This blog post is based on Episode 3/ Season 2 of the Culture Unfit Podcast. Listen Here:
Nikkia: Here we go. All right, finally Clara. I'm so happy to have you on this episode of culture unfit and as somebody who's been a long admirer of your tweets, this is a chance to get to know you, the person behind the tweets and also hear a little bit around about your story and how you have navigated life work, career stuff, being somebody who's unapologetically, you know, in their own skin. So why don't we start off with you sharing a little bit about yourself. And if we were to have met you as a teenager, as a kid and what were you like, who would we have found?
Clara: Oh that's a great question. I don't think you would have liked me as a kid or a teenager. That's the truth of it. I don't think I definitely think I still had the ability to be loud with my words, I just had no grounding and who I was or why I was saying it. And so I had no sense of like this is who I am and I stand behind what I'm saying. I think I had a tendency to just say something that would get the people going as we say. And so I think really for me coming into adulthood coming into myself and a lot of ways has been about like, okay, I clearly have this ability to like verbally take down whoever I want. Let's figure out how to channel that, so that it's used in a way that I can actually stand by in 10 years. If someone were to pull up my tweets, you know, so that's probably what I would say about that. A little about me. I am unemployed, no, I, I don't know. I've had this kind of really broad experience in tech, but I'm also a writer in a lot of genres, including screenwriting. I dabble in the social media kind of content space as well. Yeah, that's a little about me.
Nikkia: Now. you know, I am fascinated by humans. Part of the reason why I, perhaps I'm still in this field of research is because we are endlessly perplexing. And one of the things that I have been really intrigued by maybe because I'm a mother and, you know, I'm watching parents and the parents of friends age is the fact that we grow old, right? We grow up but we don't necessarily ever lose the things that we face as kids. And so, the question that I have here is that other than growing older and perhaps gaining more experiences in a few adulting areas , what would have been some of the most significant and impactful changes you've gone through in becoming the person you are today?
Clara: For me, probably the most substantial change really just happened. Just in the last year. I think, once your brain really hits, like it's finished developing the frontal lobe. You really start to notice the changes, like, that's no joke, but just even in the last year, I've noticed I feel like I'm much more comfortable being connected to other people and maybe that comes in the form of learning how to ask for help for what I need and relying on other people and not necessarily having to live this very like hyper independent life, where I have to do everything myself all the time which stems from just like a necessity of childhood and how I grew up. It really was just like me raising myself in a lot of capacities but like, you know, that's probably the most significant change for me is like learning that there's life beyond that. And now I find myself like with this rich kind of group of friends and, you know, people on social media that I'm engaging with, and just kind of like this new found ability to like connect with people and, I think much more a human way in a way that feels more true to me and maybe in the past when I tried to have friends or other relationships, I don't think I was actually showing up fully in those and it felt more like performance, whereas now it feels more like a lived experience. Is that too heavy for this early?
Nikkia: No, it is so rich and so powerful because what you're describing is so human. Ultimately we are social creatures who crave connection. It’s been very interesting to exist in the U.S., somewhere that is very individualistic and
I think we, as a society, value individualism and independence, you're 18, go out and do a thing, but at the end of the day, It is what we crave - being with other people. Feeling like we belong and we don't always get it in all of the spaces, particularly in places of work, where it's not just you trying to figure out how to do your job.
But also am I like fitting in with this group of people who, you know, we share no lived experiences. You know, is this culture that I've sort of found myself in some place that I fit in, is it the very nature of the conversation I want to have with you today. So that depth is right on so let's stick with it. So I'm going off script a little bit here because I want to go deeper. When you think about your group of friends and then you think about work and work experiences that you've had, have you found that sense of community and connection, camaraderie all the C’s in previous work experiences. Or has that independence, that seems to be core to who you are (because you just said, I essentially raised myself) prevailed in your work experiences?
