This Email Sums Up Why I Hated Working In An Office

The politics of office life

I have written before about how I hated working in an office. I understand the role that I did is not reflective of all office jobs.

This was the first time I had worked in an office. I’m sure there are offices where working practices and morale are much better. But, working at that place filled with me dread.

One of the worst things about working there was the emails. We were working in a performance-orientated department, which focused on a form of mis-sold insurance. If you are from or have lived in the UK over the past few years, you will know what I am talking about.

There were a lot of claims to deal with. We were under no illusions that we had to get responses out the door as quickly as possible but work with the utmost diligence while doing so.

Yes, that is a contradiction. You have to work as fast as you can, but you have to be accurate and diligent at the same time! Thankfully, once you got the hang of the job, it wasn’t too hard to do this.

There was just one problem, no matter how well we did as a team, it would never be enough for our manager or those above him.

There was always the expectation that we could do more. That we could work harder. This led to divisions in the team where some people bought into this poor attempt at motivation, while others, like myself, saw through it as a simple attempt to get us to work harder for nothing.

One email rammed home how much I hated working there, and how glad I was that I handed in my notice and left.

Our team was coming off the back of an outstanding week where we had shifted more cases than most of the other teams put together. You would think this would be a suitable time to send a message congratulating us on our hard work?

You would be wrong!

What we got instead was a 2,500-word diatribe on how we could do better as a team and a reminder that we had to adhere to several arcane rules. This email was also sent on a Friday afternoon to rub salt into the wound!

If I hadn’t already handed in my notice, I would have handed it in on the spot, because this email was ridiculous. Looking back now, it’s clear that despite the downsides to blogging full-time, I made the right choice to go down this path.

The environment in the office was toxic. It wasn’t an enjoyable place to work. Emails like this one are why offices get such a bad rep.

The Email

I have thought long and hard about whether I should upload an image of the email. While this would show how you what we had to deal with daily, I’m not sure if it accurately portrays what it was like to work at this place.

For that reason, I have decided to outline was in the email instead. The gist of the email was that despite ‘riding a crest of a wave from a perspective…”, there were still issues that were holding us back as a team.

As we were working in a performance-related environment, one of these resolved around accuracy. It was part of the job to make sure the initial decision on any cases was correct.

I had no issue with this. We were getting paid to ensure we arrived at the right decision first-time, so this was a given, and it’s hardly surprising managers want this to improve. It makes them look good and relieves any pressure they are under.

After this, the email delved into territory that I firmly disagreed with, that of adhering to a schedule and talking during the job.

Yes, talking while we were working was an issue!

The schedule adherence part was easier to understand, but frustrating nonetheless. The job involved ringing customers, this meant we had to log into a phone when we arrived and log out of it when we left. It acted as our timekeeper during the day.

You were also supposed to log out of the phone when you went to the toilet and got up to walk around the office. This was something I disagreed with. We were given an allotted time of 10 minutes for toilet breaks during an 8-hour shift.

This could be gone very quickly and didn’t take into account the fact that you need to stretch your legs and take some time away from your desk every once in a while. The email was firm that we had to sign out of our phones every time we left our desks regardless of how long we would be away.

While this was annoying and not necessary, we were adults, after all, the next issue was even worse.

I am someone that needs to have lighthearted chat throughout the day to keep me going. In this job, I found talking now and again took my mind off the mundanity of the work we were doing and actually made me work better. But that was not what our manager thought.

He believed that there was too much chat and that it was hindering our performance. If that was the case, he decided to highlight this point at a time when we were outperforming every other team in the department. His argument didn’t hold much credence.

This wasn’t my main issue. The main issue I had with this was that we were expected to come into the office and work with the minimum of social interaction. It was as if they wanted to us behave like robots while forgetting that we are human, and have social needs.

It is not normal to sit in an office environment and not talk to anybody. It would drive you crazy, we are social animals. We have evolved to communicate and cooperate. We have not evolved to sit at desks and bow down to the Gods of productivity 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

The email rammed home to me what I thought since I worked there. That despite the protestations of those in high positions, they did not see us as humans, they saw us as numbers on a spreadsheet, or “bums on seats” as our trainer said on one of our first days.

The Problem With Offices

That phrase “bums on seats” highlights my issue with my time in this office. You were rarely treated as a human. You were seen as a cog in a machine, a vessel through which to reach targets and increase productivity.

Productivity. That was a word I head a lot during my time there. The whole operation relied on us getting as many cases out the door as we could. Yet even when we were doing well, there was rarely a thank you, or acknowledgement of this.

Even if you don’t enjoy the job you are doing, it’s nice to receive some praise every once in a while. To receive next to nothing makes you question whether what you are doing is worth it.

This email just confirmed all the suspicions I had held about the place while I worked there. For all the talk of caring about employees, I don’t think that was the case. As long as you were achieving targets, there was no issue, but once you started talking or had a slight dip in performance, it was an inquisition!

This is not how people should be treated at work. Lest we forget, hardly anyone works at these places for the love of the job. They work there for the paycheque. That is the reason most people work, for the money. I’m sure my Dad hasn’t spent 40 years in the building industry purely for the love of it.

He has worked that long in it because it pays the bills. Jobs pay bills unless you are lucky enough to work in your dream job, you are likely sacrificing your time to be able to make ends meet. That is the reality of the workplace for the majority of us.

However, you should still be able to go into any job and enjoy the environment you work in. You should be able to enjoy working with your colleagues and not feel like you are back in school. We are all adults, it would be nice to be treated as such.

I think the issue with emails in the workplace is that it promotes passive-aggressive behaviour. Much like internet trolls, people can hide behind their emails, instead of talking face-to-face.

I worked in the construction industry for a few years, where this was not the case. If you had a problem with someone you said it to their face and resolved the issue there and then. There were no emails to hide behind, no pleasantries face-to-face and snotty emails afterwards. It was pure and unadulterated direct communication.

I think this is what offices and society, in general, is missing nowadays. We have retreated behind our various devices. It’s easier to text someone than speak over the phone, or even dare I say, talk in person!

This leads to miscommunication because there is no communication. Words on a screen can be misinterpreted and contradicted. Spoken words are clear and direct.

It would have been easier to have a group discussion instead of typing out a monster email, but our boss decided to go down the email route. We could have had a thorough and frank discussion about the issues. Instead, we were left to go home over the weekend and stew about the email we had just received.

There was a reason I had never stepped foot in an office before taking that job, and that email encapsulated it perfectly.

I printed it off and kept a copy to motivate me to work hard so I never end up in that type of environment again.

So far, it’s working!

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