Image description: A picture of a cute brown dog giving its owner the side-eye. The picture is captioned, "Me watching members of the interview panel talk to an interviewee about how diversity, equity, and inclusion mean so much to them and the company when I'm on the HR team watching everyone who isn't at the intersections of being white, cis-presenting, able-bodied, and championing white supremacist ideologies leave the company for the same reasons."

BRUH. Don't even invite me to be on the interview panel. That kind of foolish decision-making will only make it harder for both of us to get through the interview.

My side-eye is always unhindered.

I'm amazed at how many interview panels I've been on in my career where interviewers try their hardest to talk about the company like it's the dawn of a new day, often while people who have recently been harmed by the company's culture and its emissaries are expected to smile and talk the place up. Like, I get not wanting to sandbag the company. I get it. But the number of lies interviewers often tell in interviews to avoid having to be remotely honest about things not being 100% copacetic are the reasons why so many folx from unserved and melanated communities job hop so often.

It's why companies have horrific retention rates.

It's why most companies are unsafe places for so many people to work.

And it's why many workplaces focus so hard on the spin rather than legitimately doing better.

It's easier to sell harm if you gloss over it with bells, whistles, and fallacies to check a recruitment box.

I feel fortunate not to be part of interview panels at this juncture of my career. I used to tell people exactly what they were getting into, y'all. No joke. And believe me when I say that I've paid for not being willing to contribute to someone's harm. Financially, emotionally, mentally. But I just couldn't shut up in those moments. I couldn't watch people make the mistakes I made in joining these dangerous environments for a paycheck.

I had a white cis female supervisor once who said to me that I needed to be willing to allow others to make their own decision on employment, even if they were walking into a harmful culture. Any faith I had in her flew out the window and exploded like a released dove into the engine of a passing airplane. I had shared my concerns with her about this for a year, watching the revolving door of melanin and queer identities come and go. Her advice was not to get in the trenches and address the matter but to shoulder shrug and play along.

Suffice it to say I stopped sharing much with her at that point.

I'm glad I'm not placed in that co-dependency space anymore, but it doesn't make knowing people who look like you are entering potentially harmful situations feel any better.

Pro tip: If you feel the interview panel is telling you what they think you want to hear, please take the hint if you can. You deserve not to be walked into a trauma trap.

[Image description: A picture of a cute brown dog giving its owner the side-eye. The picture is captioned, "Me watching members of the interview panel talk to an interviewee about how diversity, equity, and inclusion mean so much to them and the company when I'm on the HR team watching everyone who isn't at the intersections of being white, cis-presenting, able-bodied, and championing white supremacist ideologies leave the company for the same reasons."]

On Conflation and the Universal Workplace Experience Myth

There aren't enough people willing to comprehend and admit that just because they feel safe and supported at work doesn't mean everyone feels safe and supported at work. This goes double for the place you currently work.

Just because you're having a good time at work doesn't mean everyone you work with is having a blast.

There is no such thing as a common or universal workplace experience. And if you think there is?

You're conflating your experience as the only experience that matters.

You also might need to evaluate your relationships with white supremacy and “professionalism” and the perks your lack of melanin or willingness to engage in homogenization or assimilation to erase your skin tone provides.

On Work, Safe Places, Safer Places, and White Supremacist Workplace Culture

I am 41 years old and have never felt safe in a workplace.

I have held down a job in some capacity since I was 13 years old, and I have yet to work in an environment where I’ve felt safe.

Not safe. Not safer. Nothing.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, and can share an opinion or viewpoint contrary to what white societal norms deem acceptable and not have the sword of Damocles swinging over my head.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough not to have to make sure I’m carefully wording my counsel and advice to others in ways that will not have anyone calling me racist to white people or “unwilling to understand what white people are going through.”

