Bring your whole self to work

An ex employer tried that...it swiftly ended when 1 of the engineers told them his "whole self" included burping, farting swearing and wandering around topless so he'll gladly play (to use his words), "your game of wokey-cokey". Cue lots of back peddling and a mumbled "well only if you want to of course". Nobody did.

My work definitely does not need my whole self - by turns raging irritation followed quickly by manic excitement and frankly slight omnipotence succeeded by short period of calm collectedness followed by worried fatalistic hopelessness.

I have spent a lot of time money and effort learning to manage my feelings. I don't want to let it all hang out!

I'm fairly normal by the way, if you knew me at work 🤣🤣

I work in HR and we were purchased by a US company a few years ago. This is the sort of wanky corporate bullshit they’re trying to get us to promote but we are pushing back saying it’s not what works in our UK office environment.

Dont bring your whole self to work - us in HR really don’t have time to deal with the fall out

Love that 😂

It’s up there with the, we’re not just a firm, we’re a family! Meaning we expect to be able to force you to work over and beyond what would be reasonable because you’ll feel indebted to us. Fuck that shit. I sell a certain amount of hours of my time per week for payment. How I spend my time beyond those very specific hours is not my work place’s business.

They get the portion and time that they've paid for.
I'm not one of those teachers who throw their heart and soul into it. I'm not sacrificing myself as a person or a mam.

I like some of the people I work with. But I don't consider them close.

I don't take my whole self to work. In fact, at times over the years, I have used work as a refuge to get away from what's going on in my life, so I can concentrate on smething else and forget about it for a few hours.

My whole-self cries a lot and farts freely, I think it's professional to leave parts of me at home.

We had this at a former workplace. The phrase started to be adopted in a sarcastic way when someone was being a twat - eg "I see Doreen really brought her whole self to work at that meeting earlier". Unsurprisingly HR quietly stopped using the phrase soon after.

Box ticking HR crap.

It’s all ‘bring your whole self to work’ until your personal troubles get in the way of work and then it’s ’leave your personal issues at the door and be professional’.

There is no way employees can win with organisations. Just smile and nod and be the last person in and the first one out. Life is too short to be putting up with this nonsense.

we have to bring our whole selves to work but also follow a really strict dress code 😂 it’s bullshit. My whole self is also much less tolerant of bullshit and far more sweary than I think they’d appreciate.

No. Stay professional.

Having said that, as a member of senior management, I'm open about being a single mother and meaning that means I will sometimes be taking calls from the car, and that school run times can't be changed. I think it's important that my colleagues know that this company will be reasonable and flexible around commitments.

Otherwise, my private life is private thankyou very much, and TBH, unless it's affecting your work and you need something from me, yours should be too.

No, never share. HR are not your friend.

My whole self would tell my boss to feck off, whereas my professional self thanks him for his opinion.

We had those nonsense 5/6 years ago and responded to it by saying that we noted that the purpose was to unite and bond us and that we wouldn't be doing it and bonded and were united in our refusal.

There were very strong reasons for us to refuse it.

We never heard another word about it.

It was getting a bit like that when I left my public sector job. I couldn’t give a shit about people’s whole selves and no interest in presenting mine. Bring your capable, efficient, professional self to work and get the fuck on with the work you’re paid to do.

Is there any evidence this bollocks improves productivity or staff welfare? I highly doubt it. I’d hazard a guess it’s the opposite.

Yep. I was just thinking my whole self isn’t professional.

Amen to that!

Although I do have one really close office colleague / friend at the moment, and I helped her out a lot (taking on her workload plus friendly support ) when her DH was involved in an accident- and she's been really supportive of me over stuff recently.

It's nice to have a few genuine friend/colleagues. It's a stretch to see most people as any more than "friendly colleagues" at most imo... I think the acid test is if you're still keeping up as friends after you change jobs.

Agree with pp. My work involves strong professional boundaries for legal reasons, but even working in hospitality you need those. Parts of us should only be shared in genuinely safe places with genuinely safe people; other parts should be kept for our intimate partners or our children or siblings. I would not want to work with someone who really did bring their whole self to work. I imagine it has huge potential for distracting drama, conflict, problems of all kinds.

I’d much prefer my colleague to save their “whole self” for their family and friends, and just bring their professional self to work.

Nobody needs to know what I truly think of my colleagues and the diabolical policies that we are expected to work within
I will leave my cig smoking, gin swigging, bra less, pj clad opinions at home

Good for you! That was sensible.

What a crock of BS. I would say never bring your whole self to work!

It’s hippy dippy individualist nonsense.

its leveraged by certain individuals who use it to platform and advance themselves. But
mostly it’s just a bad idea for everyone.

i don’t need to see your nipple piercing and know you are bisexual and non binary for you to fix my laptop at the help desk…

I tend to think that the people leading these kind of initiatives have had a very average upbringing and live a reasonably happy life now and just don't even think about the fact that many others haven't.

The people I work with don't need or want to know about my life story, and frankly they really don't want to know what I'm thinking some of the time because people would be offended or find it awkward.

I bring my professional self to work and they seem happy believing that that is my whole self.