Having “No Filter” At Work Is A Good Thing, Actually

When I first moved to New York City to be an intern at a magazine, I wore a lot of pencil skirts and neutrally toned eyeshadow. It took me 15 minutes to write a two-line email. The message had to strike just the right tone. It needed to say “I’m a smart, well-adjusted young person who is at your service and eager to learn — and I have moxie!” Make that “I have moxie.” Period. We do not exclaim. I would stress about whether to say “thank you kindly for your help” or just a simple, cool “thanks.” Back then, I was always frazzled on the inside, but I think I passed for (somewhat) professional on the outside. 

Now, more than four years later, at “work,” I sit at home in my leggings with my hair in a messy bun. I type off-the-cuff acronyms — usually some variation of “lol omg” — on Slack in response to my coworkers. Meanwhile, when a long-time editor told me she was quitting, I openly cried and blubbered about how much working with her meant to me. None of this is what you would call “professional.” At least not as my Business Professionals Of America Club defined it to me in high school. And yet, I feel I’ve been more fulfilled and creative at work since shedding the corporate robot facade I used to present to my colleagues, and I have been on incredible terms with my coworkers, to the point that one minute we're talking about edits and then next discussing our families and the next debating to the death about the difference between a sauce, dip, and condiment.

For those of us who were fortunate enough to keep our jobs, the pandemic changed the workplace in so many ways — for better and for worse. And one of the unintended effects has been the beginning of the end of the workplace filter. Similar to but different than a workplace "persona,” (essentially a caricature of yourself, which you present to your colleagues) I see a workplace filter as that mechanism we use to strain out our idiosyncrasies and anxieties and emotions, leaving a veneer of humiliating-if-sometimes-essential “professionalism.” It's the verbal apparatus that allows you to answer the question "How was your weekend?" with "lovely, thank you" instead of "horrific, my dog died."

But all that has become harder to do when you’re at home, surrounded by your kids, pets, parents, and the “live, laugh, love” sign on the wall of your childhood bedroom that you should really take down. “COVID has challenged our belief system about what ‘professionalism’ is and how it works in the modern workforce, given that many of us are working from home,” says Nadia Ibrahim-Taney, M.Ed, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, whose research focuses on workplace professionalism. “It’s empowered people to think about how they show up — in general, and for other people — and to speak their own truths as employees.” Losing our filters, she adds, is one of the silver linings of the pandemic, as it’s allowed us to open up more dialogues about our personal lives and even mental health.