely the real estate costs).

It's a form of emotional labor. The company gets to see who will express
outward fealty to the management, like a dog rolling over to expose its tummy.
Who will drink the Kool-Aid about "collaboration" and "entrepreneurial spirit"
and give emotional labor outwardly praising the open plan office designs,
despite inwardly knowing they are miserable, anti-productive and anti-
ergonomic spaces.

~~~
dasil003
HR I get, but Marketing is emotional labor? Not following that at all. All
departments have their element of emotional labor, but in my mind it's
something that will mostly be absorbed by management in a healthy
organization.

Maybe I just don't understand the term though.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
It is not referring to the external artifacts of a marketing strategy, like ad
purchases or the design of packaging or something.

It's talking about the internal "PR" role that marketing plays in its
interface between management and the employees. Think about the huge product
launch events that big tech companies produce. It's as much about creating
external publicity or buzz as it is about generating conformity among the
staff in terms of what the company line is going to be. As a result, it also
boils down to a lot of emotional labor on behalf of PR staff "selling" the
vision of the management to the rest of the staff, despite the fact that
management's "vision" will be represented with vague, imprecise symbols that
allow management to later on morph things around in whatever way suits them.

Incidentally, I think it's also the biggest reason why internal prediction
markets are not adopted. Despite evidence that they improve product delivery
metrics and tangible financial metrics of project success, it makes the
evaluation of project success so quantitative that managers lose their ability
to manipulate, tell stories, argue for bonuses, argue that they were stopped
by internal politics, etc. etc. Telling those stories is so valuable to middle
and upper management that it is worth more than increased raw success of the
company overall. Essentially, they want the company overall to be slightly
worse off if it gives them manipulable tactics for entrenching their personal
job security or bonus or whatever.

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slededit
Not what the article is getting at, but I have seen displays of righteous
anger cause positive changes. Sometimes you need to communicate that you
aren't just griping and this is a red line.

Doesn't work if people already think your a hot head though.

~~~
scarface74
I've never seen showing anger works. In American society, being Black and
angry, conjures up the stereotype and gets you labeled as an "Angry Black
Man". Also, if you are a female showing anger, gets you labelled negatively.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Yes, Americans don't understand disagreement, even legitimate disagreement.
You are wondering if this is because they fear incurring liability if they
admit there is a problem or due to the almost prison-like environment of high
school in their formative years, or what. It's a great problem for foreigners.

~~~
wedn3sday
Can confirm. Was recently informed I was "not a team player" for pointing out
obvious facts that happened to be inconvenient. A German friend of mine told
me that when she was immigrating here, she took a class that was supposed to
help with integrating into American culture, she was told to always wrap any
sort of criticism in a complement sandwich.

~~~
twiceaday
Being disagreeable is okay but being disrespectful is not. Sometimes people
conflate the former with the latter though so you have to be careful.

~~~
finnthehuman
>but being disrespectful is not

Nah. It’s fine. You might find it advantageous to navigate the world by
humoring the people too full of themselves to realize they don’t deserve an
ounce of respect. But they don’t, and it’s fine if you don’t want to give it.

------
megamindbrian2
I got burned out by trying to be the code hero. Then I realized there really
isn't any point to this line of work. It is the epitome of "progress only for
the sake of progress".

~~~
haskellandchill
There is no right answer. I fake being happy for fear of being fired. I tried
to contribute and help and was told to focus on my work, which is meaningless
engineering with no purpose. I have resigned myself to get in on time and sit
and stare at the screen. I try to get things done but it is a moving target.
The people who thrive here engage in side channel communications, I am mostly
unwilling to do that because I believe in public communication. I wish I did
not believe in a free and open society as we are tending towards some form
human/machine authoritarianism and my views are going to be punished. Keep
your heads down and accumulate resources seems to be the best advice.

~~~
megamindbrian2
Sounds exactly like my experience at Useless Fintech aka Charles Schwab sorry
to hear this.

“Your ideas are stupid and your goals are meaningless”
[https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/your-ideas-are-stupid-
and-...](https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/your-ideas-are-stupid-and-your-
goals-are-meaningless-3fca37d07cb9)

There is a shred of hope left. I have a friend that has not offered me work
personally but he says he loves the "Google reject engineers". Meaning he
loves to hire the people that are phenomenal and confident enough to compete
in the big league but are defeated by some small technicality such as checking
the wrong box on a web based job application or in your case failing at "side
channel" communication. That's probably more of a good quality for you rather
than a failure.

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brailsafe
Haven't read the article, but I know that faking your feelings is a great way
to subtract from team morale, particularly in situations most susceptible to
tension. Sure you may keep your job, but great workplaces don't get to be
great workplaces by instilling fear in people so they don't speak up about
issues or bother to understand the personalities of their colleagues. If all
of your colleagues are sociopaths, you're going to have a bad time.

Edit: That's not to say that you shouldn't necessarily be principled about
these things.

