Back when I was still working in the tech industry (I was a software developer for a small consulting company in my second job out of university) I had a boss that was… shall we say unpopular. My co-workers and I hated his guts and we complained ceaselessly about him.

It got to the point where we couldn’t start a meeting, have lunch in the cafeteria, or even go out for a beer without spending half an hour complaining about him.

We whined about his attitude, his stupidity, his meddling, his spinelessness … hell, even his dress sense came under fire. But then again, he is the only manager who has ever interviewed me wearing a narrow 80s-style purple, fake-leather tie.

But did we ever tell him? Nooooooo! While we were bitching and moaning to ourselves, he blithely went on as usual because no one ever complained to him. Which might’ve made sense when you think about it…

Looking back, I’m not sure that complaining to him would have worked – I think he was incorrigible – but one thing is for damn sure: Out bitching about it, fun though it may have been, did not improve things one little bit.

Because that kind of chronic complaining, justified or not, in the workplace leads to no good. In fact, in can be downright toxic and can make a department or even a whole company a terrible place to work.

Here’s why constant complaining is so bad:

1: It makes things look worse than they are
When people complain, they focus only on what’s wrong. Things may be mostly fine in the company, but complainers only talk about the problems, annoyances and peeves they perceive.

If things in a company are 80% good and 20% bad and you spend most of your time thinking and talking about the bad 20% – the situation will look a lot worse than it really is.

2: It becomes a habit
The more you complain, the easier it gets. In the end, everything is bad, every situation is a problem, every co-worker is a jerk and nothing is good.

The more you focus on the negative, the harder it gets to switch into a positive mindset.

3: You get what you focus on
According to Wikipedia, Confirmation bias is:

…a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs.

In other words, what you already believe influences your perception of everything around you. That’s why constant complaining makes you see everything in a negative light, because your subconscious mind tries to make new observation fit with what you already know.

4: It leads to onedownmanship
A complaining session might go something like this:

The other day, my boss came in 5 minutes before I was leaving and asked me to finish two huge projects for him. I had to stay two hours and missed my football game.

Yeah, well my boss told me to work this weekend AND the next.

Hah, that’s nothing! My boss…

This type of interaction rewards the person with the worst story who can complain the loudest. Not healthy!

5: It makes people despondent
Not only does constant complaining make you see the workplace as worse than it really is, but because you’re constantly hearing stories of how bad things are and how they’re constantly getting worse it also destroys all hope that things can get better.

This of course makes people less likely to take action to improve their situation, because everybody knows it’s doomed to fail anyway.

6: It kills innovation
Because the situations looks so hopeless, people become less creative and innovative. What’s the point of coming up with ideas and implementing them – it’s never going to work anyway.

Also, chronic complainers are the first to shoot down any new idea.

7: It favors negative people
The way to get status among complainers is to be the most negative. To be the one who sees everything in the most negative light.

Any attempt to be positive or cheerful will be shot down and optimists will be accused of being Pollyanna, naive and unrealistic.

8: It promotes bad relationships
People who complain together unite against the world and can create strong internal relationships based on this. But these relationships are based mostly on negative experiences. That’s not healthy.

It also means that you can only continue to be a part of the group if you can continue to complain, miring you even deeper in a complaint mindset.

9: It creates cliques
Being positive, optimistic and appreciative makes you more open towards other people – no matter who they are. It becomes easy to connect to co-workers in other departments, projects or divisions.

Complaining, on the other hand, makes people gather in cliques with their fellow complainers where they can be critical and suspicious of everybody else.

10: Pessimism is bad for you
Research in positive psychology has shown that people who see the world in a positive light have a long list of advantages, including:

• They live longer
• They’re healthier
• They have more friends and better social lives
• They enjoy life more
• They’re more successful at work

We sometimes think that pessimists and complainers have the edge because they see problems sooner but the truth is that optimists not only lead better lives, they’re also more successful because they believe that what they’re doing is going to work.

The upshot

Constant complaining in the workplace is toxic. It can drain the happiness, motivation, creativity and fun from a whole company. Wherever it’s going on it must be addressed and handled properly.

I’m NOT saying that we should never complain at work – quite the contrary. If you see a problem in your workplace, complain to whoever can do something about it.

What we should avoid at all costs, is constant bitching and moaning, where we’re always complaining about the same things, to the same people, in the same way, day in and day out.

So what can we do about it? Well first of all, each of us can learn to complain constructively. This means learning to complain in a way that leads to the problem being fixed – rather than to more complaining. Here’s my post on how you can How to complain constructively.

Secondly, we can learn to deal with the chronic complainers we meet at work. Unfortunately, our traditional strategies like trying to cheer them up or suggesting solutions for their problems don’t work because complainers aren’t looking for encouragement or solutions. Here’s my post on how to deal with chronic complainers.

Finally, you can train your own ability to be positive. Just like complaining can become a habit, so can being appreciative, optimistic and grateful. You could declare today a positive day, you could take a few minutes at the end of every work day to write down five good experiences from that day or you could praise a co-worker.

Try it and let me know how it goes!

Your take

But what do you think? Do you know any chronic complainers at work? What is their impact? How do you complain, when you see a problem?

Please write a comment, I’d really like to know!

Related

Here are some related posts about workplace complaining:

• A real-life story on how being positive helps at work
• Go complain. Right now!
• Some negative phrases to avoid

When your company screws up majorly – what do you do?

