Saying you hate an office system even as you use it is not hypocritical

Question:

I was talking to a senior person at our company about a particular system we (and millions of other organisations) use. I hate it. I thought I was confiding safely, but this person reacted angrily. They told me that if I didn’t like a system I was a “hypocrite” for working with it and, as a result, making money from it.

I was lost for words and wish I’d had a strong comeback. I suppose I froze. What should I have said?

Answer:

I’m not against finding contradictions in other people’s opinions and arguments. It can be a lot of fun. But, let’s not pretend otherwise: it can also be a totally ungratifying and unedifying exercise in picking low-hanging fruit. That’s because every single person in the world holds ideas that are inconsistent or even incompatible with one another. Finding two that match – or, more accurately, that don’t match – isn’t challenging at all. Finding two that are so preposterously incongruous that they clearly constitute, as your antagonist puts it, “hypocrisy”, is more difficult and consequently more rewarding.

As is so often the case, there’s a spectrum at play here.

At one end are gross moral conflicts. Take for example, people in the USA who call themselves “pro-life” but say it’s best to do essentially nothing about preventable school shootings. These are positions so irreconcilable that they’re grotesque. In a work context, it might be someone who delights in bullying others, who trots out “learn how to take a joke” when challenged, and who then runs to HR at the slightest hint of a bad word about the job they’re doing.

At the other end is feather-light trivialities. If you, for instance, go to the gym to stay healthy but also drink a glass of wine with dinner … who really cares? Or, to bring it back to work again, if you joke out loud about the number of typos in office emails and then make one yourself, nobody should be scandalised.

Also, at this end are contradictions that are impossible to avoid. It’s perfectly reasonable to say you’re worried about climate change but also use electricity at work. What’s the alternative? I think your case falls into this category. The person accusing you seems to be suggesting that if you don’t like something about your job, then you shouldn’t do that job. That’s a ridiculous notion.