I woke up this morning, feeling r e v i v e d and not dreadful for the first time in 10 months. I quit my job two weeks before, and yesterday was my last day! I still feel pumped from walking out the doors of the government agency office I had worked in for a little under a year. The gray boring walls, the stupid Starbucks and McDonalds oddly placed on the first floor, the box-shaped cubicles. I will never forget the battle scars I’ve earned at my first job. The racial micro aggressions, the fake DEI persona the company and agency I worked for had taken on, the group of white women who bullied me everyday, all of the psychological terror I experienced because I wanted to do work that was “meaningful.” Why is it that work that deals with improving the lives of others, whether it be advocacy, social work, government-adjacent social services, and other fields, treat all their workers like crap? I feel like my short professional life has been bogged down with negative work experiences, because too often these organizations are not prioritizing employee wellbeing or working to improve the company’s culture. We all have worked at that one NGO where the boss was incredibly tyrannical, overworked the employees, and gave them scraps for a salary (that is if you were paid). Well, I am here to tell you it isn’t that different on the government-side of things, except that there are more formal and institutionalized ways of treating and compensating workers horribly, Employees that are working in this space will tell you, ethical concerns are often dismissed under the guise that the “mission” of the organization (or in my case, agency) precede all other hinderances and that you must permit some bad treatment here and there to see the full execution of the faux mission at play.
My journey to quitting wasn’t an easy one. Having studied the social sciences at a state school in the South, I wanted to break into government work someway or another. I knew all the odds were naturally against me. First-gen, black, Muslim, female, andddd from the South? I was going to dig a way out. As an eldest daughter, I have always been prepared to do so. I was willing to look past red flags, stay silent despite mistreatment, and weather any storm. The problem was I couldn’t ignore the toll the job was taking on my body, and more importantly my morals/values/ethics, and eventually mental health. Over the months I worked here I began to feel really anxious after waking up for work, I genuinely felt like I’d rather do anything than walk into the office on most days. My boss was a classic villain who enjoyed micromanaging juniors, gaslighting, gossiped about team members, used derogatory terms to refer to her colleagues, and worst of all — she expected us to be available 24/7. I am talking weekend hours, late nights, early mornings, etc. Unfortunately, the team had normalized her tyranny, so nobody had the guts to rebel other than find a quiet exit. I should note that she was a women of color, and I can say so much about how senior-level WOC often times are the figures who are playing a negative role in the career advancements and experience of other junior-level WOC but that is for another day. Bad leadership destroys skilled and passionate workers, that was the unfortunate reality. Leaving my position took a lot of tough decision-making, weighing the odds, and being honest about how my health was deteriorating due to the pressure/workplace abuse. My husband always tells me, your work is not who you are, that you are more than an inflated title on LinkedIn. Any job that costs you your inner peace is not worth any amount you are being compensated. I guess he has a point.
My ex-job, and much of the American work culture reminds me of Japan’s work ethics where extreme and unhealthy dedications to one’s occupation is common practice. In fact, Japan’s work culture is so toxic that there is a regular phenomenon known as “Karoshi”, which essentially is a whole category of deaths caused by overworking. The word Karoshi (過労死) literally means “death by overwork”, an entirely different world of deaths which is onset by a myriad of heart and brain diseases that arise from exploitative and unhealthy work habits. Labor activists estimate that over 10,000 Karoshi-related deaths happen in Japan every year. This is not including suicide triggered by work issues as well. Karoshi is becoming a global problem. The WHO estimates that 488 million people work overtime (2016) and "that 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and ischemic heart disease as a direct result of having worked at least 55 hours a week.” There are similar iterations of Karoshi in the US, only that we don’t talk about it enough. But Gen-Z is changing that and I have hope that many years down the line our higher-ups aren’t these older productivity and profit-obsessed psychos. Maybe it wont change, who knows.
I am headed some place better now, I’ll keep you guys updated.
Read: “Japan’s karoshi culture was a warning. We didn’t listen” from Wired
Updates:
I will be spending the next few weeks traveling, spending time with loved ones, reading/writing/thinking, and healing from the career-related trauma I’ve acquired. I plan on sharing some updates throughout August, stay tuned for more details.
August is the Summer season’s farewell. It will be the last of fresh and plump summer produce (bye tomato season), as we transitional to eating squashes. beets, and cranberries in the Autumn season. I am hoping to share some summer recipes when I return from traveling and what I’ve learned from slow food activist, Alice Waters, through my study of her MasterClass and books this past year.
Offerings:
One of my favorite TikTok that encapsulates the classic abusive “CEO of an NGO” persona by Nicole Daniels.
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
— Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living
Question?
Have you ever had a bad work experience or an abusive boss? If you are POC, what are some ways your company/organization has been complicit in your mistreatment?
One thing I enjoy about sharing my life is that I get loads of messages from people sharing similar testimonies. Like James Baldwin says “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
At my previous job, I would like to say was very diverse, however the problem lays in the fact my boss showed such blatant favoritism and acted to much as a friend to most. He also kept quiet about my mistakes and would bring them all up on a random day to make me feel like an inadequate worker and threatened termination if I didn’t fix it. I soon left the environment, but stayed because my coworkers truly was sweet and I didn’t have to interact with him all the time.
Such a fanatic writer!!!