I work in a small organisation. I am part of a small team. My colleagues frequently leave me alone in the office – occasionally for hours at a time. Sometimes they tell me they are having a meeting off site. Sometimes they don’t say anything. They just leave the office and are away for a long while.
At first I thought this was none of my business. But as it has kept happening, I have found it peculiar and am now starting to ask myself whether I should be worried. What do you think?
What a bizarre mystery you find yourself in the midst of.
I can see how your colleagues’ actions have elicited a dawning anxiety rather than being immediately disconcerting. At first, when you were new to the team, this abandonment seemed like an idiosyncrasy you simply hadn’t developed the cultural literacy to understand.
You didn’t worry because you thought that a rational explanation would eventually clarify itself in front of you. After some time now, that explanation remains elusive.
The obvious question I need to get out of the way, and which you have kindly already answered in our private correspondence, is “Why can’t you just ask?” Your answer, of course, was not “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that”, but a nuanced explanation of a quite eccentric workplace culture and unusual team dynamic.
There is almost always more than one way to solve a problem, and the most convenient or conspicuous option isn’t always the best one.
The truth is, you have, in fact, asked. And you asked in exactly the way (for what it’s worth) I would have advised: in an amiable, almost off-hand manner, as far from accusatory or indignant as you could be.
The response was similarly non-confrontational, but also completely unhelpful. If I was being uncharitable to your colleagues, I’d say they fobbed you off.
From what I can tell, your initial instinct that what they were doing was none of your business is something you probably picked up by osmosis. Your colleagues, without ever saying it in so many words, have given you reason to think their whereabouts during these long absences is not for you to know.
That makes the next logical step – being firmer and less jovial in your questioning – more risky than it might otherwise have been.
I think if the situation were different, I’d tell you not to worry about causing minor offence or breaking some kind of unspoken, insignificant taboo. I’d tell you to just ask again – directly.
But in this workplace, where it sounds like there is a strict although unnamed hierarchy, including quite bizarre tacit rules on who is allowed access to what information, I’m not sure if that’s the right guidance.
This is in many ways a singular problem, but if I could widen the advice to other readers it would be that if a course of action at work seems obvious in only a general sense, don’t jump to it immediately. Ask yourself, is this obvious because it’s based on a genuinely universal principle or because it’s received wisdom?
The principle that you shouldn’t represent someone else’s work as your own, for example, holds up if you change all sorts of work variables. On the other hand, a truism like “always take up a work concern with the person causing it before talking to a higher-up” can be excellent advice in some instances and disastrous advice in others.
In short: there is almost always more than one way to solve a problem, and the most convenient or conspicuous option isn’t always the best one.
Yes, you could just demand your colleagues tell you what’s going on, but that is very unlikely to be well received. And that’s OK if you don’t fear the consequences.
But my impression (again, I’m referring to aspects of our private back-and-forth here) is that you’re satisfied with this job and don’t have much of an appetite to shake things up. Obviously, you’re not going to be sacked for such a small thing, but it sounds like you could put noses out of joint.
I’ll say it again because I don’t want you to think you’re imagining it: the culture and politics of your team is genuinely strange; the sudden and barely explained departures are illustrative of that. But my question would be, is this a form of strangeness that borders on the dysfunctional, or is it something you can live with?
If it’s the former, ignoring your instincts to be discreet and disrupting the uncanny status quo might be worth the risk. If you find the behaviour weird but tolerable, maybe this is a mystery best left uninvestigated.
Send your questions through to Work Therapy by emailing jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au
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Jonathan Rivett is a writer based in Melbourne. He’s written about workplace culture and careers for more than a decade.