The act of artificially scolding a coworker who is less experienced and/or less senior than you when noticing that they did something different than you would have done it, although there was no factual mistake in their way of doing things. The purpose of langelaaring is to re-establish traditional
power relationships between senior and
junior employees and are usually accompanied by sounds such as ‘tsk tsk tsk’ or repeating the
name of the junior employee several times in a row.
Jessy: I suggested to do it differently this
time but he just went off langelaaring me about it.
Jimmy: Oh, no, did he tell you what was wrong about it?
Jessy: No, he just kept shaking his
head, called me a ‘youngster’, and told me I still had to learn a lot.