I'm 57 and I feel disrespected and excluded at work

What do you do when you're years away from retirement but already feel irrelevant and excluded in the office? Read the advice of our resident sage Maddy Phillipps. (And see the foot of the story for where to email your own problems for Maddy.)

DEAR MADDY I’m a 57-year-old man and I can no longer bear going to work. I’ve held senior management positions for decades – but a couple of years ago I was made redundant and after a rough period in which we almost lost our house I accepted a position in a lower bracket in terms of both pay and responsibility. Now I’m reporting to someone not just younger than me (a first) but almost 20 years younger than me. The culture at this company feels alien – and very arrogant. If I try to assert myself in meetings I’m treated like an old fool, and I feel excluded from most of the day-to-day office interaction, a lot of which seems time-wasting and fatuous. There’s also a desire on behalf of some colleagues to misinterpret my comments as prejudiced and “unwoke”. I’m none of those things, I’ve championed equality my whole life. I think their need to paint me into that corner is just cynical and ambitious. I’ve recently upped my work-at-home days from two per week to just about every day. But this gets on my wife’s nerves (she runs a business from home). And my manager has told me I need to be more “present”. I have kids at university and a decent sized mortgage. Retirement is a distant dream. I suspect this job is as good as it gets – and I don’t mind the actual work, but how can I get some respect from my colleagues?

Regards, Richard

MADDY WRITES: Richard, you’re clearly carrying a lot of responsibilities. A big mortgage at a time when kūmara are, gram-for-gram, costlier than sapphires or pure cocaine, and buying one requires four Countdown staff members to liberate the precious tuber from its bulletproof glass display case by simultaneously inserting their keys in reverent unison. Kids at university, who presumably are a few steps away from financial self-sufficiency. Being a husband. And now bouncing back from the brink of the financial abyss via full-time work at a job that’s below your pay grade. Without wanting to sound like an annoying Millennial from your office, I genuinely think you’re doing amazing. And it’s obvious how much you love your family. But – and the Millennial disclaimer applies again here – what I’m wondering is how much you love yourself.

I know, I know, you want specific, actionable strategies for wrangling your performatively woke professional peers, not the columnar equivalent of locking arms and singing kumbaya. But the thing is, strategy-wise, you only have two options: (a) critically assess and maybe even reframe your thoughts about the situation, or (b) do something – which could mean communicating with your colleagues, adjusting your own behaviour, or both. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and it makes sense to try option (a) first, because without the critical thought, you’re not very well-placed to decide on the actions. And thinking about your thoughts unfortunately brings us back to self-love, because I think your negative view of yourself is really distorting your appraisal of the whole situation.

I get the sense that, at least subconsciously, you believe that you are, indeed, an “old fool” – that the sh*tty-fraying-nylon-string of events of the last couple of years makes you a sh*tty-fraying-nylon-string of a person, about to snap conclusively into professional obsolescence. This belief is resoundingly untrue. Fifty-seven is not even approaching “old fool” territory. You’re Cliff Curtis (in the 55-year-old-silver-fox sense, not the Once Were Warriors sense). You are not Abe Simpson. But this unhelpful view of yourself is priming you to look for “evidence” of your supposed old-foolishness everywhere – including attributing your colleagues’ actions to age-based disdain, instead of other potential explanations.

For example, your colleagues’ apparent dislike of your assertiveness in meetings could reflect differing communication styles – maybe the company culture favours a less direct approach than your previous job? Or maybe whoever responded negatively to your assertion privately wishes they could be more assertive, but lashed out at you instead of working on themselves? As for the misinterpretation of your comments as prejudiced and unwoke, the perceived offensiveness of different terms now evolves ludicrously quickly, to the point that almost no-one can keep up unless they mingle in youthful left-wing circles, or researching feminist social constructivism is literally their job. I’ve noticed people in their mid-40s and above seldom use the same language to discuss social issues and identities as, say, a 19-year-old Gender Studies student, but when you dig deeper, they’re expressing fundamentally inoffensive and decent sentiments. Maybe your woke lexicon just needs a little refresh – in which case, you’re not alone, and the internet is your friend. Alternately, maybe these colleagues are the kind of unbearably righteous social justice warriors who call for kindness and tolerance while brutally eviscerating those they perceive as uninformed, in which case the problem is their hypocrisy, not your age. And finally, it’s totally understandable that your boss being younger than you feels jarring, but you’re reporting to a 40-year-old, not The Boss Baby – there’s absolutely nothing humiliating or old-fool-ish about it.

Obviously, I don’t know for sure which explanations are correct. But I do know that no matter where the truth lies, you’re not an old fool, so adding these events to the pile of fraudulent documents in your “Evidence in Support of My Old-Foolishness” folder isn’t serving you. It stops you from figuring out which (if any) issues might warrant changes to your own approach, and which might be worth respectfully raising with others. Resigning yourself to the old-fool life also encourages you to write off office social life as time-wasting and fatuous – to justify your retreat from the office. Ultimately, though, staying home is depriving you of the opportunity for positive interactions with colleagues, which might set the relationships back on course.

Richard, I know you feel excluded from office life, but how will that ever change if you don't go into the office? Genuinely caring about and respecting a corporate headshot on Zoom or Teams is a tough ask. As uncomfortable as it is, your only route to repair is to show up to the office with as much self-esteem as you can muster, try to consider different explanations for any problems that come up with maximum openness and minimum self-flagellation, and use that measured thinking process to help you choose what to do – be it changing your own behaviour, politely challenging your colleagues about theirs, or absolutely nothing. In short, by treating yourself with the utmost respect, you maximise the chance of getting it back: from the polyamorous, vegan 21-year-old intern, to the frail, elderly administrator prone to fond recollection of her mid-20th century torrid affair with Barry Crump.

If you do all that and the social side of the job still grates…look for something else! Thinking this job is as good as it gets is nothing more than another untrue, unhelpful, self-defeating belief which doesn't deserve to occupy even the darkest recess of your brain.

Maddy Phillipps is a barrister, freelance writer and clinical psychology student.

EMAIL your life problems to dearmaddy@tvnz.co.nz.