Kelly, a co-worker and an accounting wizard for my company, approached my desk. I held my breath. When Kelly approached, it often meant she’d found an error in one of my spreadsheets and intended to bring it to my attention.
“Hi.” Kelly hovered at the edge of my desk, and crossed her arms. “So…” She began by updating me on the latest accounting woes with one of our most active vendors, a vendor that emailed their invoices to us in bulk – filling up our inboxes with multiple entries in rapid-fire succession. They used an automated invoice generator which was unreliable and repeatedly over-billed and double-billed us. Time and again, Kelly caught each and every error. On the other end of that spectrum was Joy, the finance manager for the vendor. I didn’t know if Joy did her best or not, but things on her end appeared to be a mess. What was wrong with her? Kelly and I routinely shook our heads in shared disbelief. I was about to shake my head again, when Kelly dropped her voice to a whisper. “…and then he told me that Joy died.”
My thoughts ricocheted from shared frustration to shock. “What?”
“Yeah. Apparently, no one, not even Joy’s bosses, knew how sick she was. Remember that email about her medical leave? She went on medical leave and…” Kelly shook her head.
I sat in stunned silence, and then my mind flew to every email exchange and phone conversation I’d had with Joy. Was I polite? Or did I openly and unfairly place my frustration with their billing system on Joy’s shoulders? In our every interaction, I could now imagine the hundred other – and more important – things Joy had on her mind.
Have you heard we spend one third of our adult lives at work? By another estimate, Americans spend a total of 92,000 hours at work, if you work from age 18 to 67. By that count, that’s over 1,800 hours per year, and if I’m 40 years old, that means I’ve spent at least 39,600 hours at work. You would think all those hours would allow me enough time to adopt a broader perspective on my work-life and develop more compassion for my co-workers – but no, not quite, and what happened with Joy serves as a reminder that I can, and should, do better. What’s more, given that the RAND Corporation says one in five American workers report some type of hostility at work, there’s no better time.
I used to think my dozen job changes put me in the minority. I looked it up and, in fact, it’s common for American workers to change jobs around 12 times. While the most common reason Americans change jobs is to advance their careers, the prime reason I left one job for another, and one industry for another, was that I didn’t feel connected to or supported by my co-workers. In one instance, a co-worker was openly hostile towards me, which I dealt with for as long as I could before I felt it was time to leave.
I admit, when a co-worker behaves negatively and differently to how I would expect, I tend to think it means they are lazy or mean-spirited, and I react accordingly. I may not respond with open hostility, but I do little to resolve or hide my displeasure. If only everyone shared my priorities, I often think. If only everyone recognized the same dangers and issues as I do, we could then all work together to fix them and the world would be a better place. But no, people remain inconstant, selfish, and short-sighted, and all I can do is shake my head.
With the error of my thinking in mind, along with what happened to Joy, I went in search of universal challenges my co-workers may face but may not make apparent. Here are seven significant (potentially hidden) difficulties I found that likely apply to those around me, and may influence the way my co-workers behave at work. My co-workers and I experience many other hidden influences of course, but these seven jumped out at me as ones I didn’t suspect:
One in three Americans experienced severe online harassment in 2018.
One in 10 Americans will never get out of debt.
At least one in 10 Americans are prescribed antidepressant, anti-anxiety, or antipsychotic medications.
Anxiety disorders are the most common disorders in the U.S.
One in 10 people have dyslexia.
One in four Americans develops insomnia each year.
Nearly half of Americans report feeling lonely, and younger generations report it more than older generations.
Before you get depressed about the above list and the plight of modern Americans, and while the figure reported by the RAND Corporation may be true regarding workplace hostility, I have good news: in 2018 over half of American workers reported satisfaction with “people at work,” (62.4%). So, I have hope that I may not be the only one who is interested in gaining a broader perspective and striving for more compassion at work. Also, if you hadn’t heard, it is likely that over half of us share the same top 10 fears, according to a 2018 report by Chapman University. To me, this means my co-workers and I face the same challenges in life, and half of us are worried about the same things. Even if a co-worker behaves in a way that I don’t understand, my co-workers and I are more alike than we are different.
When I finally became brave enough, I looked through all the emails I exchanged with Joy. I’m happy to say that the tone of our emails remained friendly and professional. I even got a smiley-face emoticon from Joy at one point. She was upbeat and hopeful about their invoicing system, and how well it would work after we smoothed out all the wrinkles. Then she mentioned being behind on things because she’d been out for a few weeks after a medical procedure. A few months after that, I received Joy’s final email, in which she apologized for the inconvenience their system caused us and said it would take another month to get it configured, but again, she remained hopeful.