Welcome to The Way We Work: Tales from The Office

Dear Readers (in my Peggy from The Gilded Age voice - I still miss Peggy),

To recap: The prior editions were full of info, but to be honest, it was a lot of work and I wasn’t being as efficient with creativity and storytelling—two areas I think we need to see more of in the workplace. Our stories at work matter.

So, The Way We Work: Tales from The Office has been born.

These are fictionalized stories of actual events—either things I’ve experienced or stories others have shared—reimagined by me so you can get a peek behind the corporate curtain. Or, if you’re already behind it, maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of a part of the stage you haven’t seen before. I hope you enjoy them as they marry the two gifts I have: impactful work and writing.

But first, previously on Gidget Ignores Red Flags - Part 1…

Gidget Ignores Red Flags – Part 2

“How’s your first two weeks, girl?!?” her bestie texted her.
Gidget didn’t know how to respond.

She had just woken up from a nap. At 7 p.m. She never took naps—well, not since kindergarten, but she didn’t value them then. She didn’t even remember going to sleep. Searching her memory, she tried to figure out what had her on her couch, wiping her mouth, and looking around like she was being robbed.

Let’s see… she had shut her computer off at 6 p.m. after talking to the CEO, sat on her couch, and then woke up an hour later.

The conversation.
Yep.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

Her first day was actually a dream. Remote onboarding where the lovely People Team person—Guy—took her and a few other newbies through mission/values, org charts, logistics like benefits, direct deposit, onboarding paperwork, who her HR Business Partner was, communication protocols, IT stuff, professional development calendars, and… did she see this correctly… a survey on how her recruiting experience was??

They cared?
She immediately felt good.

Rhona even messaged her a welcome with a fun video from the TA team.
So cute.

And then she didn’t.

After onboarding, she was released to the general population of the company, and she felt like she did when she started 9th grade and didn’t know where her classes were, who her teachers were, how she was supposed to find anything. She was lost.

She messaged her HRBP:

Gidget watched the bubbles form as they typed.
She played with the messaging platform and saw a few groups that looked like her team, so she peeked into those channels along with the company-wide channels. It was a bit like learning a new language—which she kept meaning to do, but time always hated her.

She looked back at the message… still bubbles.

She filled out her onboarding paperwork, selected her benefits, registered for some courses, checked her empty calendar, tried on her company sweatshirt that had come a few days ago, poured coffee into the company Yeti, messaged some of the members of her interview panel a hello, and got one out of five responses. Checked back… still nothing.

Two hours later, with the message bubbles still bubbling while she was reading some updates on the SharePoint (she wondered why SharePoint always felt like reading a Parisian subway map), she got a ping back.

She screenshot her empty calendar.

Gidget blinked what felt like 8937746 times.

Her gut was churning.
What are the red flags called after the job?
What’s it called when you want to enter the room rather than escape it?
How does she get in to do her job??

Pings started coming in:

Gidget’s face felt hot.

Why does everyone use “haha” here like that? Is this funny?

She went to her inbox, which had been empty, and watched the invites and messages pour in real time like she was watching an animated movie.

Do inboxes move that fast?

How many messages do you get for it to look like a movie?

Little did she know, that’s how fast her job would be from that point on.

What’s that term she hated? Hit the ground running?

Nobody likes hitting ground—it hurts.
And running—in her opinion—is something you do when you are in duress.

Maybe she was in duress?

For the next few days, she just tried to not be an overwhelmed sponge.
She soaked up info in the day, went to her notes and wrung it out at night.
Plotted what to do with the information.
Rinse. Repeat.

She was getting up at 6 a.m. for the East Coast team and staying online until 7 or 8 p.m. for the West Coast/Europe team. Eating dinner. Downloading. Sleeping. Waking.

Text messages from family and friends got answered in between (most times with wrong or confusing responses—her mind was gone) or on weekends when she slept or got a workout in or read.

Aren’t all first few days like this? she told herself.
They had told her work/life balance was important in the interview, right?

There were parents and… that’s all she remembered.
Some of her colleagues were parents.
She, repeatedly, had to tell them she was not.

She didn’t mention that was a question that could be considered bias.
It seemed innocent.

But this morning was different.

After a few weeks of feeling like she was working triage (actually the only show she could catch up on was The Pitt, and the feelings she felt watching it were so similar she wondered—had she, in fact, signed up to be a doctor or a Marketing Executive?), she felt… okay.

Her team leads seemed smart, if not a bit directionless.
The budget was in shambles—but she could fix that.
A few projects were off target for completion—again, fixable.

She had sent everyone little coffee cards for all of their hard work in getting her up to speed, and things felt like the rush was going to be over.

Did she recognize that some of her team behaved like Evillene’s factory workers in The Wiz?
Sure!
But she was gonna free them so they could fly like Ailey dancers!

Brand new day.

And then her boss—the CEO who hates messaging but also she noticed never actually communicated with her at all save for a few emails, and not directly to her—sent her a message at 5 p.m.

TBH, she hated using “U” instead of “you” because it seemed lazy.
It’s not like the word “you” uses a ton of letters or that you have to pay for them.
Digress.

The CEO put a virtual meeting link in the chat and she joined ASAP.
He did not.

Her tummy started tap dancing like that La La Land dance sequence and she immediately had to use the bathroom, but she could not leave.

She practiced looking cool and collected since, for five minutes, she was just looking at herself.
Then he joined.

She went on to punch up the wins, talk about her lessons learned, threw in a few jokes—all in about 1 minute, though she was on speed 2.0 if you think about an audiobook. She talked fast when she was nervous.

She realized he wasn’t listening, so she trailed off.

She immediately searched her memory for what he was talking about, staring at her project sheet while stammering, looking at her emails—where she’d sent meticulous notes about their projects and updates—and died a few times inside before asking:

His face darkened.

The rest was a ream.
A read, if you will.

He read her front, back, sideways, and up and down.
Nothing about him not being in touch for weeks.
Nothing about HR saying she had turned team morale around.
Not one thing about her rebalancing the budget so they were losing less this quarter.
Nothing about how it’s only been three weeks.
A whole read.

That’s when she had shut her computer off.
That’s when the universe knocked her out while she sat on the couch.
That’s why she was wiping her mouth with little memory.
She looked at her phone.

^{Should we do a Part 3? You tell me!}

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