You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t

Dilbert’s human resources manager once told him that it was a burden to remember his name, so from now on, he would refer to him as either buddy or big guy.

The employee responded, how about I just get a nametag? Then you could just read it.

To which his manager replied, do I look like I have that kind of time?

Interestingly enough, sixteen years later, that iconic outfit of a white dress shirt, black trousers and a red striped tie was replaced. Dilbert’s new corporate dress code forced him to wear a red polo shirt with, you guessed it, a name badge on a lanyard around his neck.

Closing the loop from that original cartoon, the same human resources manager now commented, the nametag makes you look powerless, boring and irrelevant. We make you wear it so you don’t look like an asexual trespasser.

Good lord, what a perfect depiction of the modern workplace. You damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. Sometimes you just can’t win. It feels like a hopeless exercise in futility.

Who hasn’t been in that situation before? Nametag or not, every professional has, at some point, felt this sense of frustration.

Like when your creative director starts giving contradictory messages and ambiguous directions.

Or when a manager starts layering one expectation on top of another until the employee loses sight of their priorities.

Or when your coworkers ask you to do something and then snap at you for doing exactly what they asked.

Or when your client emails you every hour if their account performs poorly, but then emails you every fifteen minutes if results are through the roof.

Cognitive psychologists call this a double bind, and it’s been proven to create crushing emotional distress. And not only for employees, but also for executives.

Because for them, running a company comes with a lot of scrutiny. They’re either liars for saying something that doesn’t come to fruition, or they’re sneaky for not sharing the news soon enough.

Sounds like we’re all damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

If we can learn to empathize with this pervasive sense of futility, it might make us more forgiving of ourselves and others. It might make it easier for us to surrender to the process and let go of our expectations, rather than digesting our stress until it morphs into a mental illness.

And that might just open the door to greater joy.

To quote the great sitcom creator, just do the show you want to do, because they network is going to cancel it anyway. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What if you embraced the complicated and absurd humanity of the workplace instead of trying to transcend it?