Advice Column from Your Tabby Cat
Should You Be Forced To Express Gratitude at a Work Retreat?
Dear Butterscotch,
I was recently required to attend a work retreat for administrators at Fred’s University where I work.
Although the retreat itself was paid for, it cost me money to arrange for child and pet care back home, and I also had to pay someone to bring meals to my elderly parents, whom I usually feed.
The retreat also involved activities that required me to buy a new SFW athletic-style swimsuit and hiking gear. Since both items were out-of-season, it was hard to find leer-proof swimwear and gear that fall into the socially acceptable space between not-allowed-to-look-butch and too-feminine-to-command-workplace-authority. Not to mention the problem of working at a private university where you must navigate the area between looking-old-money and not-having-old-money.
But the trickiest aspect was that the retreat followed the verdict in a long-standing lawsuit against Fred’s University for sexist practices in the workplace.
Because of the lawsuit, I had just been promoted to a top admin position. I am the first female to earn a salary on par with my male peers, and this is the first time I have been included in the luxe retreat.
The first day of the retreat was spent on Gratitude Exercises where we were supposed to reflect on how lucky we are.
Throughout the day, I was told by my colleagues that I should be expressing gratitude for getting away from my kids, which I guess is a standard of the Old Boy Networking of these retreats, which traditionally left childcare to a wife back home. I didn’t notice any of the Old Boys calling home to coordinate care and field emergency room trips from afar. I guess they should feel grateful: to their wives.
But the most egregious thing was the knowing smiles, unkind laughter, passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive comments about how I should be expressing gratitude for my job.
The whole point of the lawsuit was that much more accomplished women and people of color were excluded from top admin jobs at my school while white males were advanced. I am not grateful to my school for giving me the promotion I deserve. In fact, I am still angry. The settlement did not provide for back pay or compensation for lost wages and benefits.
I was reluctant to repeat the cult-speak affirmations of my gratitude toward my sexist and racist bosses and refused to do some of the gratitude exercises. Forced gratitude felt like servitude.
The retreat leader and other colleagues let me know that I was not showing the proper level of gratitude, and they were concerned I was not a team player.
Was I wrong to buck the system?
–Ingrate
Dear Ingrate,
A long tradition exists of demanding that victims of enslavement express gratitude toward their enslavers. There was a name for this phenomenon in the American south: “The Grateful Slave.” The trope of the supposedly Grateful Slave was used to both reinforce and justify enslavement.
Gratitude practices are also a centerpiece of the toxic self-help movement, which tells people (mostly women) that they can solve the problems of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy by changing their mindset.
The practice of expressing gratitude probably shows some positive results as part of a self-enforcing placebo-effect loop. We are told gratitude is good for you, and so maybe sometimes it is.
But the data shows that forced gratitude does not work. Contrary to what your self-help guru may have told you, gratitude will not help you battle the depression and anxiety created by poverty, disenfranchisement, and overwork. A meta-analysis of 27 studies of gratitude exercises shows they are not effective in improving mental health.
There are loads of problems with gratitude exercises. Forced gratitude can enforce toxic positivity, promote victim-shaming and psychologically trap people in abusive situations.
Yet minorities are constantly being told they should be grateful for being treated almost as well as everyone else. Women are supposed to be grateful for being allowed to enter the workplace at lower pay and still do most of the work at home.
Next time you are invited to one of these dreadful retreats, send a memo suggesting that your team embraces the spirit of gratitude by thanking service employees at Fred’s University with a living wage. Propose a Working Gratitude Weekend where administrators go and do a Habitat-For-Humanity-style project for its lowest-paid employees.
No need to worry that this might be problematic White Saviorism. It will never happen. There is no way these men will trade a luxe retreat of expensive self-congratulation for actually thanking the people that make their jobs possible.
And you will be long gone. I suggest you trade up to a higher salary using your current Fred U job as a stepping stone.
A job is work you do for money, not something you should be grateful for.
Leave Fred’s University and any job that becomes like a dysfunctional family guilt-tripping you into doing their dirty work. Send an Academic Condolence Card and call it a day.
Cats are supposed to be grateful for a bowl of dried industrial waste from the toxic food industry factory floor. Vomit to that.
You should throw this back in their faces too.
Meow,
Butterscotch
Also Read: What Will We Lose If We Get Rid of Professional Conferences?
More Advice from Butterscotch: How to Request a Teacher for My Child?