> people are less likely to feel or express gratitude at work than anyplace else. And they’re not thankful for their current jobs, ranking them dead last in a list of things they’re grateful for.
First off I don't want to be thanked or praised, I want to be PAID. If I do a great job give me more money, a day off, or something tangible. I don't want a non-monetary gift either. I have a drawer full of work trophies. It's nonsense. Why should I be thankful I have a job? I've earned this.
I used to have a manager that would thank me all the time and then praise me for the littlest thing. It lost any meaning it may have had and often feels more manipulative than anything. Student of the one minute manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager.
I thank my co-workers all the time though because they don't have to be nice or helpful. And I nearly always help a co-worker when they ask for it and sometimes when they don't. I typically get a thank you. Thanks and praise from my teammates goes well beyond anything from a higher up. Maybe I'm cynical, but it nearly always feels like I'm being placated in some way.
Edit:
I think it goes further to respect and listen to the opinions of your fellow co-workers and your employees. Take all opinions into consideration. Do not dismiss anything immediately. Acknowledge those who've contributed yes, when taking any sort of credit when speaking to other higher-ups or outside the department.
Also respect a person's work. Don't throw it away for a complete rewrite because that's easier than trying to understand it and don't suggest a revision without fully considering what already exists.
I'm moving towards a lead dev role, running a small group (3 other devs). I always try to thank people, and include enough specific detail that it's plausible. One dev, fresh to a problem, recently identified a place where if we used a multi-map instead of a map, it would solve problems that had plagued us for months. My response was "Fuck yeah, we've been trying to figure out how to work around that for months. Good catch." I praised another dev who just joined for getting a whole lot more done in her first two weeks than I expected. Entirely new language and tech stack on a sophisticated application. It's impressive. I said so.
Remuneration aside, they're humans who benefit from positive validation. It seems well recieved. Maybe an important point is I actually am grateful that they're good at their jobs. Man, working with competent people who aren't phoning it in is a pleasure.
And yeah, in the abstract, my position with my employer is basically "fuck you, pay me." But that's just a sine qua non. Whether or not I like being there is contingent on how I'm treated.
My response was "Fuck yeah, we've been trying to figure out how to work around that for months. Good catch." I praised another dev who just joined for getting a whole lot more done in her first two weeks than I expected. Entirely new language and tech stack on a sophisticated application. It's impressive. I said so.
Your anecdotes are not about thanking people or expressing gratitude. I kind of agree with both you and the GP comment. I am a woman and my life taught me to do a lot of emotional labor. It mostly has not led to money.
I think discussions about stuff like this are probably overlooking something important. As best I can tell, being too touchy feely personal reads as "I love YOU" and is problematic. A better message is "I love your work, good job!" and that seems to be the note you are hitting.
That is an interesting point. I had not made that distinction, and didn't really realize that was my MO. Maybe there's a rule to be conjectured there about praising actions instead of people.
Indeed, you have summed up a huge problem with SF area culture: many people think that these fake-nice platitudes are meaningful, and also use them against others on a large scale in their daily life as a form of pervasive emotional manipulation -- often to avoid paying someone money.
I've been at places where there was no thanks, no money, no nothing, but I was empowered and left alone enough to get things done. That was okay, but it still felt a little thankless (obviously).
I have been at places where there was little empowerment, but where there was monetary rewarding of people who somehow still managed to achieve things by working outside of the box. That was even worse; they recognized we did a good job, but didn't actually translate that to "let them be empowered to make decisions".
People aren't dumb. They can tell when they're actually appreciated. It's a combination of things. If an employer truly respects and appreciates an employee, the employee knows they will respond with verbal thanks, some sort of gift or reward (often limited by corporate, but could be something as simple as buying lunch, if that's an infrequent thing), and look to empower the employee further to continue their good work. Dropping the ball on any of these will leave it feeling disingenuous.
First, I'll state the obvious: It's not an either-or.
Second, if you look at research on incentives, I think you'll find reducing everything to money tends to backfire, where people who used to go the extra mile in the past stopped doing so because they knew the amount of money they would get would be little.
Think of this scenario some of us have been in. A friend of mine who's big on cars insisted he change my oil for me. He insisted paying Jiffy Lube is a big ripoff. So he did the work, and then I tried giving him some money. He got very offended.
