The second relates to why someone would react so strongly to what, in the scheme of things, isn’t really a big deal. Yes, five spam calls in the space of a few minutes is annoying, but not so unbearable as to provoke that kind of response. I notice you used the word “sacrosanct” to refer to your all-staff weekly meeting, and I wonder if your organisation has embraced the idea of the corporate “ritual”.

I don’t like the term at all. I understand that some conventions or repeated practices are important in a workplace. It’s fun to pop down to the local cafe with workmates, for example, and pick up a coffee in the morning. It’s useful to have a regular meeting where everyone comes together and talks about their achievements and challenges.

These aren’t rituals.

A ritual is religious. Embedded in its meaning is a sense of solemnity and devotion. It implies that work is a spiritual realm in which worship is not just important, but expected – the deity being venerated may be productivity or profit or market dominance.

To me, that’s grotesque. It’s also dangerous. When you talk about a meeting as a “ritual”, you’re asking people to treat it with a seriousness usually reserved for matters of morality and metaphysics. Now, as in all workplaces, some people will wave it away as yet more laughable corporate drivel (this piece from the World Economic Forum mentions “firing a nerf gun toy to conclude a project” as an important and effective ritual). But others will take it somewhat earnestly. And some will become outright zealots.

If this co-worker flew off the handle because they thought they were preserving the sanctity of a “ritual”, I think management, acting as clerics, holds far more responsibility than the servile, foul-mouthed employee, acting as an acolyte.

My advice would be to remove the idea of work as a place of devotion, reverence and ceremony. This desperate attempt to equate the corporate with the divine is foolish and dangerous. The sooner we stop it, the better for everyone.

Send your Work Therapy questions to jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au.

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