1 hour ago
2
July 17, 2026 — 5:01am
I am faced with a dilemma at work. I am conscious of the dangers of toxic positivity and demanding that fellow employees come to work “with the right attitude”. I faced it myself in an old job, and I found it demeaning.
That being said, I am currently having problems with a colleague I work with closely [we’ll call them Lou] who appears to be constantly grumpy. I have talked to Lou, and know they are not satisfied with parts of their life, including parts of their work life. I take what they have told me seriously. However, because they are literally always negative and pessimistic, I am starting to find coming into work draining. Is there anything I can do without falling into the toxic positivity trap?
I share your misgivings about policing co-workers’ emotions. For the most part, it’s a futile and counterproductive tactic. When you ask a person to always come to work cheerful or positive, unless they’re naturally ebullient (and who is every single day of the week?), they’ll either grow resentful or start pretending.
And if it’s not just a single manager or office busybody doing it – if it’s a workplace policy – an organisation risks establishing a culture of facades and fakery.
So, I commend you for refusing to commit the same workplace sin as your former colleagues. I also think you did the right thing by seeking out what might be behind Lou’s sourness.
As I always say in Work Therapy, we can never really know what goes on in the hearts of others, but if I were to make an educated guess based on what you’ve privately told me, I would say Lou’s worries outside work are challenging but not demoralising. It’s more likely the work-life stuff that’s getting them down.
My guess is that Lou feels alone in the workplace. They likely appreciate you as a shoulder to cry on.
It sounds like a lot of what’s making work miserable for Lou is a combination of outdated and nonsensical workplace procedures, tasks that feel unchallenging and sometimes meaningless, as well as a general sense of being under-appreciated.
Ideally, all of these things could be brought to the attention of one or more conscientious leaders. Ideally, these concerns would be treated with the gravity they deserve. Ideally, this would lead to structural and systemic changes that would make work better for everybody.
While I don’t think you should dismiss the ideal out of hand, I can see that everything mentioned in the previous paragraph might seem like wishful thinking. And even if you can help to bring about this change, it may take a long time before it’s enacted.
But I think there’s an alternative.
It sounds to me like you find Lou’s negativity exasperating but have a cordial relationship with them. Use this as a starting point for what I’m going to call a measured experiment with siege mentality.
Why siege mentality? Because I’m not sure that what I’m about to propose will appeal to Lou if you simply frame it as “working together”. I get the sense they might dismiss that as Polyanna-ish. I know you concur with some (but not all) of Lou’s complaints. Use these agreements as the basis of an alliance.
Be careful, though; it will require a deft balancing act. It has to be sincere – if it feels like a cynical tactic to manipulate your colleague into behaviour change, it’s not worth it. At the same time, it can’t be a full-on descent into us-against-the-world thinking.
If it becomes that, you risk only exacerbating the resentment. You also risk going rogue and wandering off into terrain your employer might find objectionable.
It should be more an act of empathy and solidarity than an act of resistance. And it should be highly practical. While disdain for the offending policies and directives might be the fuel that fires your project, it can’t be the project itself.
This should all be about improving your own situations. Discuss ways you can help each other to make tasks and assignments more interesting and more meaningful (while still meeting the central requirements, of course). Talk about whether there are old rules you can safely ignore and whether there are different approaches you can take to your duties.
My guess is that Lou feels alone in the workplace. They likely appreciate you as a shoulder to cry on. But confiding doesn’t change their circumstances. If you became a comrade-in-arms – in a resolute effort to make work bearable – you might help lift them out of their emotional mire.
