If you’ve paid attention to workplace culture in the last few years, you might have watched it move toward the idea that employees should be able to work in the ways that work best for them, as long as they’re getting their jobs done and aren’t preventing their coworkers from doing theirs. Witness, for example, the broader acceptance of things that once might have been viewed as unprofessional, like using fidget toys to focus, wearing headphones, or moving around during meetings. If you’re still getting your work done and not bothering others, the thinking increasingly goes, why should anyone care?
But as these norms change, people don’t always know where the boundaries are. That’s particularly true of younger workers and people new to the workforce who have absorbed the idea of “work in the way that works best for you” without understanding the constraints that still come with having a job. (Blanket fort, anyone?)
At Slate today, I wrote about this tension. You can read it here.