I needed to visit a city for some personal work for a few days, and stayed at a friend's place while there. I tried paying him a nominal amount for his hospitality. Result: He was offended.
However, in both cases, if I repay them by buying them coffee or a lunch, there would be no offense. From my perspective, the outcome is the same: I lose the same amount of money. But on their side, the response is drastically different.
I won't get into which approach is "correct" or "better". The reality is that, in most societies, including the US, the majority behaves this way.
Dan Ariely in one of his books talks about the research involving what he calls "social" vs "market" contracts. The former is usually non-financial, and often involves favors we do for friends. The latter is usually precise and monetary.
Now of course, it depends on the type of work you do, but for most salaried positions, it is a mistake to assume that only market contracts apply ("I do work, and I get paid for it"). What Dan Ariely's chapter shows, is that when companies do lean towards mostly market contracts, bad things happen: Poorer productivity, fractious work environments, etc.
Even if you're getting paid, there is a place for both types of contracts. If you're one of those who care only for the amount you get paid, you're definitely not someone our team wants to hire. I've seen this even within my company - one org takes care of both contracts, and another doesn't. I used to be in the latter and I'm glad I left for the former.
In my company, we have a tool where any employee can thank any other employee with a greeting card. The recipient's manager is notified. The "thanker" can attach company money to it (almost always do) - a nominal amount. Anything over about $30 needs to be approved, but anything under is provided without managerial approval - the company just provides a fund for this.
I think it works well, and in my department, we are frequently encouraged to thank others using the tool for both big and small things.
It doesn't impact your annual review at all. You still have the usual process to get a raise, promotion, etc.
I agree that workplace is not just about "market" contracts. It's full of "social" contracts too. And if all the parties fulfill their "market" obligations properly, there's no reason to dislike giving or receiving signs of gratitude. The problem starts when some clever manager thinks he can pay you "social" coins in lieu of monetary compensation. Everyone wants to have a nice workplace, but it's not a party; people come there to perform services in exchange for currency.
I'd say the issue is subtle, it's kind of "push" vs. "pull" thing. It's great if people believe in your mission so much they're willing to work overtime for free, or be paid low. But if you start to expect people to work overtime or accept low pay because mission!, then I'd say you've just broken the "social" contract of not being a manipulative asshole, and we're back to "fuck you, pay me" situation.
"Treat the cleaners like they're The Queen; treat The Queen like she's a cleaner"
I took this to mean: treat cleaners with respect & appreciation; do not fawn and scrape to your bosses.
Similarly: "grief travels up, praise travels down" and "be nice to those you meet on your way up as you may well meet them again on your way down".
I use all of these mantras on a daily basis and I believe they work. I can't guarantee my food is spittle free but I have never had reason to believe otherwise.
I confess I have been known to break this rule with phone spammers.
I'm a teacher: the canteen staff know a surprising amount about students and can spot changes in mood/attitude very quickly. Its uncanny. Caretakers basically run the building. Advanced warning of furniture moving needs, and any special setups and a quick word of thanks afterwards, ensures smooth running. Good reception staff know where everyone is.
I am similar but even more wide spread. Receptionist, anyone. I also try to do the same for anyone I deal with in a customer service role out in the world. Even the smallest thing really can make someone's day a little better, and isn't that worth the insignificant effort to do it?
To add onto this, I remember explaining the idea of our devops team to my non-technical/muggle coworkers at one point. Explaining how "the cloud" and "servers" are really just OPM (other peoples' machines) and that you need entire teams to orchestrate those servers (among other things) opened their eyes to how comparable IT teams are to civil engineers.
I like to think they enjoyed learning about the process and will appreciate it more in the future.
Heh, i noticed a site recently for some framework or other that claimed it was "serverless". Meaning that it was designed to run inside a container or VM, and thus whatever hardware it ran on was not "your" problem.
I really do wonder what kind of accounting gymnastics this kind of thinking leads to, as at the end of the day someone has to pay the people that monitor and maintain the hardware, never mind the power bill.
I thank everyone for everything they do for me - not because I should but because I'm genuinely grateful whenever someone does what was requested of them.
I've not found that it's something that's repaid. If anything, folks are more motivated by the guy who shouts at them and never thanks them, because they want his impossible to win approval. The thankful person gets ignored.
There's probably a happy medium to be had somewhere.
