One of the things I like about working with a wide range of clients is getting their unique perspectives on things. For one of my clients, I act as the Managing Editor for his quarterly technology magazine. I work with a lot of authors, many of whom work for very large companies. In any case, my client and I have recently been working through some author issues.
In the process of dealing with these issues he said, "I don’t want start a bureaucratic angstfest. (Yes, I invented that phrase.)" I have to say that the term "bureaucratic angstfest" completely and totally cracked me up because it completely and totally describes a condition I saw back in my days of working in Corporate America.
Based on seeing Corporate America up close and personal myself, my theory is that a lot of the cubicle dwellers out there are really, really bored. (What can I say, I was a technical writer…have you ever seen a technical writer who *wasn’t* bored?)
Anyway, to liven up their lives, the dwellers invent little melodramas regarding The Company. Often these little dramas begin with some perceived slight, move into paranoid worries about what "management" is up to, and end up with some huge outburst that often includes veiled or not-so-veiled threats of quitting.
So when I read the term "bureaucratic angstfest," I immediately knew what my client was talking about. The smallest perceived (and probably unintentional) slight devolves into a paranoid worry, and often results in some huge outburst. Naturally, we want happy authors, so we resolved the issues, and now everybody has settled down.
In the process of dealing with all of this, I remembered exactly why I never, ever want to go back to cubicle life again.