The Performance of Busywork

I’m staring at a spreadsheet that I’ve already finished, my fingers hovering over the keys in a rhythmic, meaningless dance because I saw my supervisor, Brenda, rounding the corner of the C-Block administration wing. In my 15 years as a prison education coordinator, I’ve learned that appearing idle is an invitation for someone to hand you a problem that isn’t yours to solve. So, I click between cells, frowning at data I already know by heart, pretending that the 65 students enrolled in our vocational literacy program are somehow causing a digital bottleneck that only my intense focus can clear. It’s a performance. We all do it.

But Brenda isn’t here to give me more work. She stops at my desk, leans against the laminate edge, and flashes a smile that feels like it was rehearsed in a mirror exactly 5 minutes ago.

Before I can ask what ‘strategic’ means in the context of a Tuesday morning budget briefing where we’re arguing over the price of No. 2 pencils, she’s gone. She’s vanished back into the hallway, leaving me with a mouthful of feedback that tastes like nothing at all. I’m left wondering if I’m failing, if I’m succeeding, or if I’m simply a character in a poorly scripted management seminar.

The Linguistic Virus of Evasion

This is the ‘feedback sandwich,’ a technique so ubiquitous in corporate and institutional culture that it has become a kind of linguistic virus. It’s the practice of wrapping a piece of criticism inside two layers of praise, and it is, quite frankly, a lie. It’s a technique born not out of a desire to help the employee grow, but out of managerial cowardice. Brenda didn’t want to give me feedback; she wanted to get through a difficult conversation without feeling like the ‘bad guy.’ By cushioning the blow, she didn’t make the blow softer; she just made the entire interaction invisible.

In the high-stakes environment of prison education, clarity isn’t just a management preference; it’s a safety requirement. If I have to tell an instructor that their classroom management is slipping and they’re losing control of the perimeter, I don’t start by complimenting their choice of necktie. If I did, the gravity of the situation would be lost. Yet, in the ‘real world’ of office cubicles and Zoom calls, we’ve decided that adults need to be treated like toddlers who won’t eat their broccoli unless it’s smothered in processed cheese. We’ve infantilized the workforce to the point where directness is seen as aggression, and honesty is seen as a lack of ‘soft skills.’

The Pavlovian Siren: Poisoning Praise

The most insidious part of this method is that it trains employees to be suspicious of praise. Now, whenever Brenda tells me I’ve done a good job, my first instinct isn’t to feel proud. It’s to wait for the ‘but.’ It’s a Pavlovian response. The positive reinforcement becomes a warning siren for the impending strike. You’re effectively poisoning the well of genuine appreciation. If praise is only ever used as a delivery vehicle for criticism, then praise loses its power to motivate. It becomes a red flag.

The Noise of Vagueness

Let’s look at the mechanics of that word: ‘strategic.’ Brenda told me to be more strategic. If I had been thinking clearly and hadn’t been so busy pretending to type, I would have asked her to define it. Does it mean I should speak less? Speak more? Bring a PowerPoint? Does it mean I should align my goals with the 25-page mission statement hanging in the lobby that no one has read since 2005?

Because she sandwiched the critique, she felt she had checked the box of ‘developing her staff’ without actually doing the hard work of coaching. Coaching requires specific, actionable directives. It requires saying, ‘Robin, when you interrupted the warden to talk about the paper shortage, it derailed the discussion on security protocols. Next time, wait for the administrative section of the agenda.’ That’s feedback. It’s uncomfortable, it’s direct, and it’s useful. ‘Be more strategic’ is just noise.

Negligence in the Name of Niceness

I remember one specific mistake I made early in my career. I tried to ‘sandwich’ a correctional officer who was leaving a gate unsecured. I told him he was great with the inmates, mentioned the gate, and then told him his attendance record was stellar. He walked away thinking I was happy with his performance. Two days later, the gate was left open again. When I confronted him, he was genuinely confused. ‘But you said I was doing great!’ he argued. I realized then that my desire to be ‘nice’ was actually a form of negligence. In trying to protect his feelings, I was endangering the facility. I had prioritized my own comfort over his professional competence.

The Layers of Euphemism

This brings me to the sensory reality of this place. Sometimes, when the humidity hits 85 percent and the air in the C-Block administration wing feels like it’s been exhaled by a thousand tired men, the bureaucracy feels just as heavy. Everything is layered. We have layers of gates, layers of policies, and layers of euphemisms. We spend so much time navigating the artificial structures we’ve built that we forget how to speak to one another as humans.

Navigating the corporate landscape of euphemisms is like trying to find your way through a complex, man-made habitat without a proper

Zoo Guide, where everything looks natural but is actually reinforced with glass and steel, designed to keep the observers and the observed in their designated places without any real contact.

The feedback sandwich assumes that people are fragile. It assumes that we can’t handle the truth of our own performance. But in my experience, most people crave the truth. They want to know where they stand. They want to know how to get better. When you hide the truth behind layers of fluff, you’re essentially saying that you don’t respect the other person enough to be honest with them. You’re saying that their professional growth is less important than your desire to avoid a 15-minute awkward conversation. It’s a selfish act disguised as a kind one.

The Necessity of Being Boringly Brave

I’ve spent 35 days this year alone sitting through various ‘leadership’ workshops that preach this kind of indirect communication. They show us charts and graphs about ’employee engagement’ and ‘psychological safety.’ But they miss the point. Psychological safety isn’t the absence of conflict or criticism. It’s the presence of trust. And trust is built through consistency and honesty. You can’t trust a manager who hides their real thoughts behind a mask of forced positivity. You can’t trust a system that rewards vague platitudes over concrete results.

If we want to fix this, we have to start by being brave enough to be boring. We have to be willing to say, ‘Here is the problem. Here is how we can fix it. Do you have any questions?’ No bread. No condiments. Just the meat. It sounds harsh, but it’s actually the kindest thing you can do for someone. It gives them the agency to change. It treats them like an adult who is capable of handling professional reality.

I think back to Brenda. If she had just sat down and said, ‘Robin, in meetings, you tend to focus on the immediate tactical problems of your department, but I need you to look at how those problems affect the entire facility’s 5-year plan,’ I would have had something to work with. I could have changed my behavior. Instead, I’m just sitting here, staring at a spreadsheet I’ve already finished, feeling a vague sense of resentment toward a woman who thinks she just did me a favor.

The Cost of Presentation Over Substance

We’ve become so obsessed with the ‘delivery’ of feedback that we’ve forgotten the ‘content.’ We’ve spent $575 on a fancy silver platter to serve a rotten steak. It doesn’t matter how pretty the presentation is; the meal is still going to make you sick. The feedback sandwich is a relic of a management style that values harmony over excellence. But in the real world-the one with steel doors and 105-degree laundry rooms and students who are trying to rebuild their lives one sentence at a time-harmony is a byproduct of excellence, not a replacement for it.

I eventually stopped pretending to type. I closed the spreadsheet, stood up, and walked toward Brenda’s office. I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have a sandwich. I just had a question. I wanted to ask her what she really meant. I wanted to break the cycle of indirectness that defines so much of our professional lives.

But as I got to her door, I saw her through the glass. She was on the phone, nodding, smiling that same rehearsed smile, likely telling someone else how ‘great’ they were doing before dropping the inevitable ‘but.’ I turned around and walked back to my desk. Maybe I’ll try again in 5 days. Or maybe I’ll just keep typing on a finished spreadsheet, waiting for someone to stop being ‘nice’ and start being honest. How much of our collective potential is being buried under the weight of these polite, meaningless layers? We are starving for the truth, yet we keep serving each other sandwiches.