I think I read this on HN long time ago, and it stuck with me - do you know the name of the cleaner working in your office? Why not?
I always try to learn it (by asking directly, but I'm a bit shy so it takes some time), and to show the appreciation for their work. It feels like a right, human thing to do.
Just wanted to say something about this part: "In short, Americans actively suppress gratitude on the job, even to the point of robbing themselves of happiness. Why? It may be because in theory, no one gives away anything at work; every exchange is fundamentally economic." <- this does not matches with my work experiences with americans at all. On the contrary I noticed careful attention to appreciate every bit.
I agree - this matches my experience too. Americans are blunt but that goes both ways. They appreciate a good deed while at the same time make their disapproval heard too.
I would point out that "Americans" are not a homogenous entity, culturally or otherwise. The United States is huge and has many distinct local cultural regions, with radically different behavioral norms that are obscured through the use of a common language and political system.
San Francisco is vastly different than New Jersey, for example, and both are vastly different than, say, the rural south.
Our group uses a chat bot, which plays silly games at random times. Sometimes the challenge is like "Say thanks to somebody to earn some points". Those points are useless gamification tokens, but maybe it helps to encourage gratitude. There was always somebody who took that challenge so far.
Custom. We started with a small Jabber bot framework. Then migrated it to IRC (and terminal for testing).
We cannot publicize all the plugins we made. If we rip out the plugins, it is just a bot framework like many others, just with less features and more convoluted code.
Ok, our filter mechanism is probably unique. We can switch the bot to various german dialects like bavarian, swabian, etc. Works similar to http://rinkworks.com/dialect/works.shtml but changes bot output instead of web pages. It was fun for a week and now nobody uses it anymore.
I once tried to migrate our plugins to Errbot [0], but then decided it was too much effort for too little gain.
Is it really gratitude if you cultivate it? Can you really become mindful/thankful/x via pure practice? If it makes sense and is logical why can't you instantly become thankful, why do you practice?
I see ton's of people in daily life who have cultivated modesty (eg: politicians, ceo's ect) . It is so obvious that its fake, why do ppl do this?
> I see ton's of people in daily life who have cultivated modesty (eg: politicians, ceo's ect) . It is so obvious that its fake,
No. You have seen tons of people who have cultivated modesty-signalling. Signalling is cheap, but it stops passing for the real thing when overused. That's where the fakeness feeling comes from.
The more advanced manipulators are already practicing anti-modesty-signalling: Open disregard for courtneousness, plus some other subtler signalling that people subconsciously correlate with real modesty. Onces these tactics get widespread, they will feel fake too.
But all this does not mean you cannot practice the actual thing. Being mindful, thankful, etc does require practice... and it is harder than just signalling for it. It does not come naturally to human beings, at least not in our culture, but it does not make it worthless.
To add on to this, this thinking of "fake" vs "real" gratitude falls into the typical Socratic thinking of "I can tell you what isn't XXX but I can't tell you what it is cause I'm not wise yada yada." As human beings we like to think we can tell human beings intentions. However, as miscommunication proves, we often can't, at least accurately. Having individuals go through the motions of generosity, humility, and gratitude is just as good as teaching people those intentions e.g. play the part long enough and you stop playing.
why do we need to teach people though? If its obvious that gratitude is good why can't we simply adopt it in an instant. Unless you mean 'anti gratitude' is inherent to all human minds and needs to be constantly suppressed and overpowered through practice.
Call it "teaching," "training," "learning," "conditioning," or whatever else you like, but it seems pretty self-evident that people change how they think and feel based on their experiences. Some of those experiences involve acting a certain way and seeing how others react.
Think about it the other way—in terms of negative emotions. A person with anger problems might practice suppressing blowups and taking a moment to try to deal with the anger before moving on. Would you accuse them of being fake-not-angry? Of course not. They're practicing healthy behavior, and over time the practice becomes natural and they don't even have to think about it anymore. They have become a genuinely less angry person by practicing non-angry behaviors.
Practicing gratitude is the same thing, except you're reinforcing a positive emotion rather than suppressing a negative one. You can become a genuinely more thankful person by reminding yourself to express gratitude.
