A paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse

Lauren: 00:00:00

A paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse. All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record. Cause that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.

I go by L2. Yes, you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's a long story. It's actually not that long a story, but we'll save it for another time.

Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're different, and that's fine.

So, quick rundown of the rules. We talk about this every time. If you want to know more about them, pop back to our first episode.

First, I'm gonna curse a lot if bad language is a problem. Sorry. Second, I'm gonna tell a lot of stories, even on things that don't sound like they have stories.

Third, I'm gonna tell a bunch of dead dad jokes. It's just par for the course around here. And fourth, anything that comes out of your face is appropriate here. So.

So you do not have to worry about filtering any part of you to join us in this space. So, obviously, I'm somebody who. We've talked about this a lot, even in our short tenure. But I survived. I got out of a toxic work environment.

It was really damaging. It was really hard to exist in. It was really hard to get out of. It was damaging to my physical health, my mental health.

It very much warped my perception of myself and what I was capable of. It was a bad environment, and I think I stayed there as long as I did one, because my headspace did not permit me to up and leave.

I had a lot to learn about who I needed to be and who I wanted to be. But also, there was this idea that, well, work isn't supposed to be fun. You're not supposed to enjoy it.

You're supposed to go and get your paycheck so you can do the other things. Maybe that's a perspective that works for some people. And if it does, great. Do not let me harsh or mellow.

Like, if you are comfortable living in that environment and just going to a job, surviving it, and then living the rest of your life outside of work. Good for you. Proud of you. I'm glad that you have that capacity. I do not. I cannot imagine.

And I say that being a person who's done it, who was in that environment for a long time, but was abjectly miserable at this place in my life, I cannot imagine spending eight hours a day doing something I hate. I just can't. It, like, it makes me feel trapped. It makes me feel like the walls are closing in on me.

The reason that I stayed for as long as I did, or one of them, I should say, was this idea that it's a job. It's not supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to be something that you enjoy. It's not supposed to be playtime.

You're going, you're doing a job, you're getting paid for it. You're there to get a paycheck. So what happens when that it's not supposed to be fun becomes.

It doesn't have to be tolerable because, like, I get it, there are people who are going to work jobs that they don't love, and that's fine. But, like, what if it's abjectly harmful? But what the prevailing wisdom around you is is that it's not supposed to be fun.

Okay, but is it supposed to be traumatizing? Because that's different. You're not asking for fun at that point. You're asking for being able to exist. You're asking to not have nightmares.

You're asking to not have your brain chemistry changed by somebody who is literally abusing you. And so something I say a lot is, is everybody's job going to be fun? Probably not.

Are there people who are just going to go do their job, tolerate it, and go home? Yeah, sure, that's fine. But a paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse.

A paycheck does not mean that this entity or the people who are responsible for me at this entity can treat me however they want, can make me feel however they want, can pile on whatever they want just because they're paying me. You are getting paid to do a job. You are not getting paid to do the emotional labor that comes with being traumatized in that job.

You're not also being compensated for the help that you will need to recover from that job when it abuses you.

Jobs that contact you after hours, that expect you to work off the clock, that threaten you with termination all the time just to keep you quiet and compliant, that make you feel psychologically unsafe. Psychological safety is not a fringe benefit. It is not a thing that you should just get when you've earned it.

You get psychological safety on day one. You are supposed to be safe in your work environment from abuse, and that includes emotional and mental abuse.

They damn well better protect you from physical abuse, but all abuse is abuse. So a paycheck does not give them carte blanche to do abusive things that we see in corporate environments currently. Gaslighting.

Gosh, the gaslighting.

Misleading you on important things, promising things that they never deliver on, waving carrots in front of you to get you to perform, and then never delivering on their end of the bargain. There's any number of things that happen in a workplace that can be damaging, protecting people who are objectively harmful.

I had a situation once where there was this guy that I worked with who was repeatedly trying to get me alone. I was like six months pregnant. There was absolutely no reason for this guy and I to be alone.

I was going into the office occasionally at the time, and every time I was in the office, he would ask me if I wanted to, quote, unquote, go for a walk with him. And it made me so uncomfortable. But I also wasn't sure if I was allowed to report it because he hadn't done anything wrong.

He could just say he was trying to be my friend, but it made me so uncomfortable, and I don't remember. I don't think I reported it. Now. I would be an absolute nightmare to anybody who did not take that seriously.

But at the time, it was just like, well, they're just going to say that he's just a nice person. And then it turned out he was very much not a nice person. He got into a lot of trouble for a lot of sketchy shit down the line.

But at the time, they would have been like, he's just trying to be a nice person. He just needs friends. Why aren't you just being his friend? Because I don't want to be his friend. He makes me uncomfortable.