~~~
warent
I was with you until the sociopath part. Faking emotions and sociopathy are
two different things

~~~
brailsafe
You're right. Upon reconsideration, I think what I meant those as two
independent examples of unhealthy company compositions in which lack of
authentic emotion could lead to negative outcomes. Though I suppose it depends
on the place.

------
sandworm101
When you bottle things up for months and months you eventually get your own
Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_flight_attendant_incid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_flight_attendant_incident)

When people are forced to keep up that fake smile, the people they interact
with start taking advantage. Then eventually the person behind the smile
cracks, grabs "two beers and exited the plane by deploying the evacuation
slide".

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phyzome
Note that this article uses a somewhat older and more specific definition of
emotional labor, casting it as something done in the course of paid work.
These days, it is also commonly recognized to occur in _unpaid_ contexts.
(Maybe it was in the 1960s as well, but
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor)
doesn't seem to cover that.)

Having a friend lean on you during a breakup, and helping them process their
feelings -- that's unpaid emotional labor. Which is fine! It's just good to
recognize it, especially because there's a gender imbalance. Women are
commonly expected to provide unpaid emotional labor in the domestic and social
spheres, and in traditional labor contexts, women are commonly expected to
provide emotional labor on top of their other job duties in ways that men are
not.

------
xj9
> having feelings at work

i go to work to complete an objective and get paid. feelings are personal and
not something i care to share with workplace associates or strangers. of
course, this means that i'm totally unsuited for any kind of non-technical,
customer-facing work. except maybe a bar or restaurant that wants
bitchy/sarcastic staff.

i'm sort of lucky that i work it tech, but i'd be pretty happy doing
construction or anything that involves doing stuff other than talking to
customers.

~~~
oldcynic
> feelings are personal and not something i care to share with workplace
> associates or strangers

"xj9 you don't seem to share the enthusiasm for our exciting journey. We're a
family here at SaaS.com and you seem to be treating it like just a job. You're
fired. Please clear your desk"

~~~
tw1010
Yeah, I used to think like xj9 in collage. But I have no idea how it's
possible to survive as completely non-social programmer, now that I've seen
what work life actually consists of.

~~~
scarface74
You can be social and build professional relationships without sharing your
feelings.

~~~
Someone1234
Not for long. People feel like they're really getting to know you if you're
that caged off.

~~~
philwelch
Most of the successful people I've seen in my career had a demeanor that
ranged between "happy and pleasant" and "serious and stoic". Founders and top
executives can get away with being passionate (e.g. Steve Jobs) but serious,
reserved stoicism seems to be the norm (e.g. Tim Cook).

~~~
walshemj
But not as good for motivating staff.

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tw1010
Why giving generalized advice without conditioning on context-dependence is
bad.

Edit: Sorry, I now see that the real article has all the proper "can"'s,
instead of "is"'s, I was missing.

------
draw_down
I mean, the whole enterprise is damaging. Workplaces are not humane, they're
hostile (in a blithe, disavowed way of course) and overtly not designed for
the interests of the people occupying them. Including whether it's considered
appropriate to show your feelings (usually no).

~~~
stevenwoo
How do you find work where this is not true? (assuming that you are working)

~~~
phyzome
I've never worked customer service, but I know that some managers will 100%
stand by their employees against abuse from customers, and don't demand
smiles. I've heard of this specifically w.r.t. some coffee shops.

(Now I wonder if this has anything to do with France's reputation for surly
customer service -- are the employees simply not expected to give "service
with a smile", and Americans are horrified by the contrast?)

