Episode 71
Women at Work: You’re Not Too Much, They’re Not Enough
Every time I talk publicly about being a woman at work, the first response is the same. It’s never "that sounds hard." It’s "well, I had a terrible boss once, and she was a woman."
Yeah. Okay. Women are allowed to suck, too. Plenty of men suck and we just accept that as fine.
So this episode is about the two women you’re allowed to be in a workplace that was not built for you. The one who shrinks to fit — who gets told she’s too big, too loud, too many ideas, and folds all of it up inside herself, hands her ideas to somebody else so they’ll get heard, stops saying the thing she knows is going to go wrong. And the one who strikes to kill — who was taught there’s only ever room for one of her, so she leaves no space for the next one coming up behind.
They’re the same woman. Same message, two ways out. You are not allowed here, you should feel lucky we let you in, and if you’re uncomfortable with how we do things then you should shut up or leave.
I’ve talked to thousands of women over the last five years who live inside that, and I lived inside it myself. I’m the person who had to hand her idea to the nearest male coworker because it would be taken seriously from him and ignored from me.
All of that is evidence of a problem with the workplace. It is not evidence of a problem with you.
You are not intimidating. They’re intimidated. Nobody is going to make them do the work to find out why you’re such a threat, so you’re going to stay a threat — but you do not have to make yourself smaller to fix something you didn’t break. You’ve been the same person the whole time.
You are not too much. They are not enough.
Plus: breaking news on the semicolon rant, in which four actual English professors turn up to tell me I was right. And an Ask L2 from Kieran, who wants an exemption from the don’t-fight-with-pigs rule for a pig who owes him $4,000.
CHAPTERS
00:00:00 "You are not allowed here"
00:00:23 Welcome to You’re Not Too Much
00:00:37 What always happens when I talk about women at work
00:01:08 Women are allowed to suck, too
00:01:46 I wish you the success of the mediocre white male
00:02:25 Persona one: the woman who shrinks to fit
00:04:13 Persona two: the woman who strikes to kill
00:05:09 Both of those are the same thing
00:06:37 Thousands of women, same paradigm
00:07:57 Give it to your nearest male coworker
00:08:19 A problem with the workplace, not a problem with you
00:08:28 You are not intimidating. They’re intimidated.
00:09:03 What you actually owe a job you need
00:09:44 You are not too much
00:10:04 They are not enough
00:10:57 Do enough to survive, then find a place that doesn’t suck
00:11:05 Ten thousand levers you don’t need to pull
00:11:20 You’ve been the same person the whole time
00:11:55 Your five to nine is better than your nine to five
00:12:03 A toxic waste dump and no hazmat suit
00:12:31 What professionalism actually means
00:12:57 Why the show is now called You’re Not Too Much
00:13:25 Breaking news: the semicolon rant, vindicated
00:15:26 Ask L2 — "This pig owes me $4,000"
00:16:37 You can have whatever tone you want
00:17:15 The strongly worded email
Every episode: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com
Leave me a voicemail: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail
Come find the rest of us: https://alwaysquirky.com
Transcript
You are not allowed here.
Speaker:You're not supposed to be here.
Speaker:You can either feel special by making sure that nobody is ever offended by your
Speaker:presence, and speak only when spoken to.
Speaker:If you want something to be paid attention to, you have to give it to your nearest
Speaker:male coworker because they'll take it seriously from them and ignore it from you.
Speaker:Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken
Speaker:Network, a podcast about how you're not too much, they're not enough.
Speaker:Space expands, so let's fill it.
Speaker:There's one thing that kind of always happens when I talk about safety for
Speaker:women in the workplace or how to exist while female, how to work while being
Speaker:a woman. And how workplaces are not constructed to be hospitable to people
Speaker:who are not middle-aged white guys.
Speaker:And one of the first things that I always hear is, "Well, I had a terrible
Speaker:boss once, and she was a woman."