But that makes the work environment unsafe. It clearly was already unsafe because I didn't feel comfortable speaking up about the fact that this was happening.

That in and of itself makes it unsafe. If you're not comfortable telling someone you feel unsafe. It was unsafe before that dude made you feel unsafe. All of that is abusive.

So that is not just something that you should have to deal with because you're getting a paycheck. Your paycheck is for your job duties. The extra stuff they're not paying you for. You're doing that for free. That's not okay.

There is another side of this conversation, though. The extra stuff they're not paying you for. You're doing that for free. That's not okay. There is another side of this conversation, though.

And in hindsight, a paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse. You should not be abused. In your workplace.

However, with job mobility the way it is currently, it can be really hard to convince somebody, and it's really not our business to convince somebody that they should just jump ship from something that is abusive. Because, like, where do they go? There is some job mobility, and there are people who get new jobs all the time right now.

But it's not like it was three or four years ago where everybody was resigning and just walking into another job that was better paid than anything they'd ever had before. It's a different climate now, and so we kind of have to talk out of both sides of our mouth. You do not deserve to be abused at work.

Workplace abuse is a problem. There should be avenues that you can go through to get the support you need in the workplace.

Especially if you're being treated poorly because your brain works differently, or not being given the accommodations that you need because your brain works differently. All of that should not be happening. But if the alternative is unemployment, what do you do? Because that's an unwinnable situation. That sucks.

Especially if you are somebody who is not super clear on what happens next, where you find your next job, what the opportunities for employment are for you. There are a lot of neurodivergent people who feel like they are lucky to have a job.

They are lucky to find a job that will tolerate them the way they are or with whatever version of themselves that they give them. And they don't have the ability to speak up or. Or change something or make waves. And that's a valid fear.

I wish I could wave a wand and make workplaces better for everybody, but specifically neurodivergent people, because the way neurodivergent brains work to make all products better, there's a whole thing there about how those varying perspectives really matter. But that doesn't mean that you should have to tolerate abuse because you don't know where else to go.

That feels like a completely unwinnable situation, because it probably is an unwinnable situation. I don't want to throw it out there that a paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse, so you should just quit your job. That's not the point.

Because no job is worth your mental health. But also, is not being able to pay your bills worth your mental health?

If you're living paycheck to paycheck and you don't have the ability to just leave and not have income for however long it takes you to find another role or replace your income, is that better? Is that stress better than the other? Should you be in a position to even choose between those two stresses. That's awful.

Nobody should be in that position. So the point isn't put up your middle finger and walk out. And I say that as somebody who more or less did that at one point.

There are ways that you can take back control, that you can separate yourself from the chaos that's happening around you. There are ways that you can protect yourself. Document, document, document. If it happened, write it down, send it in an email to yourself.

Whether, you know, send it in your personal email so that it's timestamped. Emails are really powerful because they're timestamped.

I'm a big believer that after you have a meeting that's tense or imperfect, somebody should be sending an email.

And whether it's somebody else should be sending that email so that you have documentation of their position on whatever happened, like a recap email of the meeting, or it's an email you're sending to yourself to document what happened, or like, hey, do you mind sending me an email of somebody you know, a trusted colleague who can send you something to just give you their perspective on what happened? Whatever you can get that can be timestamped, document it.

And then the other thing is, and this is something that I have been told by multiple people in the employment law space, is that once you know, you need an attorney if you're being mistreated in the workplace, you probably needed an attorney three months ago.

And while attorneys are expensive and that can be prohibitive, I just want to float that out there that it's okay to talk to an attorney even if you don't plan to do anything with it.

A lot of employers have free legal services that you can use, or low cost legal services that you can use through your benefits package to discuss what you've been experiencing. And looking at different options. Some attorneys will do free consults.

Sometimes there are less expensive ways to talk to somebody you might know, an attorney who can look at them. The point being that everybody feels like talking to an attorney is like going nuclear. And in some ways it could be a protective measure.

One, there are ways that you can take a step back and look around and say, what part of what is actually happening has anything to do with me? What is my responsibility to take on the emotional burden for?

And if all the fuckery that's happening is your coworkers being bizarre and your management being incompetent, and you're still doing your job, you're still getting your paycheck, it's not being turned Toward you. It's an uncomfortable environment to be in. You worry that you're going to get wrapped into it.

But you can keep good documentation of what's happening.

And you can make a very conscious choice that you are not going to have an emotional reaction when somebody around you does something stupid or something harmful or whatever that will make your day easier at a minimum, to just say, I get my paycheck whether you screw this up or not. So screw it up, whatever. I could get upset about it and I could try to fix it, or I could let you learn from your lesson.

