I’m off today. This was originally published in 2017.

A reader writes:

Every month, my work has a “pep rally” where the whole staff gets together to highlight what’s going on in each department. My boss, the executive director, has recently decided she wants to cure everyone of using the words “um,” “uh,” and “like” when they are talking. Her idea is that each pep rally, two people will present some sort of five-minute speech on their department and we will all watch and count how many times the person says “um,” “uh,” or “like.”

It’s horrible. It makes you overthink everything because you’re so conscious that all your peers are staring at you, waiting for your next “um.” A bunch of us call it “The Shaming.” It doesn’t seem to help and it makes people feel bad afterward. When you’re done, our boss announces how many times you said “um” and lets you know what else you could work on.

I just don’t think this is right. I get what my boss is trying to do, but I feel like there’s a better way to go about it. Would I be out of line if I said something to her about how I felt?

There’s a certain type of manager who’s unclear on appropriate boundaries and thinks it’s okay to use their position to carry out personal agendas that have nothing to do with people’s jobs (like this guy). This feels very much like your manager has a pet peeve and has decided to misuse the authority of her job — and misuse the time of her staff — to pursue something that really shouldn’t be this high of a priority.

It’s very unlikely that everyone on your staff has a job where using the occasional “um” or “uh” matters. Some do, no doubt, but it’s unlikely that it’s so important to everyone’s position that they need this kind of training.

Your boss would probably argue that everyone can benefit from becoming a more polished speaker. And sure, it’s a great skill to build if people want to.

But this isn’t the way to go about it. The public shamings are BS, even for the people who genuinely do need to be extremely polished when speaking. In general, people do better when they get critical feedback in private, not when they’re forced to stand in front of their peers while they’re critiqued.

I get “I wanted to be a teacher” vibes from the whole thing, but she’s dealing with adults who aren’t taking a class.

So no, you wouldn’t be out of line to speak up. But unless you have extremely good rapport with your boss — and maybe even then — you’ll be more effective if you and some of your coworkers speak up as a group, rather than if it’s just you.  The more of you saying “this feels demeaning and we want to stop,” the more likely you are to have an impact.

(You might also arm yourself with this take on “like” from Merriam-Webster and this one from linguists — for your own morale, if nothing else.)

Read an update to this letter here.