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Women are allowed to suck, too.
Speaker:Plenty of men suck, and we just accept that as being okay.
Speaker:Like, women don't have to be exceptional just to be allowed to exist.
Speaker:There's this idea that if you're a woman in the workplace and
Speaker:you're not exceptional, you are therefore not even welcome there.
Speaker:Whereas you get these dudes who have only ever failed up and never actually
Speaker:successfully done anything in their career, aside from looking busy maybe,
Speaker:and they keep getting promoted, but if you get a woman who's just good at her
Speaker:job and not giving in 1,000% all the time, she's somehow a disappointment.
Speaker:So yeah, women are allowed to suck, too.
Speaker:They just are.
Speaker:I wish you the success of the mediocre white male because it
Speaker:seems to work out for them, and they don't have to put in 1,000% just to
Speaker:get a modicum of the recognition.
Speaker:It's always one of the things.
Speaker:"Well, I had a boss who was a woman, and she wasn't friendly.
Speaker:She didn't help other women.
Speaker:She didn't make the workplace any better for other women." Yeah, that happens,
Speaker:but why do you think that happens?
Speaker:I'm a firm believer that there are really, like, two personas, or
Speaker:historically, I think this is changing now by having conversations like this,
Speaker:but there are historically two kind of women's personas in the workplace.
Speaker:One of them is the woman who I became when I was at my most unhappy in corporate.
Speaker:It's the woman who gets feedback that there's something wrong with the way she
Speaker:does things, or that she's rubbing people the wrong way, or gets feedback that
Speaker:she's doing things too big, too involved, her laugh's too big, she's got too many
Speaker:ideas, whatever, and she shrinks to fit.
Speaker:She takes all of that brilliance that was oozing out of her and that was
Speaker:making her better at her job, a better teammate, more dynamic in the workplace,
Speaker:more promotable, and she shrinks them all inside of her so that she fits into
Speaker:the box that she was told she needs to be in and doesn't ever branch out of it.
Speaker:And when she has an idea, she gives it to someone else so that they
Speaker:can claim it as their idea because it will be received better from a
Speaker:different persona other than her own.
Speaker:And she doesn't speak out about the things that she knows are gonna go wrong.
Speaker:She doesn't pipe in when she's the expert in the matter because she
Speaker:doesn't think it'll be received well.
Speaker:She has to orchestrate getting things done in a way that won't ruffle any feathers.
Speaker:There are so many women who exist in that place in the workplace because
Speaker:it's the only way for them to feel like they can survive, like they can
Speaker:have security, like they can keep their jobs, like they can not become a target.
Speaker:For all of the ridiculous bureaucracy that's sitting around them.
Speaker:That's one of them, and I feel like that's maybe the one that
Speaker:we hear about more often, right?
Speaker:The one who has been silenced, the one who's been made to feel small,
Speaker:the one who has forced themselves to be small rather than being whoever
Speaker:they are in the workplace because it's not safe for that person otherwise.
Speaker:They've been told that person is not professional, which is bullshit.
Speaker:But then there's another person.
Speaker:There's another way it comes out, and that's the woman who strikes to kill,
Speaker:and she doesn't leave a lot of space for other people to come up with her
Speaker:because she's been told over and over that there's only room for one of her.
Speaker:We can't have two women in leadership.
Speaker:We can't have two women in the same role.
Speaker:We can't have two women in the same field because you have to be exceptional to be
Speaker:a woman in your field around mediocre men.
Speaker:So if you want this space, you can't bring anybody else with you, and
Speaker:she will eat other people alive.
Speaker:She will seem aggressive in certain situations that don't require aggression.
Speaker:She lives in the boys' club.
Speaker:She acts like the boys.
Speaker:She was brought up in an environment where if she wanted to succeed,
Speaker:it meant other women had to fail because there couldn't be too many.
Speaker:This was not a hospitable place for too many women.
Speaker:Both of those personas are the same thing.
