our meetings always start with a discussion of bad things that have happened to my coworkers

A reader writes:

I work for a medium-sized, family-owned business. We all work from home. Some of us live in the same metro area but we’re not friends. We have an office culture of sensitivity and compassion when someone is going through a difficult time.

For the last few months, every staff meeting somehow functions as an open mike for stories about horrific things that have befallen us, going back to the 1970s. I can’t give examples without needing a wall of trigger warnings. All are totally unrelated to the work we are there to discuss. We often end up with two or three people needing breaks to gather themselves, or being unable to pay attention when we do get to work things. I’ve tried interjecting, gently and then firmly, to redirect to a work topic but to no avail.

Generally, it begins when we’re all coming into the meeting platform. Those who arrive early/on time will chat among themselves while waiting for the start. One person, when asked how they are, will express a minor problem before segueing into a more general complaint about the state of their life, which then is taken up by others on the team as a sort of prompt. For example, Regina has a persistent cold. She talks about her snot, her cough, what the doctor said, what she thinks about what the doctor said, how expensive he was, someone will agree with her, then a third person has a similar story, and Bob’s your uncle, we’re off. It’s not on the agenda officially.

Lately, however, this is becoming formalized. Recently, another colleague had a “wellness prompt” for the meeting and started telling us about a time she was nearly very badly harmed, but made a good friend. We sat there for a 90-minute trauma dump. The next week, lo! “Wellness check” is in the agenda. Nobody likes to cut off the talking because it’s rude and insensitive. I’ve done it once or twice recently, and as a result, I’m getting some frost from my direct reports.

Team morale has flatlined now that every gathering is the Misery Olympics, but our bosses are not reining this in. One of them participates.

Frankly, I dislike the new office culture of constant overshare, and I despair of my bosses keeping our meetings productive. Do I say something, and if so, what? Or do I acknowledge I am not a good fit for the organization anymore, and try to find another job?

Good lord. You said these meetings have agendas, so what is happening to the rest of the items that are supposed to be discussed?

There’s a very high chance that you’re not the only one who’s frustrated by this! In addition to being a terrible use of time, these topics are probably making a lot of people uncomfortable (and maybe worse, depending on the topic and people’s own histories with related trauma).

Can you talk to whoever is in charge of running these meetings, point out they’ve been veering into topics some people are likely to find highly painful, and you’re not getting to the business that you’re there to discuss? And if that person isn’t receptive, can you go above their head to someone else who might be?

If that doesn’t work, I’m curious what would happen if you started joining early in order to very deliberately direct the conversation in a non-misery direction — talk about some exciting news on your team or in your life, or a (non-tragic!) movie you just saw, or some exciting news in the lives of your cats, or really anything that is far away from a trauma dump or an extensive exploration of snot. If it’s needed to keep things on a lighter track, go ahead and monopolize the chit-chat more than you normally might feel polite about doing and then when enough people have joined that the meeting is ready to start, ideally you’d segue into work topics — “now that everyone is here, I’d love to share what my team has done on X” or “I’m hoping today to get people’s thoughts about Y” or similar.

You could also try messaging whoever runs the meetings ahead of time and asking for time on the agenda to talk about Non-Traumatic Work Topic X.

Try all of this before you decide you need to change jobs! And even if this doesn’t work, I’m not convinced you need to change jobs over it, unless it’s really affecting your quality of life (it might be!) or it’s symptomatic of larger issues in how the organization is run (which it also might be).

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