Why Does Everyone View Work As "Toxic?"

I would generally classify MIT Sloan Management Review as a “reputable publication.” Here is their list of their most popular 2022 articles. Before you even get to №5, you have two references to the word “toxic,” with the most-popular article of the year being about how a toxic culture is driving “The Great Resignation” (sure, sure) and the fourth-most popular article of the year is about fixing toxic cultures. Between 1 and 4, you have (2), which is about meeting-free days — and I’d argue meetings are an example of managerial toxicity, so maybe that applies as well — and (3) is about how the “superpower” of “top performers” is happiness. That’s a whole other thing. I’ve written a bit about that before, but I’ll spare you links.

It is interesting how we have this semantic focus on “toxic” and “toxicity” in the last few years, usually around “toxic workplaces” and “toxic masculinity,” but also “toxic positivity,” which I think is when people gloss everything over as good and refuse to admit anything is bad. Personally I think most people are that way, or rather they only talk about the bad stuff with a small group of individuals, which is probably the best model. I write about all my bullshit and challenges on this channel and elsewhere, and I wouldn’t call myself conventionally “successful” in any true way. So maybe piping down is the best approach. I’m 42 and I still have no idea.

Some of the focus on “toxicity” is probably semantic creep around “trauma” and people wanting to find a vile, disgusting word to associate with Resignation, Reset, Quitting, Ghosting, and all the other workplace buzzwords of the moment. So, toxic fits. I get it.

But this should concern us, no?

I initially wrote this a couple of years back.

It quotes a 2018 (pre-COVID!) article called “The Workplace Is Killing People And Nobody Cares.” In that article, you have this:

Job engagement, according to Gallup, is low. Distrust in management, according to the Edelman trust index, is high. Job satisfaction, according to the Conference Board, is low and has been in continual decline. The gig economy is growing, economic insecurity is growing, and wage growth overall has stagnated. Fewer people are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance than in the past, according to Kaiser Foundation surveys. And a strikingly high percentage of people, even those covered by insurance, say they forgo treatment and medications because of cost issues.

Some of this is a bit melodramatic and speaks to this current issue of modern society.

But a lot of that paragraph is also very true, and I think the biggest thing about COVID and work is that it made a lot of people question “Wait, what the hell am I doing with work and why am I spending so much time here and focusing on it so much?” That cuts in two directions: some people spent more time associated with work, probably because being shut-in with their family was crazy in its own right, and some people re-evaluated work. Every journey, as it would be, was different.

It’s depressing to me how we spend so much time at work, thinking about work, trying to be relevant at work, completing tasks for work, hoping work likes us enough to give us a few more pennies, and just checking emails and pings re: work and yet … the biggest themes of a given year are managers reading articles about how everything is so toxic.

I honestly sometimes think that the “work revolution” we need isn’t in all the bullshit around “trauma-informed management” and/or “servant leadership” or whatever else the business journalism guys and the influencers want to discuss. Rather, we just need a society where increasingly more people realize work is mostly just a means to an end.

That would be the single-biggest change we could enact. Because if you realize “Hey, this is OK sometimes, and I’ve made some acquaintances, but largely I am just here for the money to live my life aside from this,” well … then all the other stuff about toxicity and bad management? It still matters, because you still need to live it and you wish it wasn’t present. But it matters a lot less. And that’s kinda what “Quiet Quitting” really is: it’s you saying, I’m gonna do what’s tied to my compensation and I’m going to make all the other bullshit matter less because when I’m out, I’m out until the next time I’m on shift.

What’s your take, tho? Is work truly “toxic” or is this more about the semantics of a generation raised on fluffy Instagram bullshit and DEI up-ramps?