My colleague does numerology at work. How do I avoid a Jackie O-style blow-up?

March 13, 2026 — 5:01am

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I have recently been given a more senior role at work. My first big challenge seems silly on the surface, but it is causing some angst in my team, and I am finding it difficult to navigate. My colleague regularly talks about numerology at work. For some colleagues, this is fun. But other colleagues think it is offensive pseudoscience. I now think I need to get involved, but I am struggling to know what to do. Any thoughts?

Isn’t it so often the case: what seems at first blush to be a trivial matter at work ends up being the situation that threatens to pull a team apart.

The first thing to say – and recent events have made this point only more salient – is that, however you approach this, don’t make it public. For any person in your position seeking to sort out an office problem as fairly as you can, there is simply no need to embarrass someone in front of their peers.

Even a mild verbal reprimand takes on an entirely different hue – and can sometimes be humiliating – when it’s done outside the privacy of a........

© The Sydney Morning Herald