Just as those of us who live in big cities know they are never more than 20ft from a rat (which is probably nonsense), those in the HR realm know they are never more than a few hours away from a new buzzword.
So what in the good Lord’s name is “pleasanteeism” in the workplace?
At Personnel Today we decided it describes people who come to the office and are officially extremely nice to everyone. Such people are very welcome – I can think of a pleasanteeist who brings colleagues presents of little pots they’ve made every month in a pottery workshop – even when we’re not really sure who they are and what they do.
But our guesses were way off. An HR expert has spoken up to describe pleasanteeism. And refreshingly he hasn’t told us it’s a TikTok sensation, as is so often the way with shiny new trends.
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David Rice at People Managing People starts with some big grown-up stuff. So read no further if you don’t want to be reminded of the state of things.
He says: “Let’s be real. Over the past decade, the world has been a very tough place to exist. Be it due to the Covid pandemic, Brexit, wars or an economic crisis, the list goes on. Showing up to work and putting on a brave face, when there’s news of a cost of living crisis, wars and general elections going on, is not an easy thing to do.”
One Personnel Today colleague immediately contradicted this, suggesting that, in purely financial terms, it was quite an easy thing to do, given they were saving up to buy a bag of artisanal crisps.
David shares the key signs: you don’t feel like you can show your emotions at work; you constantly apologise for showing signs of stress; you struggle to keep up appearances for eight hours a day; you are not able to admit you feel overwhelmed.
He adds: “A big factor of ‘pleasanteeism’ is constantly taking on more work and saying ‘yes’ to everything, even if you’re already at full capacity. To avoid letting anyone down, you take on the extra work and don’t admit that you’re actually massively overworked and overwhelmed.”
We’ve all been there, although I’m not entirely sure some of us are perceived as “pleasant” even when we don’t have much work to do.
David plays his trump card (now once again an unfortunate term) by using another recent buzzword: “The ‘Sunday scaries’ is something we all get at the end of a great weekend,” he says. “But if you’re constantly feeling anxious every Sunday before the start of a new work week, especially about maintaining a positive facade, then you could be experiencing pleasanteeism.”
We don’t like to mix our buzzwords at Personnel Today but we wondered whether if you suffer the Sunday scaries, not only are you feeling pleasanteeism, but you could be a “quiet quitter”, and may develop into a “loud quitter” once your desire to be pleasant evaporates. You certainly need to consult your “frolleagues” about your working life, or else you could end up being “quiet-fired” (and no, that’s not a pottery analogy). Buzzwords, eh? I smell a rat.
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