The People We Forget to Thank

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How often do you say thank you? I’m guessing not enough. Sure, you say it when someone passes you ketchup. You say it to friends and family for helping. You probably say it to your co-workers, too, and that includes others outside the company you work with, e.g., vendors, partners, customers. But what about the others you “work” with? We often define our colleagues quite narrowly as those in the same office or those we directly engage with in our job. I submit that, for the purpose of gratitude, we should broaden that definition.

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Beyond the Org Chart

Let’s begin in the office. Have you ever said thank you to your custodial staff? Some people do, most do not. Yes, it’s their job to take out the trash, but then again, it’s your job to support your co-workers and theirs to support you. Don’t you say thank you to each other? Consider how quickly your office space would become unusable if no one took out the trash.

But it’s not just in the office. I take the subway around NYC and, at night, see people cleaning the stations. I tell them thank you. How often do you think these folks, who work the night shift cleaning the subways, get thanked? They’re not our colleagues in a traditional sense, but everyone working in public transportation is crucial to helping us to get to work and do our jobs.

Expanding more broadly, we can find people who help us, often unbeknownst to us. Many of us in office jobs interact with customers, whether external or internal. Consider public health officials, ranging from restaurant inspectors who make sure you won’t get sick from your meal to doctors who prevent outbreaks. When they do their jobs well, their work may be invisible to their true customers: the public. Most people don’t thank those they didn’t know had helped them.

There’s no reason to stop at work-related appreciation. Just the other day, I thanked a volunteer who was planting spring flowers in a park I walk through. We all enjoy the flowers, but how many people, even among those who see her doing the work, ever say thank you?

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Not Just Words, but Actions

Another challenge is that good service isn’t always visible to the right people. When I was young and broke, every so often I’d be in a high-end restaurant (often as a guest or for a business event) where there was a bathroom attendant. No matter how broke I was, I made sure to tip him and say thank you. If your job is to stand in a bathroom—let alone doing it for tips—folks should appreciate your effort. Once, I encountered an exceptionally nice and attentive one, so I wrote an email commending him to the company that owned the restaurant. My guess is that very few people in the management chain actually realized how good he was. After all, who is actively monitoring the bathroom attendant? This was a guy whose skill and professionalism deserved to be recognized. If you can provide great service standing in the restroom, you can do it in more impactful roles. I’ve also written to corporations praising waitstaff and to government agencies praising helpful bus drivers and police officers. (And on occasion, I’ve written complaints, too.) We’re quick to complain when things are bad; we need to be equally quick to thank and praise.

Why email corporate and not just the manager? Because they will always let the restaurant manager know, but the restaurant manager doesn’t always let corporate know. There may also be opportunities at other locations, even if none are available at the location where the employee works (and corporate is more likely to know this than the location manager).

Positive feedback in the right channel can be really helpful to someone’s career. In your office, most actions are visible. Even if the manager doesn’t see it directly, it often gets back to her. For people in “field” positions or those working with external parties, their work is less visible to their managers. Taking just sixty seconds to provide it can be very helpful.

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Job Burdens Aren’t Always Visible

We tend to base our gratitude on what we think a job entails rather than on its reality. There are cultural norms around thanking people in certain professions, such as the military and first responders; they get singled out because their jobs put their lives on the line. I’m not discouraging you from doing that. But consider waste collection, which has a surprisingly high occupational fatality rate, making it one of the deadliest professions. Many other jobs also have a higher risk of injury than most people think. It’s not just physical injury. Burnout, stress, and emotional trauma are also common in fields ranging from social services and healthcare to nonprofit work. Waste management may not be as glamorous as firefighting, but if we didn’t have it, society would be much worse off.

I’m not trying to claim one is better or more deserving of praise than another. We selectively choose who we thank and often do it based on assumptions about that work. I say this only to challenge those assumptions and encourage you to appreciate more types of work that are often overlooked.

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On more than one occasion, you probably felt people didn’t really appreciate all the work you did and you would have appreciated a thank you. So would many other people. Your professional community is larger than your company; the scope of your gratitude should be, too.

Thank-yous cost little or nothing. A thank-you may simply be verbal or take the form of an appreciative tip; it can also mean taking a minute to send a note. I try to keep my threshold for sending a note balanced; that is, I want to be just as willing to send praise as I am to send a complaint. It probably offers one of the best returns on investment there is. These tiny actions can positively impact the careers of others. Be liberal with your thank-yous, in any form; the world would be a much better place with more of them.