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Toxic Work Culture - Blog Posts
"They're not harassing you. That’s just how they talk." Oh okay. I’ll just rewire my nervous system so it understands context.
“You’re so calm during conflict.”
No babe, that’s dissociation. We all bring our talents to the table...
Some people won’t believe you until you break. Break anyway, if you need to. You don’t owe anyone your composure.
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.
The performance review said you were “pleasant under pressure.” You thought about telling them it was acting. But why ruin a standing ovation?
“It’s not brave to have boundaries
it’s just basic hygiene for your soul.”
-Jenny Slate
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
He said I was a real asset to the team but the way he said “asset” made me want to wash my hands.
Twice.
You said thank you.
With a smile so dry it might’ve caught fire.
Boss: "Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll circle back..."
Me:
It wasn't a secret. It was a system.
Tree swallows.
Birds around New York city. 1942.
Internet Archive
Therapist: How's work going?
Me:
Women In Tech: A Relatable Story?
Hey everyone,
I'm a 31 F, working at an architectural design firm. I will keep this short because I am pretty upset and I know it will just turn into a big rant if I don't.
I am newer there and lower level - junior designer slash BIM tech. But I have a degree and am frankly overqualified based on past experience and my skill set. We have a few Slack groups divided up by project, job and client. I'm on most of them because I am a newb, they have me bouncing all the time from thing to thing. So I get to see most of the messages across the company.
It's almost all men. 30s to 50s. I am one of two women in the entire place other than cleaning staff. I almost didn't take the job because of that but I have a kid and student loans and can't not keep my pay at the level it was.
My secondary work computer is a laptop and it was stolen a few weeks ago. It wasn't backed up so I lost a lot ofwork and had to redo it. It took a lot of extra time. This caused delays and a headache with two big clients and my project leads and boss have treated me like absolute shit ever since.
After that the running joke on Slack about “diversity hires” has been getting out of control.Nobody has said they mean women specifically but all the details about what happened with me have been mentioned very clearly. The have gone as far as saying it's so sad how the company is “lowering the bar", that this is why the economy is so bad.
The supervisors are on these threads too. They steer clear of that stuff but they don't stop the constant jabs either. Based on their treatment around the office I feel like they actually hate me. I can't go to them. The owner is the biggest douchebeg of them all.
We are all contractors I think so there is no HR. It's "in the works" they tell me.
The other woman I work with has become an ally and a friend through this and we want to get out of there but yeah we can't afford it. We want to resist. But there is nothing to do about it. Sick to my stomach of the backward slide things are taking, women are becoming second class citizens again.
Want to burn the place down. Nowhere else is hiring where I am.
Sorry if there are men on this thread I know you are not all the same but sorry sometimes it feels like you are.
I am so frustrated I want to scream.
They called it “just a comment"
I called it
three weeks of anxiety, five skipped shifts, and a therapist
I couldn’t afford
You get punished twice — once for what happened, and again for how you react.
Given a choice between accepting that something awful has happened, or thinking that someone is mistaken, exaggerating, or lying, much of the time our brains will deny the awful thing happened.
You don’t need to prove it
was
serious enough.
If it made you feel unsafe, disrespected, or humiliated
that’s serious...that’s enough.
Given a choice between accepting that something awful has happened, or thinking that someone is mistaken, exaggerating, or lying, much of the time our brains opt to deny the awful thing happened.
You did not deserve to be sexually harassed.
This is true no matter what. No matter
what you wear
how much money you make
where you work
or anything else
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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and found me guilty of making things awkward
