Welcome to The Way We Work: Tales from The Office

Ok Bakers (Great British Baking Show is coming soon — can you tell?),

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.

Previously on Gidget Ignores Red Flags

• Part 1: The Interview Process

• Part 2: The First Few Weeks

Gidget Ignores Red Flags – Part 3

She almost didn’t make it to the executive offsite.

She spent about an hour on the internet researching plausible diseases or viruses one could get — we did just have a whole pandemic where that virus hasn’t magically disappeared — but she couldn’t go through with sending the email to her boss and the Head of HR.

“Hi I have food poisoning.”
“Hi I have COVID again.”
“Hi I had a nervous breakdown after my last one on one with you so therefore I am sending my regrets.”

Not when she was actually sitting on the plane. That would seem abrupt. And weird.

Her best friend had told her that she was tougher than dysfunction and that you only take feedback from people you value or respect. She technically didn’t even know this man yet so why was she so stressed out about his poor one on one skills?

“Because he signs my digital checks, sis,” Gidget told her.

“Yes but that doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about. Half these leaders in business today are going off of vibes and poor intuition,” her bestie replied. “He’s not worth your stress. Did you cuss him out?”

“How does one exactly cuss out a CEO, friend?” Gidget asked but immediately regretted it — her bestie was that one who would.

“Email. The men do it all of the time. You have to protect your peace and not let this job stress you. Women, and specifically Black women, die from this corporate mess. I will not let you.”

But how do you separate your stress from your confidence, Gidget wondered.

She’d been in leadership positions for the last 10 years — when she had no idea she would even make it this far — and never had she experienced a place where she felt like she was being punked.

Literally the day after their disastrous one on one, she joined the leadership call, already with her shoulders in her knees, and the CEO was so pleasant to her and everyone that she wondered if he had a twin.

He asked about her weekend, asked about a project her team was launching, praised their recent social media campaign and told people that she was really making a difference in her short time there.

Gidget was too stunned to speak.

She looked at the little boxes of heads on her computer screen for anyone else who was experiencing this odd personality dominating their leadership call.

Everyone had poker face.

She didn’t have a work bestie yet and was kind of reluctant to get one as the last time she had work besties, one of them plotted to get her fired but smiled in her face the whole time and another ghosted her after she got laid off from their company.

Gidget firmly stood on the principle that we are not all from the same fabric and should not be automatically treated as such. Trust was earned.

So here she sat in this hotel room, staring out the window after having answered close to 150 emails in the span of a few hours because the funny thing about work offsites is that the actual work never stops.

She liked that her team was starting to trust her experience and judgment so she was consulted a lot. And she was giving them valuable direction and insight.

“Our last department head barely answered our emails and was always ‘visiting clients’ and staying at hotels that cost a grand a night in the name of partnerships,” one of her team members told her. “She looked like she was plucked straight out of a magazine cover and she would speak to the men on the executive team in a way that, let’s just say, rarely resulted in her getting pushback.”

Upon hearing that, it was Gidget’s turn to have a poker face. She had asked what happened to the person in the job before but was told the role had been reimagined so it wouldn’t have been apples to apples.

“She quit when she realized the CEO didn’t really know anything about marketing this product. Like she was for sure extravagant and used to big budgets but she knew marketing and she didn’t seem like the type to stick around to hear questions that didn’t make sense,” her team member told her.

Gidget, she said to herself, this is a real red flag.

This is what she thought about as she stared out the window, looking at the ocean from her room, psyching herself up to go and rub shoulders in person for the first time with her colleagues and her boss.

She was already dressed even though dinner wasn’t for another hour but she couldn’t get off of her chair as she watched the sun go down on the ocean. Her room was so quiet she could hear the silence ringing and she was fine with that.

She kept taking deep breaths and practicing circular breathing.

As Gidget walked downstairs to the lobby, she put on the smile — the armor — the one that protects you when you meet people in real life for the first time and want to make sure that they find you pretty likable but also not too likable unless you become a doormat or brown nose.

“Gidget! Look at you! I love your outfit. It’s so unique.”

The Head of HR went to her immediately and looked at her outfit starting with the shoes first and stopping at her hair. It wasn’t that unique — it just wasn’t off the mannequin from J. Crew.

“So great to meet you in person. Let’s introduce you to the team. We were hoping you’d be down soon for the shuttle — we don’t leave anyone behind but we are hungry!”

She ushered Gidget over to a group of mostly men drinking at the bar and wondered if there was a pre-game invite she missed.

Introductions were made and all the heads in boxes became real people of varying heights, sizes, and complexities.

It didn’t really hit her until then that out of the nine of them there were six men and out of the six men there were five white men.

These were observations and not judgments because their product was inherently way more female/female-presenting focused and yet the voices of those customers essentially on the leadership team were her, the Head of HR, and the CFO.

And most of them all were wearing those tech brothers all weather vests with either their company logo (she asked later if that was a good swag choice given their product and was assured that it was just company swag which made her scratch her head…) or some other past company.

Dress shirts, jeans and vests — the uniform of the male leaders universally.

She wondered if they all shopped together.

“Let me get you a drink,” the CEO had said, ignoring Head of HR’s subtle but desperate attempt to get everyone in the waiting Mercedes shuttle.

“Oh I can wait for dinner. I’ll catch up to everyone then,” Gidget replied and immediately received an appreciative glance from Head of HR.

“We all just kind of gathered early,” Head of HR said as they walked to the shuttle. “Since we all know each other, it kind of happened organically. I totally would have texted you if it was a real thing, you know?”

“Totally.”

Later, she would use this very phrase when she talked about what this night foreshadowed as her time as an executive there. Like verbatim it would replay in her mind over and over.

But in this moment, she was just the only non-white woman leader in a Mercedes bus full of other leaders who barely spoke to her on the ride to the restaurant.

At this point, I think we need a Part 4. Don’t you? Let me know.

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