Speaker:Those are the same thing coming out in two different ways.
Speaker:Now, does that make it acceptable to stomp on other women in your
Speaker:workplace and make their lives harder and make their jobs harder?
Speaker:No, don't do that.
Speaker:That's shitty.
Speaker:But it all emerges from the same place that you are not allowed here.
Speaker:You are not supposed to be here. This place was not built for you, and you should
Speaker:feel special that we've allowed you in.
Speaker:And you can either feel special by making sure you're the only, or by making sure
Speaker:that nobody is ever offended by your presence, and speak only when spoken to.
Speaker:Those are the same thing.
Speaker:Both of those people have been told that they are too much, that their
Speaker:ideas were not welcome, that they were not rewarded for being innovative.
Speaker:They were punished for authenticity.
Speaker:They were made to feel like being themselves was not
Speaker:allowed in this environment.
Speaker:They were hired for something, and then it was immediately snuffed out because this
Speaker:is not a space that was built for them.
Speaker:Whether you realize it or not, this space was built as a boys club, and
Speaker:you should feel lucky to be here.
Speaker:And the fact that you are made uncomfortable by the way we do things
Speaker:doesn't mean that we do things wrong.
Speaker:It means that you either should shut up or not be here.
Speaker:I have literally talked to thousands of women over the last five years who
Speaker:fit into that paradigm, who have had that impressed upon them over and over,
Speaker:who had to leave a toxic environment.
Speaker:I'm one of these people who had to leave a toxic environment that
Speaker:fed their head with so many things that were not true about them.
Speaker:That they were too loud, that they were not a team player, that they couldn't
Speaker:operate as a function of the bigger team because they weren't willing to
Speaker:do what management said when management was giving them something that was gonna
Speaker:be abjectly harmful to the company.
Speaker:That they didn't just say yes and do whatever it was because they knew better.
Speaker:And instead of being rewarded for having the insight of knowing better, they
Speaker:were punished for being insubordinate.
Speaker:We're not talking about people who are written up, though
Speaker:sometimes that does happen.
Speaker:We're not talking about people who get suspended for being insubordinate.
Speaker:We're not talking about people who get pay cuts.
Speaker:We're talking about people who get left off of meetings. We're talking
Speaker:about people who don't find out about things until after they're
Speaker:already done because they knew if they told them it would be a problem.
Speaker:We're talking about people who do bring up things and then get ignored.
Speaker:We're talking about situations, and I had this happen to me multiple times,
Speaker:where if you want something to be paid attention to, you have to give
Speaker:it to your nearest male coworker because they'll take it seriously
Speaker:from them and ignore it from you.
Speaker:And I've lived that.
Speaker:I've experienced that, and so I fully believe it when other women tell me
Speaker:that they have it happen to them, and it happens, and I hear about it all the time.
Speaker:The point of that is all of that demonstrates problems with the
Speaker:workplace, not problems with you.
Speaker:You are not intimidating.
Speaker:They're intimidated.
Speaker:They probably need to do some work to figure out why
Speaker:you're such a threat to them.
Speaker:Now, nobody's gonna make them do that work, so you're just gonna stay a threat,
Speaker:unfortunately, but you don't have to make yourself less of a, quote-unquote,
Speaker:threat when you're not threatening them.
Speaker:You're not doing anything other than existing.
Speaker:The only thing you have to do in those environments is the things
Speaker:required for self-preservation to keep your job or to keep whatever
Speaker:thing if you need that paycheck.
Speaker:And so while I would love for you, love for you to give these people giant
Speaker:middle fingers and walk out, that is not realistic for a lot of people, and that
Speaker:is not something that I want you to do if you're not in a position to do it.
Speaker:But I do want you to get it through your head that you are
Speaker:not your toxic work environment.
Speaker:The way you feel is a by-product of the fact that place is messed up,
Speaker:but there is nothing that you have done that creates that environment.
