Workplace Culture - Blog Posts
The Cost of Staying
Sometimes it’s not that you didn’t want the job.
It’s that you wanted it too much. And now you're floating down some corporate river. Toward the wrong end of The Waterfall (TM).
You worked too hard. Put up with too much. Got good at things you never thought you’d be good at. Found your rhythm. Found your people. Maybe even started to believe you belonged there.
And then it changed.
Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was always like this and you just finally let yourself admit that the cost was too high.
That staying meant watching someone else get away with it. That staying meant shrinking a little bit each day. That staying meant carrying your own silence like it was professionalism. Like it was maturity. Like it was strength.
But here’s the truth no one wants to put on a poster: Sometimes leaving is the only way to protect yourself.
And that doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you weren’t strong enough. It means the place wasn’t safe enough.
And maybe that’s not the ending you deserved, but it’s not the end of your story either (the waterfall).
Muted Square in the Zoom
They didn’t say my name in the meeting. Not once. I was there and had written half the report.
The credit went around the table like a bottle passed hand to hand. I watched it skip over me.
At lunch, I sat with them. One of them asked me, “Are you new?”
I’ve been here fourteen months.
After a while, you stop correcting people. You stop reminding them that you’re part of it. You become good at inhabiting the background. Or a muted square in the Zoom.
But I’m still here. Still opening the spreadsheet. Still writing the copy. Still dressing up and disappearing.
They didn’t see me. But I saw everything.
How Abusive Workplaces Mirror Abusive Relationships
Earlier this year, Piggy and I delivered a speech on the subject of burnout. That there’s an appetite for advice on this subject among women’s professional associations will, perhaps, not shock you?
As I was researching the impact that burnout has on the body, I got an eerie feeling that the symptoms seemed familiar. I wondered if I’d already written something on this topic and forgotten. (We’ve written several hundred articles apiece, so it happens!)
But no! What was tripping my extremely faulty memory triggers wasn’t a past article about burnout.
It was a past article on domestic violence.
Keep reading.
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