Sick and dying parents, one’s own ill health, plus wayward adolescents and relationships hitting a bumpy patch: these are (mostly) inevitable features of this stage of life. Being words people at the FT, we’ve been debating the best metaphor for the concatenation of disasters that seems to hit in late middle age. When you’re in the thick of it, does it more resemble an anxious game of whack-a-mole or just a constantly raging bin-fire?

To me, this mid-life barrage has the hallmarks of a sadistically designed video game, where the path clears for a split second before another catastrophe hurtles into view — any gaming entrepreneurs reading this can have the idea for free. Could we market it as Call of Duty: Middle Age? It’s a navigation of treacherous territory followed by a pile-up. But my colleagues and I are not competing in ranking our traumas — if you win at this one, you really do lose.

Nevertheless, whatever we call it, attempts at professional poise have gradually been abandoned in favour of mass, multidirectional exchanges of confession and empathy. It’s become totally #nofilter — we’re all so beaten up by the rolling programme of challenges that there is little energy for anything other than the work itself. You can forget keeping up appearances let alone a stiff upper lip.

The mutual support is of immense value. It is probably keeping us healthy (and working) for longer: an Australian study of women aged between 45 and 70 released this year found that those with friends at work and good relationships with colleagues were much less likely to develop a range of common diseases including diabetes, high blood pressure and even cancer. After the difficulties prompted by the Covid emergency, these friendships, both recent and long-term, feel particularly nourishing.

But we don’t yet know the nature and extent of the costs attached to airing our dirty linen in the office (and I’m no longer talking an aspirational trouser suit, more the psychological equivalent of loungewear). What if the collapse of your at-work persona means a career penalty after your crisis has passed? What if those work friendships can’t take the load?

As for the managers, they are pulled in two directions by sympathy and the need to deliver — the show must go on and the work has to come first. Not for nothing does the traditional training include a section on how to comfort an underling, pass them a tissue as they blub, then move the conversation on.

These days, work buzzwords emphasise humanity. Take the call to “bring your whole self to work”, or the slightly terrifying exhortation to “radical candour”, a sort of update of tough love. It is a direction of travel that introduces more emotion rather than damping it down. This seemed refreshing pre-pandemic: a chance to wriggle out of an office straitjacket that homogenised the workforce. “I’m not like you so don’t make me pretend” is a pretty good response to outmoded and often exclusive formality.

But we now have a different problem of too much information — a TMI SOS, with workers at all levels sending up emergency flares. It’s a constant onslaught of exhausting revelations. Career reviews since Covid are a minefield of medical updates and childcare and eldercare crises. With so many of us withdrawing from work or struggling because of ill health and caring responsibilities, particularly among the over-50s, running a team has become less like a normal white-collar job and more like keeping a unit’s morale up in a trench filling with muddy water. There’s too much for managers to handle — and for our poor colleagues, who bear the brunt as carefully crafted competent personas crumble before their eyes.

This doesn’t feel sustainable. Employees need support better tailored to these tricky times and managers need help to cope with the carnage. In the meantime, my newest worry is I’ve become one of those people whom it’s dangerous to ask “how are you?” in case they actually, you know, tell you.

miranda.green@ft.co.uk

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Miranda Green

But someone is out to spoil our fun. Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at Oxford and chair of the Food Standards Agency, suggested that we are harming our colleagues’ health by bringing sweet treats into the office. Comparing the effects to passive smoking, Jebb called for a “supportive environment” for healthy habits, explaining in a Times interview: “If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them.”

This morale-killing message, delivered at a time when many are already confronted with the failure of their New Year’s resolutions, was not so much dry January as just-plain-miserable-and-can’t-take-any-more January. “Why does someone not simply eat Professor Jebb?” was one irate reaction on Twitter.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Miranda Green

By midnight our number had dropped below 50, but it was still taking four hours even for assessment by the triage nurse. When at last I made it through what the crowd of patients had dubbed “the magic door” she advised me that, given the pressures on the department and lack of staff, the wait for a doctor would probably be as long or longer. Usually, she added, they would aim to triage within 15 minutes and then strictly prioritise by need.

As I was not in danger (a regular injection had produced profuse bleeding), the nurse made it subtly clear it was up to me whether to stick it out or come back the next day.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Miranda Green