Speaker:You are trying to exist in that environment, and because you are
Speaker:the person who is affected by it, it physically hurts you. And that's not okay.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, you are not too much.
Speaker:You are not too big.
Speaker:You are not too loud.
Speaker:You're not too opinionated.
Speaker:You are not too wild.
Speaker:You are not too bossy.
Speaker:You are not too much of leadership material.
Speaker:You are not too ambitious.
Speaker:You are not too anything.
Speaker:They are not enough.
Speaker:You are not too big for any space.
Speaker:The spaces are lucky to have you, and if they have created environments
Speaker:that are not hospitable to a dynamic, communicative, brilliant person who
Speaker:was hired for that role for a reason, that is not a reflection on you.
Speaker:So the outcome of that is at some point you have to make a choice to
Speaker:decide that you're not the problem, and that doesn't mean that you don't
Speaker:try to exist in your workplace.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that you don't try to do your best at your job every day.
Speaker:Or, like, do what they're paying you for.
Speaker:I don't know if you need to do your best if that place sucks.
Speaker:I think you just need to do enough to survive.
Speaker:Like, maybe just do what they're paying you for and don't go above
Speaker:and beyond, and find a place that doesn't suck when that comes up.
Speaker:So that's another thing.
Speaker:But those environments are built to make you feel like if you change
Speaker:something, it will be better for you, and you are gonna go pull 10,000
Speaker:levers trying to change what needs to be better in you so that they see you
Speaker:for who you are and what you can do.
Speaker:You've been the same person the whole time.
Speaker:There is not a change within you that will make them suck less.
Speaker:There are changes within you that can make them hurt you
Speaker:less, make them upset you less.
Speaker:You can make the conscious choice that if they do something that is shitty
Speaker:for the company, that's their money and their time, and good for them.
Speaker:Enjoy it, and you're just not gonna take it personally.
Speaker:You're not gonna let it affect you, and you're not going to accept
Speaker:the overwhelming burden that's gonna get put on you when they
Speaker:realize what mistakes they made.
Speaker:You can make that choice.
Speaker:You can make the choice that your five to nine is better than your nine to
Speaker:five, and you're not gonna let your nine to five affect your five to nine.
Speaker:That's a good choice, but you do not have to make the choice where you internalize
Speaker:bad messaging from them that there is somehow something wrong with you when
Speaker:the reality is you're dealing with a dump of toxic waste. It's always been a
Speaker:carcinogen, and there's no cleaning it up.
Speaker:And you didn't bring a hazmat suit, so fuck 'em.
Speaker:You are not too much.
Speaker:You are not too much to be successful.
Speaker:You are not too much to be professional.
Speaker:Professionalism is a white supremacist trope that is designed to make
Speaker:everybody fit into the box of middle-aged white men in tan suits
Speaker:and boring shoes, and that is not you.
Speaker:If you can do the job with empathy and kindness, you are professional.
Speaker:If they're trying to tell you otherwise, they are wrong.
Speaker:Please tell them I said to get bent and do it hard.
Speaker:If you haven't caught on yet, this is why our show is now
Speaker:called You're Not Too Much.
Speaker:Because if you're me, you need to hear that over and over for a long
Speaker:time, maybe a period of years, before you actually internalize it.
Speaker:So we're gonna start.
Speaker:You're not too much.
Speaker:They're not enough.
Speaker:But there are historically two kind of women's personas in the workplace.
Speaker:This is a You're Not Too Much breaking news update.
Speaker:Follow up to my semicolon rant.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:Hold please.
Speaker:There is a person I know from the internet who is a college English professor, okay?
Speaker:And somebody made a comment about somebody misusing a semicolon or something.
Speaker:There was a post that somebody made and there was a semicolon in it and it
Speaker:was basically an erroneous semicolon and it was clear that the person who
Speaker:used it did not know how to use it.
Speaker:I was not trying to shame them for that by any means.
