Dear James: I Can't Keep My Mouth Shut at Work

The Atlantic

2 days ago

Editor's Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers' questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at [email protected].
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Dear James,
I can't seem to shut up at work, and I keep putting my foot in my mouth.
I am a naturally brusque person—a get-to-the-point kinda gal—but I am not a complete boor. Over the years I have learned to temper my directness with watercooler niceties and 'please' and 'thank you' in my emails.
But, sometimes, when faced with inadequate meeting agendas, disorganized communication, and paper-pushing bureaucracy, I can't help but speak up about our team-wide inadequacies. (My other colleagues are much more reserved.) I oscillate between wanting to shut up and act my wage, yet also wishing we would hold ourselves to higher standards. By God, can't we do better here?
This is not a new feeling in the office for me, and I am starting to question whether I'm the common denominator. Is it time to throw in the towel? Or should I do more to restrain my critical instincts?
Dear Reader,
I think your questions answer themselves. In the workplace, you should never restrain your critical instincts, and, yup, it's always a good time to throw in the towel. (When it comes to family, interestingly, the opposite is true.)
It does sound as if you are the common denominator, carting your high standards and your limited tolerance for banality and ineptitude from office to office. Then again, aren't we all the common denominators in our own lives? It's always us, in the middle of some situation, doing what we always seem to do, arriving at more or less the same outcomes, which for some reason bewilder us completely.
Not you, though: You're un-bewildered. You know what you're doing.
I've had only a couple of office jobs in my life. I'm a lucky bastard: I sit in coffee shops and type and fiddle around with my playlists on Apple Music. But I do know that watercooler niceties (to take a phrase from your letter) will kill you in the end, and that team-wide inadequacies (to take another one) are a condition of office life. And if you've had enough, you've had enough.
Continually firing myself,
Dear James,
After more than 40 years of cognitive behavioral therapy, I thought I'd overcome my childhood demons. But, like my parents before me, I still became an alcoholic. Now I'm 66, and I'm torn: Should I give up on the world? (The state of affairs is grim.) Or should I strive to live without alcohol?
Dear Reader,
I deeply appreciate this letter. So many of us right now are contemplating, approaching, or have already passed the moment of abdication you present so clearly. The moment of: You know what? Fuck it.
I hope you won't think I'm being flippant if I respond to your question with a couple of staves of soul doggerel. Here they are:
TO A READER
ON THE VERGE
When the demons are upon you
and the world is on its ass,
why not sink in resignation
to the bottom of a glass?
I'll tell you why: You're here to try,
and while you have volition,
to quote my friend Jay Babcock:
Don't be bummed into submission.
Heroically,
James
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