What We Talk About When We Talk About Work

I’ve noticed that the quantity of work-related posts has increased on this blog recently. I wouldn’t chalk that up to more things to talk (read: complain) about per se, though we are approaching a couple of major changes that are worth bringing up. The menu is going to be changing soon, we’re going to be handing out silverware soon, and I’ve been told the employee roster is going to change in a major way soon, though outside of some new hires I’ve yet to see anything there that is really that significant.

I don’t really talk about any of that because, well, it’s much more fun to complain about things. Like how the grill is broken or how coworkers can be a bit too nosy. It also keeps things a bit more universal in application. Everyone has nosy coworkers and appliances that refuse to work, or at least can sympathize with the idea of them. Less so the minutiae of silverware logistics; there are definitely fans out there, just fewer, I think.

Taking the complaining route also benefits because it’s simply a stronger emotional reaction, one of the few ones left once one gets into a working routine. It’s a moment of catharsis, excising frustrations because everyone has those.

I have talked about before, though, how I don’t want this blog to just be complaining about random things. There’s a danger to a wholly negative mindset, I think. It can bleed into not only the work one might be complaining about -- becoming the cause of complaints rather than relaying them onwards -- but also the rest of one’s life. That’s one of the reasons I started the Raindrops on Roses series, just to be nice to things on occasion.

So while I could talk at length about how, instead of replacing the grill, we now have a new dishwashing machine, I’m going to just leave it at half a sentence in a concluding paragraph. And next week? I don’t know yet, we’ll see. But it’ll hopefully be something a bit nicer.

-F