Speaker:All I said in response is the first rule of semicolons is
Speaker:don't use fucking semicolons.
Speaker:And expected to get a fair amount of internet hate because there
Speaker:are some pedantic a-holes on the internet and I am only one of them.
Speaker:Anyway, so the first person who responded is this literal college professor who
Speaker:was like, "This is a slightly more crass way of what I tell all of my
Speaker:students after we talk about semicolons."
Speaker:He was like, "I tell them this is how you use them, but don't use them.
Speaker:Nobody uses them right.
Speaker:You will be incorrect.
Speaker:I will take points off." And I was like, "Vindication." And then
Speaker:like three more English professors responded, "I do the same thing.
Speaker:I do the same thing.
Speaker:I do the same thing." And one of them had a semicolon tattoo on her wrist because
Speaker:it's a sign for mental health awareness.
Speaker:And she was literally like, "I have the tattoo and I still won't use
Speaker:semicolons." And I was like, "I have found my people." And I said, "If you guys
Speaker:want a really good rant on semicolons, there's probably going to be one on
Speaker:the pod at some point." And apparently that's going to be our entire listener
Speaker:base is like people who want pitchforks against semicolons, which I get.
Speaker:Ask L2.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:We have a question from Kieran.
Speaker:"You told us not to fight with pigs, but this particular pig owes
Speaker:me $4,000. Do I get an exemption?"
Speaker:Oh, God, yes.
Speaker:You get $4,000.
Speaker:You get 4,000 exemptions.
Speaker:You might even get more than that.
Speaker:I don't know why they owe you… Okay, what do they owe you $4,000 for?
Speaker:I guess, is really the first question.
Speaker:If it's for work you did, yes, absolutely, you can scrap and
Speaker:get in the mud with that person.
Speaker:If you did something that would land you in jail, then you probably just
Speaker:need to walk away from that money.
Speaker:Just let it go.
Speaker:But no, like, people don't get to not pay you, especially if you did the
Speaker:work and you did the work to standards, and there's a contract in place.
Speaker:And even if it's a verbal contract, like, you should be paid.
Speaker:And so obviously, like, as professional as possible, up to the point where
Speaker:they have exhausted all of the avenues for professionalism, and
Speaker:then you do what you gotta do.
Speaker:You are owed $4,000.
Speaker:That's a lot of money.
Speaker:That's two months' living expenses for some people.
Speaker:Like, that's a lot of money.
Speaker:Go get your money.
Speaker:And you can be direct, you can be confrontational, you can be
Speaker:even a little aggressive, and still be completely appropriate.
Speaker:People are gonna tell you that it's not professional to change your tone when
Speaker:somebody has done something incorrect, and the reality is, you can have whatever tone
Speaker:you want when somebody owes you $4,000.
Speaker:Pick.
Speaker:You want me to give you, like, a wheel of tones that you can pick from?
Speaker:Actually, let's have this tone.
Speaker:You get to be whoever you wanna be when someone owes you $4,000.
Speaker:And if you need me to write them a strongly worded email, my strongly worded
Speaker:emails have made flowers wither before.
Speaker:If you need me to do that, you can find me and let me know, and I'll craft one
Speaker:for you that will leave somebody in tears without ever saying a harsh word.
Speaker:It's one of my many skills.
Speaker:Anytime my husband needs something written, he'll be like, "I need you
Speaker:to write one of those Lauren emails." I'm like, "All right." And then he'll
Speaker:read it and be like, "I don't know how you do this 'cause all of this
Speaker:is very civil and polite, and I still feel like you're about to shank me."
Speaker:I'm like, "I know. It's my skill." So anyway, do what you gotta
Speaker:do, and if you need a strongly worded email, I'm your girl.
Speaker:Thanks for being here, guys.
Speaker:Have a good day.
Speaker:Love you, mean it.
Speaker:I'm so itchy all the time.
Speaker:I'm just an itchy person.