Finding ways to find the choices of. I have a choice to get emotionally invested in this or to just let it happen. Because my emotion is not going to change the way this goes.

That can take down the temperature of a shitty workplace from like a 10 to like a 6. I don't know if that's my rating scale. You might have your own rating scale.

Maybe it's like we're at five Mario Brothers now and we need to be at two Mario Brothers. I don't know. You pick your own rating scale. It's fine. You could have, like, the number of dentists who agree with you. That's fine, too.

But there are ways to make it so that you are at least in control of more. So that you can make a calculated decision that still ends with you telling them to fuck off for abusing you without destroying your whole life.

And so, again, it feels like we're talking out of both sides of our mouths, right? A paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse. You should not have to tolerate that in your workplace. You should have ways that you can report it.

You should absolutely be documenting it. You should know you are not deserving of that. You are worthy and valuable regardless what your workplace output is.

And also, no job is worth your mental health. But is your mental health worth starvation because you don't have a job? And how do we survive this environment that we're in right now? Document.

Document. Document. Document. Document. I'm like the Birds and Finding Nemo, except instead of mine, it's document. Document. Document. Document. Document.

Find support groups, community. Sometimes toxic work environments become way more palatable.

And I can say this from my personal experience, toxic work environments become way more palatable when you have a void to scream into of people who remind you that you are not crazy. It doesn't have to be an official support group. It can just be a bunch of friends who you sit on a zoom with and talk shit. That's fine.

We have Actual support groups, those are fine. Those are great. And we have actually toxic work environment support groups. Also great. But it doesn't have to be a formal intervention.

It literally can just be talking to your best friend and saying, please validate me that I am not losing my mind and that this is completely untenable. And sometimes that's all it takes to get you up in the morning to another day of trudgery through whatever insanity they throw at you.

But fundamentally, needing a job should not make you subject to abuse. And if you're not sure that it's abuse, it's probably abuse. Everybody's pretty certain when they're not being abused.

But if you have to ask the question, odds are it's kind of sketchy and you might deserve better.

And by the way, regardless, you deserve better even if you can't make that happen for yourself right now because of all of the other very reasonable, chaotic things that you have to deal with. You still deserve better, and you still don't deserve the situation that you're in.

Okay, so for this week's small talk again, remember, this is something we do every week. Everybody needs somebody in their life, and maybe this is a neurodivergent brain thing. I don't know.

Everybody needs somebody in their life that they can communicate through sounds with. Not word sounds, just like sound sounds. So last Christmas, our nanny asked what I wanted for Christmas.

And I always tell her that I don't want anything because I don't need her to buy me things. That just feels silly to me. She's our oldest child. She doesn't need to buy me gifts, but every year she wants to anyway.

And so I was trying to think of something small because I don't want her to spend a lot of money. And in general, like, I don't want stuff anyway. Like, I'm bad when it comes time to buy me things because I don't ever ask or anything.

So she was like, well, just tell me what you want. And I was like, oh, you know what I do want? I want. I want the dunk. The dunk.

And I, like, I, like, held up my hand like I was holding a phone and, like, attaching something to it, like, what the dunk? And she was like, oh, like, with your phone?

And I was like, yeah, yeah, the thing that you put on the back and it goes dunk and then it charges your phone is the dunk. She was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Okay. Yeah, no, I have one of those. So you like the little magnetic thing? Yeah.

So Then when she gave it to me for Christmas, which I was very excited about, I opened it, and she was like, look, it's the dunk. And I was like, it's the dunk. It makes sense. But my husband was very confused.

And then I took it out of the box and showed him that when you take the phone and you attach it and it starts charging, it goes dunk. And he was like, oh. But I didn't have to explain anything to her. I just told her, I want the dunk. And she was like, oh, okay, no problem. So I'm just.

Everybody needs that person in their life who knows that they need a donk and what a dunk is, and I hope you have that person. And if not, you should test people out by making random noises and figuring out if and seeing if they can figure out what you mean.

Also, I've trained my children to do this, like, unintentionally, because sometimes, like, I'll say something very direct to my kids, and the answer I get will be, like, some inane gesture. I'm like, I don't know what that means. They look at me like I've lost my mind, because clearly, this is the way I communicate.

So I've also broken two children in the process. It's fine. But I have a charger for my phone, so whatever. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.

Okay, so, quick rundown of our weekly rules. One, I'm gonna curse a lot. Oh, nope, sorry. I forgot. This is going so well. This is going so well.

I'd like to say that I do the rules every week to remind other people of them, but the reality is, I do the rules every week to remind myself of them. So rule number one is we are. We're gonna curse a lot. We do that. Two, we. I forgot the second one again, and that one was good. Damn it. All right.