Don’t hate the (rational) player, hate the game.
What our colleagues actually owe us in this IRL game of Monopoly.
Last week we talked about what we owe to each other at work and how, à la an escape room, what makes for nicer, non-toxic workplaces is when we:
Know the rules, and can be trusted to follow the rules. This is more than just the company handbook stuff - it’s also about knowing how to row in the same direction.
Related to rowing in the same direction, it is also us being ready to work with other people, and respecting that they have different roles & skill sets.
And lastly, with those people, it is us wanting to accomplish the bigger goal in an optimal amount of time (i.e., 40 hours a week).
Sounds nice, right?
Then - why, and where, does it all go so wrong? 🫠
Let’s revisit our colleague from last week - the one who made the microwave mess. Common aliases: The one who cooks fish in a communal kitchen. The one who never takes notes in a meeting. The one who speaks over us. The one who consistently messages us after hours (and expects a response!) The one that, even when lent the most generous definitions of the above, still doesn't row in your direction.
To these humans, we ask: What gives?!
The question isn’t “what gives?!” with this insufferable human. The real question is - what aren’t they giving, and why?
Let’s walk through the office in their shoes.
Choose a colleague that is driving you batty (or: choose a fictional one to do this exercise without getting riled up about something recent and real), and answer the following questions.
First: Are they a rational player?
This is a concept stolen from game theory. If you’re in a game (whether a real one of trading nukes, or a casual game of Battleship), can you expect this human to act rationally? Are they trying to avoid war, or are they just dead-set on everyone dying? In an escape room, the irrational player is the friend that breaks things for fun.
We do ourselves a disservice to assume that the humans we work with are irrationally terrible. When dealing with an irrational player, there’s no improving the situation. We can’t work with them, which means we can’t fix the problem, which leads to feelings of helplessness. Why even try, if they’ll set off the nukes anyway?
Even just for our own sanity, it is better to see them as rational players - perhaps of a game we don’t quite understand. The next two questions help us discover what their game is, and whether it is the game they should play. If it isn’t, are they being punished for it?
Does their behavior help, hinder, or do nothing to the larger goal of the organisation?
A chef insisting that the onion be diced finer might be hindering the day’s work of getting food out, or it might be what makes the dish. A colleague pinging you after hours for questions they should know the answer to is possibly helping the larger goal of the workplace (by getting work done), but it might also be hindering it by exhausting you after a full work day. Someone leaving the microwave a mess probably weighs not at all on the organisation’s success (unless you sell microwaves), although it is supremely gross.
Is the behavior expressly forbidden in the workplace? Or, alternatively - is it rewarded?
Is there a rule you can point to that they’re not following? Or is it one of those “common sense” rules they should know, but pretend not to? What’s the punishment for doing it, if any? If you were going to report it, how would you? If it is rewarded, why is that? Is it because it contributes to the larger goal, even if it irritates you?
My favorite fictional character for this game? Dwight Schrute from the American version of The Office.
Wow, how irritating is he? If you’re unfamiliar with the show: He eats hard-boiled eggs at his desk. He hides weapons all over the office. He is insufferably obsessed with his boss, and his job.
And yet, he is a rational player. His behaviour, while often verging on gross, isn’t punished by Dunder Mifflin, and may even be ignored-slash-encouraged in service of his sales record. Jim hates working with him, true, but Dwight doesn’t really owe Jim anything except general respect.
And where Dwight’s version of general respect diverges from Jim’s (i.e., talking super loudly on the phone), Dunder Mifflin doesn’t take action. They didn’t even give them phone booths!
The times where Dwight causes a big issue, like setting the office on fire, he is actually punished.
If anyone should have a problem, it’s with the company’s leadership, and the company culture they allowed to grow.
But… at the same time, it’s a company culture where everyone can show up as a little bit weird.
As long as you don’t harm someone else in your pranks or hobbies, and don’t let them keep you from rowing in the same direction - the company doesn’t seem to care. That element of Dunder Mifflin is respectful (while the rest, not so much).
Nice workplaces are places where humans are respected. One of the ways we can respect ourselves, and our colleagues, is by remembering what we owe to our colleagues, and what they owe to us.
All our colleagues owe to us at work is their ability to help the organisation row in the same direction.
If their behaviour is advancing the workplace, if it isn’t forbidden, or if they aren’t being punished for it, then they are rowing in our same direction. We just might not like the way they do it.
This ability to generate a result - a successful dinner service, a product launch, a banner month of sales - is why the rules of the workplace exist. It’s why we were hired and they were hired, for the number of hours a week we were hired for, to do the job we’ve been hired to do.
This truth sets us free, because - unless it is explicitly written down, or clearly rewarded or punished in our workplace - we were not hired to be work spouses or after-hours secretaries or office housekeepers. These are nice benefits that you or I or our work bff may choose to offer, but it is indeed extra.
Expecting these perks by default from all of our colleagues isn’t nice. Instead, it puts unrealised (and often unverbalised) expectations onto our fellow humans at work - which inevitably leads to disappointment.
For behaviour that truly isn’t acceptable and harms the organisation - like leaving communal areas a mess, regularly expecting responses after hours, personal insults - you should report it. But if that doesn’t work, there’s one more truth here for you.
If the game of our workplace is one where the rules change often, where bad behavior isn’t corrected, where gossip, betrayal, secret alliances or other strategies pay off, then our problem isn’t with our colleague. Our problem is with our workplace.
And it’s up to us to decide if we can handle being, and working with, the kind of rational players that thrive there. You might not be able to leave that workplace right now - but by seeing your coworkers as players in the game should make it easier for you to operate alongside them until you can.
In theory, a rational and respectful workplace should work well. But one of the areas where humans diverge in their opinion of what’s rational is in the personal! Personal information of all kinds, really, is a minefield to navigate at work with respect and boundaries, because it is different for everyone in terms of what’s appropriate and normal.
That’s what we’re tackling next week, with a bonus edition for our paying subscribers on all the most awkward personal situations we face.
Until then!
Rachel
Links We Love 📚
All of the reading on game theory is great, but an amazing place to start is the Wikipedia page. Bear your way through the math to get to the applications - trust me!