We moan that we spend too much time in the office, then go home and rant about our boss for hours. Does the cult of complaining really help? Stylist investigates

Words: Catherine Gray

I’ve whined about the office being ‘bloody Arctic!’ while sunning myself in the park with my colleagues at lunchtime; ranted over a huge glass of wine about how my boss does less work than me, and delivered miffed monologues about useless colleagues over Sunday lunch with my family. No matter what I do, my work woes seem to tag along. Surely the whole point of after-work drinks and taking time off at the weekend is to de-clench, unwind and get away from office dramas? But hang on, did I tell you about that time someone stole my stapler?

It’s not just me packing up my workplace troubles and carefully carrying them home like a backpack of heavy rocks. A recent study from the UK’s Legal Ombudsman found that the average Brit moans about everything from slow internet connections to fickle bosses and incompetent colleagues 11 times on an average weekday, with three of those grumbles happening before we even leave the house. At the weekend, the time when we should be chilling our boots, we complain an eye-rolling 16 times a day, with three quarters of us griping about our colleagues’ moaning. Cue the irony buzzer. But career moaning is normal, right? Everyone does it. Surely giving airtime to our angst is a natural way to get grievances off our chests, unleash frustrations and talk things through?

“Complaining is the adult version of crying,” says careers consultant Jon Gordon, author of The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways To Deal With Negativity At Work. “It’s an expression of powerlessness.” We’ve been taught that ‘venting is healthy’, he adds, but that’s a myth. “Psychologists used to think punching a pillow or moaning would rid you of the frustration, but it has the opposite effect, stirring you up further.” Indeed, a study by a Detroit hospital found that people who complain suffer from higher rates of insomnia. Opening our mouths does more harm than good, it seems.

“Venting is unhealthy,” agrees psychologist and corporate communications coach Terry Erle Clayton. “So-called ‘offloading’ gives the illusion of taking control and regaining power. However, rather than ‘getting it off your chest’ you are actually cherishing, storing and memorising the perceived wrong.”

He explains that in the brain, “the more often you repeat a neural connection (eg ‘so-and -so is a slacker’), the stronger that connection becomes. It’s like forging a path through a forest. The more often you take the negative path, the more pronounced it becomes. Repeating new scripts (‘so-and- so is alright really’) forms new positive pathways. It will take a while to trample down the new route and your brain will want to default to the path of least resistance, but simple repetition is the key. The brain will go, ‘What about that moaning path over there, we know that one!’ It’s our job to make a conscious effort to continue down the new path.”

There’s also a difference between thoughts and feelings, says Eric Zimmer, a behaviour-change coach and host of The One You Feed wellbeing podcast. “Thoughts such as ‘My boss is horrible and bullies me’ are stories we tell ourselves, not necessarily facts. We should try to stop replaying this fractious script in our heads.”

And it’s a common misconception that being positive is more tiring than being default-miffed, too. In fact, a month-long study by Michigan State University found that employees who complain become more mentally drained than workers with a sunny-side-up outlook. “Such a constant state of vigilance is depleting” the study stated.

Bonding time?

Interestingly, complaining shoots up when we’re trying to bond with our workmates. One study found that groups working on a project creating brochures together moaned 50 times in one hour – that’s close to one complaint a minute. Professor Joanna Wolfe, who led the study, says: “It’s one way to create rapport. It creates a kind of solidarity.” But it’s a misguided attempt to connect atop negative common ground, says Gordon. “We’ve fallen into the habit of using moans as conversation starters,” he says. “It becomes second nature to complain, whereas, ‘Hey, look at that beautiful day’ is something we’re unfamiliar with saying.”

“I call it co-miserating,” adds Zimmer. “It can bring people closer, but there are healthier ways of bonding.”

Often these ‘co-miserating’ sessions are triggered by change, such as the company growing and taking on new employees, reveals occupational psychologist Aliya Vigor-Robertson, founder of Journey HR. “You’ll get a bunch of core employees grumbling about how it’s ‘not the same’. But bemoaning change is unhealthy; embracing change is the key.”

Clayton suggests that the British seem to be losing their ‘keep calm and carry on’ reputation. “In the Nineties, a well-known psychological report found that British attitudes were drifting from ‘stiff upper lip’ to being a litigious, complaining nation,” he says. For instance, we enjoy some of the mildest weather on the globe and yet Britons grouse about the weather on Twitter more than any other country, a study of 300,000 tweets discovered. We write 20% of all weather-trolling jibes, while the Danes, Swedes and Finns, who contend with much gloomier weather, double us in blue-sky positivity.

The cult of complaining: why do we spend so much time moaning about work?