I question any person's ability to truly read the thoughts or emotions of another. At any given moment, a person's thoughts and feelings are very complex and entangled, yet when we interpret their actions we reduce them down to a simple emotion or intention. That oversimplification is always inaccurate, and we should work to develop more complex understandings of other people. So when someone looks like they're faking modesty, they may in fact feel somewhat modest, or at least be faking it for "good" reasons.
There is, of course, a difference between "saying what you're supposed to say" and "trying to be more outwardly grateful," but in reality the lines blur a lot and neither is a bad thing. This may be an unpopular opinion, but when it comes to public discourse, I'll take fake expressions of gratitude over genuine expressions of contempt any day of the week.
Just curious about your reasoning behind the last statement, that with "public discourse [you'd] take fake expressions of gratitude over genuine expressions of contempt any day of the week".
If they were to openly express their contempt, then I know where they stand, and adjust my actions accordingly. If they fake expressions of gratitude, I can't be sure what their feelings actually are. Are they having a bad day, and trying to turn it around? Do they genuinely view me with distaste? If it's the former, it might benefit me to support this person. If it's the latter, I might not.
I can understand why it'd be good for a politician to present this ambiguity, but why is it good for you, the consumer of the public discourse?
I put a lot of stock in the power of discourse. When a person publicly expresses their hatred or contempt, they always raise the levels of hatred and contempt in the listeners--those that agree with them are emboldened, and those that disagree are aggravated. Creating a more hateful society is so negative (in my opinion) that it outweighs the benefits of the honesty.
I think the strongest case against my stance is the politicians, since we need to "know" them in order to be informed as voters. Except politicians are actively campaigning, so it's impossible to know whether a politician is expressing those views because they actually believe them or just because they think it's good strategy. Therefore, when it comes to politicians, I judge them more on what they've done in the past, and I consider their public statements mostly on their tone than on their content, because it probably reflects the tone they'll continue to take once they're in office. Hypothetically, if I could instantly detect the truth in a politician's statement, maybe the information benefit would outweigh, but since I need to assume that I don't know the full story no matter what they say, I'd prefer they be kind than mean.
>Is it really gratitude if you cultivate it? Can you really become mindful/thankful/x via pure practice?
Yes (if done well) and yes.
>If it makes sense and is logical why can't you instantly become thankful, why do you practice?
For all the same reasons that other things that make sense and are logical do not instantly transform you.
Various studying habits make sense and are logical. Knowing them does not instantly change you.
Same with eating habits.
Heck, I do not know your age, but I'm old enough where it's easy for me to find things in my life where I knew the "correct" approach, but it took me years to change my behavior to be consistent with what I knew.
bad food is more appealing to eat. Is there something more appealing about not being grateful? probably. In which case constantly beating yourself is over doing the right thing as the article suggests is not going to work.
Same reason most diets don't work. you mind cannot deal with constant conflict all day, you have to understand and resolve the conflict, not chastise yourself all day.
The article had a point about not overdoing it, and, to consider specifics of things that actually helped, which would sound more sincere if mentioned. You have to remind yourself that people actually are helping you.
yo gratitude is nice but mainly make sure you're at a minimum in a good working environment. again, gratitude is nice, but it's not necessary for a healthy working environment.
i think many people here would be surprised how many people don't give a shit about things like gratitude etc but just want a working/decent coffee maker in the office.
a healthy working environment is the most important.
First off I don't want to be thanked or praised, I want to be PAID. If I do a great job give me more money, a day off, or something tangible. I don't want a non-monetary gift either. I have a drawer full of work trophies. It's nonsense. Why should I be thankful I have a job? I've earned this.
I used to have a manager that would thank me all the time and then praise me for the littlest thing. It lost any meaning it may have had and often feels more manipulative than anything. Student of the one minute manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager.
I thank my co-workers all the time though because they don't have to be nice or helpful. And I nearly always help a co-worker when they ask for it and sometimes when they don't. I typically get a thank you. Thanks and praise from my teammates goes well beyond anything from a higher up. Maybe I'm cynical, but it nearly always feels like I'm being placated in some way.
Edit:
I think it goes further to respect and listen to the opinions of your fellow co-workers and your employees. Take all opinions into consideration. Do not dismiss anything immediately. Acknowledge those who've contributed yes, when taking any sort of credit when speaking to other higher-ups or outside the department.
Also respect a person's work. Don't throw it away for a complete rewrite because that's easier than trying to understand it and don't suggest a revision without fully considering what already exists.