What’s Your “Get Off My Lawn” Gripe About Work?
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We’ve talked a lot over the years about the ways work has changed — remote work, extreme business casual, the decline of the five-day office week, and so on. But today let’s talk about our workplace gripes — reasonable or not. What annoys you about your workplace, your coworkers, or work in general? Are you comparing it to another workplace, to some time in the past, or just your own sense of how things should be?
We had a fun discussion a while back on millennial complaints, and I thought this could be similar. So: What is your “get off my lawn” gripe with regard to work?
I’ve seen readers discuss disappearing support staff, people “inheriting” laid-off coworkers’ work (but without an attendant title or salary boost), and the increasing amount of administrative work that seems to fall on everyone even as other parts of the job get outsourced or automated. And, of course, we’ve had a lot of discussions about artificial intelligence, the way the kids just can’t write, and more.
Maybe your gripe is about something big: training, mentorship, benefits, raises and bonuses, staffing levels, or advancement opportunities. Or maybe it’s something gloriously petty: email or voicemail etiquette! Zoom backgrounds! Business casual that has become too casual! People who schedule a meeting when a two-sentence email would have sufficed!
Maybe you have a rock-solid argument for why your way is better. Maybe you recognize that this is purely a you problem and the rest of the world has sensibly moved on. We want to hear it anyway.
So, readers: What’s your workplace “get off my lawn” gripe? What’s the thing that makes you think, “No. This is not how we should be doing things”?
People who complain about working in person and then, if you do something by zoom, who complain about having to turn on their cameras and give you their undivided attention.
AI being pushed down everyone’s throats. I actually use AI every day and find it helpful, but it’s also way overhyped in its current form, and I would appreciate a more rational discussion of its pros and cons for various uses. Every single leadership townhall-type meeting is not complete without glorifying AI in 50 different ways.
Agree completely. One of our higher ups is annoyed that people won’t just love her AI idea, but pushing ideas down peoples throat has never led to them actually loving it. A little disagreement and discussion is normal and should be accepted.
This is also mine. It definitely has it’s uses, but it’s not the cure-all people try to make it. It’s being used to substitute for actual thought and a lot of people do not sufficiently check results. I hate it. My husband made the observation that the people most excited about AI are the ones that are the least technologically competent and do not understand its potential pitfalls, and I think he’s correct.
+100
People who complain about small tech changes (noooooo google calendar is sooooo much harder than outlook calendar, I can’t swiiiiiiiitch). Like, are you not embarrassed to admit that?
I may get slammed for this but parents who are not upfront that they are consistently providing childcare during working hours or offline regularly for pick ups. I’m not talking about occasional emergencies which we all have but routine disappearances that coworkers are not upfront about or don’t proactively manage ahead of time. So the rest of us are left wondering if they will be back online today, saw our slack message, can answer our question so we can proceed with our duties or can get to the task etc.
Of course this is a society wide responsibility and we need adequate childcare services or more formalized flexible work/job sharing/real 30 hour a week jobs. But the childless workers get more work and if junior, less support and guidance. Abusing the flexibility of remote work also hurts all of us.