my office is obsessed with Taylor Swift

A reader writes:

I am part of a small team in a global corporation. My team works closely with other teams in the department, and we often have weekly or biweekly catch-ups to update each other on projects. My colleagues are mostly nice and pleasant to work with.

There’s only one problem: everyone is obsessed with Taylor Swift. And I don’t mean it in a “owns a few of her albums and liked them” sort of way. It’s something more akin to religious fervor. They log in from rooms plastered with Taylor Swift posters and talk about her in almost every meeting. They sneak references in marketing content. The passwords we use for our shared software accounts are all Taylor Swift-based. It’s been going on for months.

I seem to be one of the very few people who doesn’t have strong opinions about Taylor Swift, one way or the other: I don’t love her. I don’t hate her. I occasionally bob my head to one of her songs when they come up on the radio. But this is somewhat affecting the way we work.

As everyone knows (whether they like it or not), recently Swift’s new album came out. We had three separate meetings in which the icebreaker was related to this release, such as “which was your favorite song from The Life of a Showgirl?” I found myself scrambling to listen to a few songs just so I could have an answer ready and wouldn’t have to stand there in awkward silence.

Our company is going through a tough time lately, and I’m genuinely happy for these people to have reasons to be excited, so I feel bad about asking them to tone the Taylor Swift talk down a little. But at the same time, I could do with getting 5-10 minutes of my time back by keeping it to private chats, and I am not thrilled about giving myself homework in case of pop quizzes.

How can I opt out from the cult without being a buzzkill?

You need to come out and say you don’t follow Taylor Swift!

By doing things like listening to songs from her new album just so you’ll have an answer ready for Swift-based icebreakers, you’re actually making it worse — because you’re reinforcing that this is an icebreaker everyone can participate in, when that’s the opposite of what you want. It would be far more effective toward your long-term goal if you instead said, “I don’t really listen to Taylor Swift, so I can’t contribute.” Let that truth make the point that that something they’re assuming is universal is in fact not universal. And if they keep making icebreakers Swift-themed after that, you’d have plenty of standing to say, “Could we do icebreakers everyone can participate in?” and maybe, “This is like having every icebreaker be soccer-themed or something else that not everyone follows.”

A similar principle applies to the constant Taylor Swift chat. People definitely get to chat about what they want with coworkers (within reasonable boundaries), but at a certain point it’s also fair game for you to say, “Y’all, this is a lot when not all of us are fans. Can we talk about anything else?”

And if you get people who respond to that by trying to turn you into a fan, you can say, “Truly, I’m good. She’s just not my cup of tea, and this is a very Swift-talk heavy office!” If that doesn’t work, move to: “I would love not to be evangelized at, thank you for understanding.”

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