Clara: That's a tough question because I would say, No, I've never worked somewhere where I really felt like I belonged. I definitely worked with people I’ve liked. I've been able to function in those workspaces, but I also think I've always worked somewhere that at the end of the day, had an incredibly toxic work culture, which just kind of prohibited that kind of sense of belonging in community. And I think, especially in my last job, the longer I was there, the less I felt like I fit there and that was one of the driving forces that really prompted me to leave that job. I mean I gave them plenty of notice. I was like, this is you know where we're at and they just were never able to come together and find a resolution and I left, but that was one of the driving forces and it got so much worse when I got it a new manager who didn't see me at all, didn't get me at all and had no awareness of herself and how she was coming into space and I was like, okay life is too short for this. And I think, for me, that's one of the things I need to find in my next role, like it's time. I've had enough of these jobs where I'm just kind of like, Oh, always feeling like I'm on thin ice, even if I'm able to kind of laugh and have jokes with these people, it's always like usually on the basis of shared trauma in the workplace, that we're bonding, right? So yeah, no, I don't think I found that yet, and I would like to find that.
Nikkia: Oh, wouldn't we all! Trauma bonding by the way- whole other topic. We should get into it at some point. Maybe episode five, but going back to something you just described. It sounds like the relationship with this former manager was a painful experience and you know, there's so many people that I’ve encountered that are trying to disentangle what feels like workplace fit or lack thereof from like managerial toxicity. And sometimes they get conflated, sometimes they're kind of one in the same. Like, you know, the manager is a product of a toxic work environment and therefore, it becomes, you know, toxic themselves. But in that experience, how did you know when it wasn't about you anymore? That the problem actually was something else? Because that's the other thing, sometimes we're like maybe I do need this feedback and need to grow or you need to figure out whether you're crazy or you're not crazy. Whether it's absolutely their problem or you deserve a bit of feedback. So help us understand how you were able to disentangle that it was a managerial problem or opportunity.
Clara: I think. I literally looked at my other co-workers, who I had worked with for a long time, whereas this manager was pretty new to the company and was the third direct manager I had in twelve months, just because this company had gone through so many changes. So, I knew my job really well, and she knew nothing because she was coming in, completely new to the company. And I found that everyone who was working at my level at the time, there were three of us who had worked together for a while, we were all having the same feelings about working with her, as well as one person who was kind of a level above us. And I didn't report to him directly, but the other two people did and we were saying, Listen, we are not able to be productive in these meetings and we found ourselves, literally having to reschedule meetings without her. We'd hang up on a call with her and then redo the meeting without her to actually get work done. It became very clear that there are problems that have nothing to do with me. But because of my personality type and the fact that I am very observational, I think often I would have to be the person to say, let's pin this for now, let's focus on this topic, just to try to get some sort of product productivity out of the meeting. I think she always took that as a personal affront, but the more conversations I had with other people on the team, I started to see it as a pattern of people's interactions with her. So I knew it wasn't something that I was doing.
I also knew I wasn't behaving in a way that I wouldn't behave with everyone else on the team… that I didn't stand behind, you know? Sometimes when you're on a call, you're like, Oh, I shouldn't have said that and, you know, it and you can course correct. But that's never the feeling I had, when I left there, I felt like we were constantly talking like normal but then she would come back with some wild complaint about tone. This was her, this was her thing. She constantly would police my tone and she would talk to me, like I was in preschool, and she's like, “Do not take that tone with me”. Those kinds of sentiments. Yeah, this is like a grown adult, talking to another grown adult. What I started to realize when I tried to have a conversation with her … stating that the fact is we need this amount of time to complete something but she would get offended as if I said that as a matter of fact statement and I was like I don't know how else to tell you that it takes three days to do something and you don't get offended by that statement because that's just a fact.
And so that's how I knew that there's not really any winning with this. We tried to have conversations with her. One of the people who was part of trying to fix the problem actually ended up getting fired. After we went to HR and said, Hey we're all having the same issue, can we try to give some feedback here? Because none of us really feel like we can talk to her directly about this. And then one of those people ended up getting fired. Then, the team got thrown into this huge restructure. She did a bit of a power grab within the team from my viewpoint and then like, pretty quickly isolated me out of everything started; leaving me out of meetings, didn't complete what the plan would be for my vertical within the team. She presented a map where everyone else's positions were lined up, and mine was literally just like a question mark on this infographic. And I was like, You know what? This isn't for me.