You can play hardball and stick to the rules, only apologizing and compensating your customers as a very last resort. For a wonderful example, check out this story of a Continental flight that was delayed 32 hours while plane toilets malfunctioned so sewage was running down the aisles.

What compensation did Continental offer?

…32 hours into the whole ordeal, we are in Newark, ready for the fun of customs and immigration, and on our way out of the gate Continental issues the final slap in the face—a voucher for one free drink the next time we fly with them! I wanted to tear it up and tell them where they could shove that drink, those bastards.

Continental HAS since apologized but I suspect that it’s just too little too late.

Alternatively, you can do what Southwest Airlines does and have a person in charge of apologizing:

No airline accepts blame quite like Southwest Airlines, which employs Fred Taylor Jr. in a job that could be called chief apology officer.

His formal title is senior manager of proactive customer communications. But Mr. Taylor — 37, rail thin and mildly compulsive, by his own admission — spends his 12-hour work days finding out how Southwest disappointed its customers and then firing off homespun letters of apology.

He composes about 180 letters a year explaining what went wrong on particular flights and, with about 110 passengers per flight, he mails off roughly 20,000 mea culpas. Each one bears his direct phone line.

I think that’s incredibly cool for a couple of reasons:

1. Taylor writes homespun letters that carry his direct phone number. No pre-written form letters with the company’s 1-800 number on’em. Direct responsibility and accountability.
2. These cases aren’t handled by lowly customer service reps who stick slavishly to company regulations and scripts – these are individual decisions based on what’s right and wrong in the given situation.

There’s also a Business Week podcast featuring Fred Taylor and here’s a story of how this works out in practice, from a traveler stuck on a Southwest flight that got delayed for 5 1/2 hours:

Bob Emig was flying home from St. Louis on Southwest Airlines this past December when an all-too-familiar travel nightmare began to unfold. After his airplane backed away from the gate, he and his fellow passengers were told the plane would need to be de-iced. When the aircraft was ready to fly two and a half hours later, the pilot had reached the hour limit set by the Federal Aviation Administration, and a new pilot was required. By that time, the plane had to be de-iced again. Five hours after the scheduled departure time, Emig’s flight was finally ready for takeoff.

A customer service disaster, right? Not to hear Emig tell it. The pilot walked the aisles, answering questions and offering constant updates. Flight attendants, who Emig says “really seemed like they cared,” kept up with the news on connecting flights. And within a couple of days of arriving home, Emig, who travels frequently, received a letter from Southwest that included two free round-trip ticket vouchers. “I could not believe they acknowledged the situation and apologized,” says Emig. “Then they gave me a gift, for all intents and purposes, to make up for the time spent sitting on the runway.”

I suspect that what really mattered here is both the formal apology and compensation that arrived a few days after the event, but especially the fact that the Southwest employees present handled the situation well. In Emig’s words the “seemed like they cared”.

Contrast this with the Continental sewage flight story above:

At one point I went up to the gate and one of the crew happened to be there. He was either the pilot or the co-pilot. I was trying to speak to the women behind the counter, telling them that we’d been waiting for hours and people were getting really upset about the lack of communication. This pilot stepped in and snottily told me that they were working on and I should just go sit back down. When I told him they needed to keep the passengers better informed of the situation he literally screamed at me, yelling “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” and then he stormed away. From that point on he earned the nickname Captain Customer Service.

There are two major points I’d like to make here:

1: Apologizing is good business.
Studies show, that a well-timed, honest apology from the company makes customers more understanding of the situation, less likely to cause problems and more likely to remain customers.

Studies from hospitals show that when doctors honestly apologize for medical mistakes, people are also much less likely to sue:

Colorado’s largest malpractice insurer, COPIC, for example, has enrolled 1,800 physicians in a disclosure program under which they immediately express remorse to patients when medical care goes wrong and describe in detail what happened. The insurer compensates patients for related expenses, including insurance deductibles for follow-up medical care; lost time at work; and baby sitters…

Buckley said malpractice claims against these 1,800 doctors have dropped 50 percent since 2000, while the cost of settling these doctors’ claims has fallen 23 percent. The University of Michigan Health System has cut claims in half and reduced settlements to $1.25 million from $3 million a year since developing a disclosure policy in 2002, said Richard Boothman, chief risk officer.

This runs counter to traditional thinking:

”Doctors worry that if they talk to the patient, they’re more likely to be sued,” Hanscom said. ”Our feeling is just the opposite. It’s the shutting down that angers patients. We’ve heard from patients in this situation that everyone almost shuns them.”

2: Employees who care handle these kinds of situations much better
This is crucial, because you can only care what happens if you’re happy at work. If people hate their jobs, dislike their coworkers and loathe their managers, there is no way in hell you can make them care about the job and about the customers.

When employees feel good at work, when they like their coworkers and, indeed, the company, they will go to extraordinary lengths to make customers happy. This means that any problems that do occur become nothing more than another chance to demonstrate good customer relations and make your customers even more loyal to your business.

Related:

• Top 5 reasons why “The Customer is Always Right” is wrong
• Create a culture of forgiveness in the workplace
• Monday Tip: Make an apology
• Four Fantastic Phrases at Work

Btw: I can’t believe I’m the first to suggest that after a flight where the toilets malfunction so sewage is leaking down the aisles, maybe it’s time Continental changed their name to Incontinental airlines. Ba-da-boom. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week!