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough to do the work that I went and obtained student loans and a degree for in a way that centers the humanity and mental, physical, and emotional well-being of others and challenges leaders to lead with empathy without having one or all members of the senior leadership team question my skillset or “fit” for “their” organization.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I see other melanated, under-represented, unserved communities feel safe, hell, safer, enough to seek support when they are being harmed, they’re witnessing someone being hurt, or their needs aren’t being met without someone asserting they are “trying to stir the pot” or being told that they are the issue, not the workplace culture.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, around the idea that accountability is expected of everyone, not just those impacted by not having power, privilege, positionality, and proximity to or assimilation of white supremacist hierarchal ideology.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel like I’m doing anything but putting together survival plans and trying to make it to Friday.

Before the white “professionals” and those who covet the comfort and faux safety of white supremacist ideology chime in with their advice, I want to let you know that I’ve heard your advice, often unsolicited, since I’ve been a part of the workforce. It is always centered around assimilation or options with a history of not benefiting the melanated and marginalized. So, I’ll pass. I’ll also pass on the notion that, somehow, I’m the reason I don’t feel safer in the workplace, like my existence and unwillingness to sit idly by and allow myself or others to be harmed in “the problem.” I’m not “the problem.” People who look like me, talk like me, and bring their embodied identities to work like me are not “the problem.”

“The problem” is the systems and structures of whiteness created as the foundations of work that present us with the boxes we’re forced to fit into.

”The problem” is that so many people do not feel safe, hell, safer, anywhere, yet we have to get up every day, try to earn a living, and survive in another space where we cannot rely on safety and stability.

At 21, I began understanding that workplace culture in the United States works as designed.

At 31, I intimately understood that workplaces were not designed for someone like me.

At 41, I firmly understand that I will never inhabit a space designed for someone like me.

And I know that if I want any form of safety, it will be up to me to build it because I will never work anywhere that will dismantle or create a new design because of the whiteness-driven revolt that would ensue.

Challenge accepted.

This Week's Opening Thought: June 5, 2023

This week's opening thought: no job, organization, or industry will ever be worth sacrificing your soul and dignity.

I know there is some privilege that is embedded in that statement. You don't have to point it out. I see that sh-- in full color and the highest resolution. I know that sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do. I know that sometimes a job is a job, and you don't feel like you care enough to be tethered to it. And I also know what it feels like to work somewhere to make ends meet and the abuse and stripping of one's dignity that comes with it, no matter how untethered you try to be. I also have had well-paying jobs that looked great on the surface but killed my sense of self, creativity, curiosity, and joy. One such role a few years ago led to depression and almost led to an emotional breakdown.

Nothing is perfect. Every job, company, or industry is flawed. But I've found that If you can't work for an organization, or in a profession or industry, without compromising practically everything that makes you the unique and beautiful person you are or trading in your joy, creativity, and energy for a consistent pattern of personal and witnessed trauma, no amount of money, "perks," or benefits will make being there easier to swallow.

If you are doing work you want to devote your life to, it shouldn't be literally siphoning your life away.

Nothing is worth that price.

On Workplaces, Family Systems Theory, and "Family"

Work is not "your family."

It will never be "your family."

I hope you have a family, chosen or genetic, that is a healthy space for you as a growing and evolving person, but the workplace ain't it.

With that said, you better believe that work is still a toxic family system that we're knee-deep in for 40 hours per week.

And as you should with any family system you're a part of, you need to be clear about your perceived or forced role in the family system and what you want or think your role should be.

Just like family members, workplaces will prey on your co-dependence, need to be liked, need for validation and support, narcissism, lack of boundaries, and need for safety to force you into the role it thinks you should be in within its toxic family system. And that role often predicates some level of harm to yourself or others because workplaces are set up to be collaborative yet driven by individualism. You owe it to yourself to take the time needed to know your worth, capacity, co-dependence triggers, and toxic traits to work on so you can show up in your workplace's family system with better mental health, firmer boundaries, and intentionality.

Even if you work at Olive Garden, you ain't family while you're there. At least not a healthy one.

We all deserve better "family time" than what we're getting.