Use Your Words

A podcast conversation about how language helps you resist the excesses of work

The Mode/Switch will be on summer break next week.

I remember one summer in my twenties working for a company that lost a number of workers. As people quit, those of us who stayed had more to do. Everything felt thin. Everything felt hurried. Everyone felt exhausted.

I remember one morning, the manager gathered us around and said, “This year, we’re gonna keep it lean and mean!”

Whoa. Rhyming language. Workplace poetry.

I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. I think he was trying to inspire us. He wanted to give us courage, rather like King Henry V telling his outnumbered soldiers, “We happy few, we band of brothers!”

But the language didn’t encourage. It added to the exhaustion.

Using words well in the workplace is hard. It’s easy to gaslight. It’s easy to lie. It’s easy to exclude. It’s easy to forget what you’re trying to say or who you’re saying it to.

This week, the Mode/Switchers engage two poets, Jane Zwart and Lew Klatt, who have thought a lot about the role of language in labor. They have advice to share about inattention, bullshit, power, and joy. (They’ll make you laugh, too.)

The podcast, you’ll notice, is longer than usual. There’s bonus content at the end from Jane and Lew’s life stories.

Thanks for thinking of someone in your life who feels stuck at work—

and thanks for sharing this with them!