Let’s take your manager’s point of view for a moment and assume they see you as responsible and trustworthy. We’ll pretend, just for the sake of steel-manning their position, that they never talked about monitoring arrivals and departures as if they’re air traffic controllers and their charges are aeroplanes.
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Let’s assume, instead, that they value your expertise and want you to share it with others. That’s fair. Their supposition, though, is that the best place for you to do this is in the open-plan office. But your non-clinical work (the specifics of which we’ve removed from your original question for reasons of anonymity) is all about sharing your knowledge – just not verbally.
And if this is something you enjoy, are good at, and which is valuable to public health, why would a boss want to make it harder for you? If it ticks none of those boxes, why are you being asked to do it in the first place?
As is often the case in Work Therapy, I think what we’re talking about here is a kind of one-track managerial thinking that works only in the abstract. In practice, setting unbendable rules that apply to everyone may seem nondiscriminatory.
And it’s a strategy that may have worked well when manufacturing was the heart of our economy (and more workers were doing arduous, repetitive and sometimes unsafe, manual labour).
But today it breaks down the moment it comes into contact with the reality of a post-industrial economy – a complex reality made messy by the sheer multiplicity of human experiences.
It makes total sense to me that, as someone affected by migraines, you would work better in a quiet place (perhaps with a certain kind of lighting that big open offices generally don’t provide). It only makes more sense when you consider the nature of your work. To me, this isn’t a “special privilege”, but a sensible work decision.
Yes, get a health concession if you need one, but don’t feel as though you’re shirking a responsibility or taking an “easy option” if you do. I see this as your attempt to bring legitimacy to a way of working that, in a more trusting workplace, would be considered entirely unexceptional.
Send your Work Therapy questions to jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au