Nikkia: So that's a crazy experience and I'm sorry you had to go through that. What I am wondering is how in the midst of this, you kept yourself sane. What are the things that you did or wish you did to not feel pain? But seeing that question mark next to your name looking into rooms and being like, what? I should have been invited. So that's the “what” of what happened, but the emotions and feelings are sometimes the things that could destroy us.
Clara: I think that I was feeling horrible and I felt ways that I had not felt in years because
I was at this point of my career, I had been to therapy, I had done the things. I was feeling in probably the best place with my mental health that I had ever felt when this started to happen and suddenly interactions with her, made me feel like I was 18 again, and it was just bringing up so much trauma.
I had this awareness of it. So really what I did to get through that at first, I would try to talk to some of my co-workers and kind of, you know, get them to kind of either validate what I was saying or help. Give me information that I was excluded from and then it became [checking out]. It's so hard for me to do the bare minimum, but I started doing the bare minimum. I said I’m going to work the minimum number of hours I possibly can, I am not putting anything for it and I'm setting very strict boundaries with everyone, because I was someone where anytime anything needed to get done. Let's go to Clara! I wore like 16 hats in that job and I was fine with that, if I felt like I was valued but it was very clear that I wasn't being so suddenly it shifted. Oh you want something from me? Here's a Google form where I need you to fill out exactly what you want, tell me what your priority is, what your time frame is, how many hours you’re willing to commit to this project and what your scheduling looks like? And when you put that in writing, then come to me and then we'll work it out.
Those were kind of some of the practical ways when I'm having to actually be at the office. But outside of that, I really shut down. I got to the point where I would log off a zoom meeting for the day and lay across my bed horizontally for six hours, scrolling Tik Tok, it was bad, it was really bad. And I kind of was having this discussion back and forth on Tik Tok with people about like I feel like I need to leave. I don't feel like financially I can leave. How do I navigate this because I can't risk my mental health to the extent that I was. I was like, I am in such a bad place where my safety is being compromised by this person and by this workplace. And it's a shame because it really was mostly one person causing this. And, you know, that's kind of where I came to the places of knowing I'm going to quit.
It's just a matter of picking the time frame out and basically, what they ended up doing as part of the restructure, they converted my role from a salaried role, back to an hourly roll, gave me 30 days notice which meant losing like, perks and stuff, and also meant, having to go back to using a punch clock. I told them outright that that doesn't work for me. I'm not doing that. You have until the end of the month to work something out or I'm leaving and they didn't work it out. I put in my notice, got paid out my PTO and I felt a calm that I don't think I had ever felt. It was immediate. I didn't regret the decision. I didn't feel stressed about it, just calm. And it was so funny because 700,000 views of people watching me. Quit this job, and I eventually just had to put it on private because some weird click bait website wrote an article about it, and it was getting spread way outside of Tik Tok in a way, that crossed a lot of boundaries for me, but
I literally quit my job in front of almost a million people.
Nikkia: That's incredible.
Clara: I think I still have it but I have it set to private. I got a fair share of negative comments from Boomers, but I also got a lot of people saying, “Good for you and that really helped”. I had a lot of friends who were really supportive and they were like we are gonna help you get through whatever this is. I don't think any of them expected it to be six and a half months and they're all just mind boggled that I still haven't found a job, but I've really had a really a strong network of people just around me supporting me and trying to find connections and like buying me a cup of coffee and that has been tremendous in that sense.
