JetUNsetter

You must have heard of that one right? What does it mean exactly? Yes of course, you should be free to bring yourself to work. No matter your colour, your size, your sex tastes.

But wait a minute: is your sex taste relevant to the workplace in the first place? Why would you bring that to work? We should be free to flirt politely of course and expect to be encouraged or discouraged and act along. But the rest? Is work the forum to do politics, push agendas and envelopes or is it just work? Do work, have some fun, collect a salary and leave might be healthier. No one should care about your bed at work. No one (unless you are sleeping with the CEO, in which case good luck!)

Also, who exactly is giving the permission here? “Bring your whole self to work”. Who is saying this exactly? Some authority? (The employer, the manager?). We are already free to be ourselves without anyone’s permission or tolerance. There is nothing else there! We can be ourselves and ourselves only. We know of being nothing else.

Supposedly this is a new age slogan after years of suppression in the workforce where people chose to hide and pretend to keep their jobs and not disturb, not be loud, not be seen for humans when the deal was to act as clogs in money making machines. But they were still themselves. They somehow thought it was better to hide aspects of themselves. They might still want to do that. It might serve them well. They might not care to love anyone at work. They might have an abundance of friends and lovers outside the office so they just want a salary from that place.

We need no one to tell us who to be and what to bring where. This “do as I say” hidden behind the new age slogan does not fix the suppression, it reinforces it. Does not liberate, it’s again authoritative. It’s not democratic grammatically nor notionally.

It’s also empty: a slogan. You are still expected to wear something smart casual, right? You can wear flip flops potentially BUT only if so does the CEO and allows the look alike or you work for a flip flop manufacturer. You are still expected to look good on video calls even though you are at home. YOUR home. Have the people encouraging us to bring our whole self to work really allowed for pjs on Teams and Zooms?

But let’s also come to something deeper. A workplace where everyone is free and happy to be themselves and wear pjs on a zoom call would likely be a paradise. What it means (to me at least) is that we all have healthy personalities, no complexes and we are confident and free to think and act as we think and speak out loud about our thoughts. We are confient to love ourselves and confident to make space for others who also love themselves. Awesome! Yet, we find ourselves born into families with terrible parenting so the seed of hiding and staying quiet and learn to please by dishonesty is already planted. Then there is school. If you missed what authority, conformity and suppression is, you are in luck: your poorly educated, exchausted and equally troubled humans as yourself and your parents will take care of that. Teachers they are called. And then, in some countries there is the army if you are still worried about missing out from the conformity drama. And in any other part of the (western) world your manager will take care of your FOMO for a culture of suppression: a person with likely no formal education on people management who got promoted to the task and now can mirror all their suppression onto you and make sure “you bring your whole self to work”… (feel free to laugh at this point but I can understand if you feel like crying too).

What is the point I am making? We are so broken and it is not our fault. So we can only bring our broken self at work. Becoming our whole for a great majority of us might mean we need to go to therapy first. So how about we are not bothered with cheesy slogans about what self to bring at work unless this (for now) means it is actually a good idea to bring our broken selves at work (think again here and maybe don’t. We are not ready). We should instead worry about the teachers and the managers and what they first bring to work? … Please help me make sense if this one too….

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