A few years ago, my entire team was eliminated.
It sucked, too, because I’d been brought in specifically to lead and grow this new organization and I was stoked about it. Loved my boss. Thought the company was super cool and had lots of potential. They had a nifty little family-ish analogy to describe their culture.
But as it turns out, our team was set up to fucking fail from the start—nothing I could have really anticipated walking in without a lot more information—and so a year and change after I started, we sat down to talk about unpleasant shit like separation agreements and severance and what the fuck we were going to do about the rest of my team.
To add insult to fucking injury, while my boss was awesome, some other people were…not. And they mangled the way we handled and communicated this as an organization, so to this day, several people fucking hate me. And it’s probably justified. So much for that cozy little collective, huh?
I want to throw up in my mouth every fucking time I hear another organization say saccharine, disingenuous stuff like “we’re a family here at MegaCorp.”
No. No you fucking aren’t.
First of all, families are fucking dysfunctional. Most of them, anyway. So why you’d want to liken your company to a construct where Uncle Joe says casually racist shit at Thanksgiving and Cousin Sharon drinks pink box wine at every cookout to the point where she regales everyone with details about her sex life from her clubbing days…actually, maybe the analogy is more on the nose than I give it credit for here. But I digress.
Stop building your entire fucking personality and mental health infrastructure around a machine that gives exactly zero fucks about you as a person.
Sure, sure relationships. I have lots of those. That boss above? We’re still tight. He’s awesome. It wasn’t his fault that the fuckery was coming from inside the house. And I’ve grown a formidable network precisely because I invest in relationships and they’ve rewarded me well.
But those are not the same as the P&L that ultimately decides whether a company lives or dies and what decisions its leadership makes about the fate of the people within it.
And yes, people can care about you. Care about what happens to you. Like you as a person. Think you’re wonderful and smart and capable. And they will still fucking fire you, reorg you out, restructure your ass into oblivion, or nerf your job so hard that your head spins and you wonder what the fuck you’re even going to work for anymore. They might cry after they do it (ask me how I know), but that might be their job and they don’t get to make those choices.
Simply put, they will sever those oh-so-familial ties in a fucking heartbeat if that’s what the bottom line dictates.
And look, that’s the agreement we enter into when we work. We trade time, expertise, knowledge or labor for money. It’s a fucking transaction. And you can wrap that transaction in all the fucking platitudes you want about servant leadership and team building and growing together and whatever else, but it doesn’t change the fact that if the math doesn’t work, people lose their jobs.
Oh, but that’s why I’m self-employed, Amber. I don’t fucking answer to that corporate bullshit.
Oh is that so, Nancy? Who fucking gives you revenue for your business? How do you make money and pay your bills, fund your little Etsy shop or your WeWork office for your freelance business, or keep your own fucking balance sheet in the black for that startup? Right. I fucking thought so.
Your time. Your personal boundaries. Your mental health. Your self worth.
None of these fucking things is protected, nurtured, or built through your professional identity. And you can take that from someone who had this so fucking wrong for so many fucking years that it almost destroyed her. (Me. That someone is me, in case you’re dense as fuck, but I have so many stories).
We spend a lot of our lives at work. So it’s an easy mistake to make. Especially if you figure in really insidious shit like gender and “provider” roles, Daddy issues desperately driving our need to have someone be proud of us, former gifted-and-talented kids being taught that achievement IS worth…you get the picture.
But it for sure doesn’t have to be this way.
We can be great at what we do. Enjoy it. Even be passionate about it. But we do not have to be fucking slaves to it, nor defined by it, nor naïve about the savagery that lives underneath the commercial and capitalistic foundations of “profession” in the first place.
That truth can actually be liberating if you let it. Do your work. Be proud of that thing you built and did. Put that cute little award trophy in a visible place on your desk and zip up that logo hoodie while you sip from your logo water bottle.
And when the setbacks inevitably happen, remember that they are part of the path, but not hair shirts of failure to be worn on your psyche forevermore. Don’t ever fucking let yourself believe that you are the thing you do to earn a paycheck. You are so much fucking more than that. You hear me? So much more.
Then go to the fucking park with your kid. Go get a Negroni (hi, CK) at that fave neighborhood haunt all by yourself and be a walking fucking thirst trap for a few hours of real life. Stay in fucking bed and make out with that person. Ride the fucking train to another state. Jump on the fucking trampoline. Sign up for the fucking pottery class you told yourself you don’t have time for.
If you want family, weave it from the fabric of people you find within that madness who are worthy of knowing outside of it. Choose to invest in humanity. To love other people and to love yourself.
We are never promised another breath.
Let’s saturate the air our soul breathes with the moments, experiences and people that give us life and grant power over our worth and purpose only to those who have actually and truly earned it.
The first one? The most important one? The only one who really matters?
That’s you.
Well, you got me in the jugular with this one! 100% on board. I’ve shared this ….because it needs to be megaphoned. “Right sizing”; hmmm wonder how that would work within my family. I jest. Sorta.
Always solid and unambiguous writing Amber. Perhaps a massive stereotype (or reflective of my Southern Hemisphere cultural upbringing) but, for many men, we are ENTIRELY defined by our professional identity and what's deemed as "successful". You're a "C" executive - success. You're a "partner at Big F**k-Off Inc" - success. This is exacerbated by the (Western) proclivity to introduce yourself to people by the classic "So...what do you do?" ice-breaker. After 30 years I'm trying desperately hard to cut that umbilical cord before it strangles me and stifles me from the realization of all the OTHER dimensions of my life that I could - should - be relishing and nurturing. We are ALL more than a wonderfully embossed business card like that classic Christian Bale scene from "American Psycho" - https://youtu.be/cISYzA36-ZY