Nikkia: And as somebody who has been a follower of yours on Twitter for a long time. Your transparency has been inspiring. The fact that you're sharing alone, is something that is motivating to people who are in similar situations either looking for a job or like on the cusp of leaving one. Going back to this manager, one of the things that I wonder is if this person ever got was feedback. And I'm curious if they had the awareness that some of the words that they were using that maybe had been coming from an internal place because a lot of this stuff that we see comes from an internal place- I'm feeling a thing, I'm aggravated, I had an awful time getting the kids out of the door this morning. There's something behind it, but we learn as leaders to temper that to really ask ourselves to take a beat and ask the question, Is this going to be helpful to the person, moving towards some goal that we all share? And so it sounds like this person in addition to being new and stressed out , like hadn't had feedback or coaching. But I am curious about whether or not, if given the opportunity. You feel like you would have the tools to be able to help this person understand what was wrong about what they said.
Clara: I tried, I tried.
Nikkia: You did.
Clara: Honestly, I actually haven't thought about this conversation in months, but yeah, so we had a series of conversations. One of them, basically we had our director who was above both of us, but I had been working with the director for three years. I really always enjoyed working with her and we had a good rapport and so she was kind of just in the background of this call watching it unfold.
I really went to her and I said, This is how you are talking to me. This is how it's coming across on my end. This is how I'm receiving it. Here are a series of better ways to communicate with me. Does this make sense? How can I respond to you? Those are kind of the things I was giving on my end and what I was getting back is, you're being disrespectful.
This is disrespectful to me and I'm literally just telling you how I am feeling and what a better way to try to communicate is, what it is that I need… and that whole team had communication problems. I'm sitting here, earnestly on this call saying, here's how I feel like we can address this communication gap. What do you need? How can we fix this?
And really asking to make sure she was understanding my points. Trying to be really open in this dialogue, and I was just getting back. You're being disrespectful, you need to watch your tone, but I was like, You're talking to me, like I'm a preschooler and I didn't say that on the call, but I came to a point where I even told someone in HR, that if she tells me to change my tone one more time, I will walk out because that is so beyond triggering in so many ways, especially for someone who is like a neurodivergent person in the workplace, someone who is from the South working with all these California people, it just can be a very triggering thing. When someone's talking to you about your tone, especially when you know that your tone isn’t different from how I'm talking right now. I don't have some kind of ridiculous tone. I'm just having an open conversation with you and anytime you try to be open with her, she would take it as a personal affront. I can't. Have you ever had an interaction with someone who doesn't accept criticism? Well, and so they just take everything as an offense and…
Nikkia: Yes, yes.
Clara: That's really what it was with her and even when she would try to give me feedback, I would accept that but here's context that you don't have because you haven't been here for three years. So you're listening to someone that's telling you something false and then what I'm trying to tell you is that what she's saying is false and here's all of the paper trail of evidence of that. You're saying, Oh, well, now you can't take criticism. I'm like, No I can, but I also need you to understand that there are facts involved in a situation. And so, you know, that's kind of another thing that would come up with her, she would say, Well, so, and so doesn't know how to do X, Y and Z. And I'm like, I trained them on this date. Here is where they signed off on it, here is where they did it correctly. And I have this documented for her. So it's not me who didn't train her. There's another issue here. Let's figure it out and resolve it, but she would be like, Oh well, you're not doing your job.
But there's other things here and she would never look at me as someone who had expertise in this area. I'm like, I have a whole ass industrial and organizational psychology degree. I do know what I'm talking about but she would look at me like Oh, it's just you don't know what you're doing or that's why I don't understand something. When it's just a learning thing and there's going to be regression and that's just part of it and someone has to be willing to want to learn new things and sometimes that's not where someone's at in this particular moment and those need to be part of a conversation, but no she wouldn't hear any of it.
Nikkia: I’m sorry and it's not my intention to bring up old feelings. The thing that I'm fascinated by is how universal what you're saying is and there are stories that resonate with one, communication opportunities, and then the other is a lack of curiosity.
[in life] Both of those things. curiosity and communication when they're not there, can start wars. It's the foundation, a cracked foundation, that leads to separation of relationships, to parents and kids not being able to communicate, to siblings fighting.
Literally those are the small ones…but you know they're huge ones too, that can start wars. And I don't know if I have the answer and I'm always on this journey, but we can only control what we can control. We can't make other people different and we can't make other people change. So this idea of trying to make somebody who's not naturally curious, curious, is where I'm gonna wrap things up.
If you were to speak to the managers of listening to this podcast who themselves are under pressure to deliver. Perhaps, they don't have this natural curiosity. Help me understand a little bit about you Clara. Where did you come from? How would you like to be communicated with? What does it look like to have a healthy relationship? So you don't have conversation because that's not a way that they're showing up. How do you suggest it in a way that isn't threatening and respectful? Let's just brainstorm together but I'm curious to get your thoughts. How would you in your new job or new next job try to clear the space to have a conversation that says curiosity is really important at the beginning of a relationship, in the middle of a project and at the end of a project with your manager.
Clara: I think it has to come to a place of choose Empathy over Ego. That's if we were to just put it in buzzwords, that's what it is. Because anytime I've had communication issues that aren't being addressed over a long time, It's always because one of the parties isn't willing to set aside their perception, their feelings about something and hear the other person out and then try to reach a solution. They just want to be right, right? It's ego over empathy and if we're ever going to address this person like one, it is addressing lack of curiosity. I'm an aggressively curious person so I don't mind. I want to hear how you're experiencing things, but not everyone comes to the table with that.
I think it comes down to what we're talking about at the start. It is individualism versus collectivism. I think there’s a strong individualistic streak that we have in this country that really causes people to prioritize their experience, over everything else that's happening, In the workplace and in a managerial context, that means that what they say goes, what they think is, right? And that's not always the case, just because you have a bigger title, doesn't necessarily mean that your experiences are the more important ones of the conversation. I think if anything as a manager, when you're talking to people who are reporting to you, you should be the one setting aside your feelings in that situation and hearing the other person. That's part of the role of the manager and if you aren't able to do that perhaps management isn't the right track for you and that's a conversation we need to be having because we have all of the wrong kinds of people in management and people aren't happy in it because they don't enjoy having these kind of interpersonal conflicts.
It's not their strength to navigate through that, they don't need to be in management, but
we've told people that in order to promote up and grow your career, you have to go down this management path. And that's just not fair because that's not the skill set all humans have or want to have or need to have in order to be kind of considered as growing in your career. But that's just that's what capitalism tells us, right? That there is this kind of one path up.
And it's like, unless you have people that you're in charge of, you're not growing as a person and that doesn't jive with me.
Nikkia: Oh, let's dismantle that concept and again, more podcast episodes, but to bring it back to the human, who is feeling the pain. We sort of talked a little bit about the manager. For those young folks who are listening in and struggling with a manager who isn't seeing them valuing, their expertise, their feelings and speaking to them in ways that are demeaning, condescending and really lacking a bunch of curiosity, but they don't actually have any way of leaving. They're on a visa, you know, they really are bringing in money for the family whatever. What advice might you offer to them? So that they don’t lose themselves and all of this pain.
Clara: That's such a hard question because I've definitely been in that position where I couldn't leave before too and then I feel like all advice people give just sounds ridiculous, but I think it is a reshuffling of your priorities and understanding that if you can't show up as your full self at work, you have to put up these boundaries to protect yourself from some of that treatment and maybe that's taking a step back in a meeting and just not participating to the fullest extent. I hate to tell people to do that, but sometimes that's what you have to do to survive these spaces to keep yourself employed. So that you don't say something that gets you unemployed.
You just have to say okay if I'm not showing up as my full self here, I'm not giving this energy here, well suddenly I have that energy to do other things with. I have that energy to spend time with my family, or to create something in my private life that gives me fulfillment or to write something or to really invest in my friendships, right?
Everything is a season and we have different chapters and sometimes when you're in a really bad place in one part of your life that you don't have control over you just, you know, you have to kind of start investing in the aspects that you do have control over and hopefully that gives you some mental fortitude to to get through the part that you don't have control over until you're in a position that you can, right?
