Corporate Horror Stories

In this episode, you all share your most toxic work experiences with Nora. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you. I’m gonna start out by telling you some of my own corporate horror stories. In no particular order, these are the ones that just came to mind.

One, my boss asking me to house it for her, even though I lived in Queens and she lived in the East Village, and it was, I mean, it was an hour. It was an hour door to door.

She needed me to house it because she had a hamster that needed taking care of, but the hamster couldn’t come to my apartment. I don’t know why, maybe it was just never brought up, maybe I never asked.

The hamster did go missing sometime during my tenure as an unpaid house sitter, unpaid. And what I remember is her husband being mad at me that a hamster was missing. Hamsters go missing.

That’s what they do. That’s what they do. Hamsters disappear.

That’s a fact of life. He said something to me. I called them in the Hamptons.

I was like, I’m so sorry to tell you this. Like the hamster is missing. I don’t know what to do.

And he said he was disappointed in me, which was like gun to the heart. And then he said that it was my responsibility to put the hamster back when I was done playing with it. I was 23 years old.

I wasn’t playing with a hamster. Now I’m 42 and I play with hamsters. But the point is that was not my favorite experience.

A different boss set up cameras in her office. This is a small office. Her office is like the whole office, everybody.

It’s the size of the room that I’m recording in right now, which is the size of a living room. And her office was an eat-in kitchen attached. Why is it so hard?

I don’t know what sizes things are, so this is difficult for me. Small office. She had cameras installed so she could sit at her desk and just watch us work.

Just watch us work. Also more than once she had me stand on the desk to hang a crystal from the ceiling because it was Feng Shui.

A man at work once had a crush on me, which then became my problem in my entire reputation at work, even though I had 0% interest in him whatsoever. Another man at work once called me an asshole in front of other people.

I wasn’t even being an asshole. He had asked for a link to something. I sent it to him.

You know, I didn’t say Google that. I sent him the link, and then he said it wasn’t working. I had intentionally sent him a link that wasn’t working.

I said, just refresh your browser. I’m sure it’ll work. And he called me an asshole.

Also, I was going through a lot at the time, and I was still showing up to work every single day, even though I was like, I have a new baby. My husband’s dying. Yeah, I think he wrote that in an email.

I’m pretty sure I sent that email from the hospital. Anyways, truly hate that guy. Could not wish him any worse.

Wish I could tell you more about him. But you know what, I think I got to let it go, and I’ll bring this up in therapy soon. What’s another one?

Oh, this is a good one. Getting paid maybe 20%, maybe 20% of what a man was getting paid to do the same job as me, but not as well, like really not as well.

Not as successfully, not bringing as much money in for the company, and he was getting paid significantly more than me and also getting benefits.

So we all have work horror stories, and mine are actually pretty tame because I do not do dangerous or life threatening or even physically taxing work. I mean, my posture could be better.

I’ve experienced carpal tunnel, but these are what I’m telling you are corporate horror stories because I was a corporate girlie through and through. But there’s one work horror story that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

On a Friday in August 2024, a 60-year-old woman clocked into her job at a Wells Fargo office building somewhere in the Phoenix, Arizona area. That was Friday. On Tuesday, she was discovered dead at her cubicle.

She had been dead for days and nobody had noticed. And I’m not using her name here because there is enough about her that is attached to her death that’s out there. And while I looked and I looked, I couldn’t find anything about her life.

And that honestly kind of killed me. Now, there’s a lot of discourse online about work and life. Like we know, we know mentally our work is not our life.

And yet, of course, work is a huge part of our lives. We spend something like a third of our lives working. And work is, for better or worse, a part of our identity.

It gives our lives meaning in a lot of ways, and most importantly, it gives us money. It gives us money to live on.

And when our work and our home lives are aligned, when we are lucky to be doing work that is meaningful and fulfilling, you know, it’s hard to complain. But I still do. I will find a way.

I will find something to complain about. Now, the culture around work, when I was starting my career was be the first to the office, be the last to leave, never say no, go above and beyond. And once you’ve gone above and beyond, keep going.

And I did. It was the girl boss era, and I was girl bossing. I was wearing pencil skirts.

I was taking enrichment classes. I was trying to be indispensable. And oh my God, I was so stressed out.

The levels of stress that I experienced when I was working in marketing, PR, advertising, these were not aligned with the seriousness of the job. I would get emails that said 911 emergency, and the emergency would be there’s a banner ad.

There’s a problem with a banner ad. There’s a problem with the thing that is preventing somebody from seeing the thing they want to see on the internet. And people meant it.

They were like, this is an emergency. Get on your computer. Get to the office if you have to.

We must fix this. I saw girls having panic attacks regularly, sometimes over like shampoo samples. When I worked in Beauty PR, I had panic attacks pretty regularly, even though I didn’t know what they were.

I was like, man, I just feel like I’m gonna die. Well, that’s work for you. And 20 years, whoo, after I entered the workforce, that’s a fact about me, 20 years after I entered the workforce, things are maybe not all that different.

I want them to be different. I have seen a lot on TikTok that suggests that Gen Z might be turning the tide here, but we all still have our own version of a corporate horror story.

And so today we have calls, we have texts with your corporate horror story. So I hope that you are listening at work. I hope that you are doing some light time theft because we know they’ve stolen time from you.

And I hope that if you are in the middle of your own corporate nightmare, or if you are just waking up from one, trying to recover from one, I hope this makes you feel a little less alone, and maybe even a little bit better. So let’s get into it.

Okay.

I’m going to start with some texts and some emails. A few years back, I had what was supposed to be a simple elective surgery, but my body had other plans. The incision across my abdomen didn’t heal.

It opened. It wept. Flesh softened, dissolved.

Who wrote this? You’re a horror writer. This is not just a corporate horror story.

You are terrorizing me, a person who does not want to have a body, and a person who really struggles to read about bodies. But I will persevere because I know that you did also.

I was packing gauze into my own body every few hours for months, draining what was dying so the rest of me could stay alive. And still I went back to work.

I walked into an auditorium, stitched together and leaking, to help direct a video shoot for a campaign about employee wellness. The talent I was managing? Corporate executives, supposed thought leaders, but the thoughts they were leading with?

Mine. Along with some other peers, I wrote every line they read about respecting work-life balance.

I sat, surgical drains tucked under a denim jacket like contraband, guiding the narrative and coaching an arrogant creative director on how to frame shots so they felt authentic while trying not to bleed through my jeans.

The person overseeing the whole thing? They knew. And they were happy to have the help.

At the time, I thought I was being strong, that this was loyalty, that if I just kept showing up, some god in a conference room would reward the offering. But now I see it clearly. I wasn’t being strong.

I was being my own sacrificial lamb, laid bare on an altar of PowerPoints, crowned with KPIs, and bled out in the name of a tinted window Olympus that paid me back with nothing but opportunities for development and in achieving review rating.

I’m going to be haunted by this one forever. Whoever wrote this, I want you to know that you painted a picture with your own blood and suffering. We felt it.

We felt sick over it. I hope you are well. I hope that you have recovered not just from the surgery, but from whatever version of you went through this and was like, yeah, I know that I am on death’s doorstep.

I know that I am practicing medicine on myself. I gotta get to this corporate video shoot. I have to do this.

Cause guess what? I think I would have done it too. My husband was in at-home hospice for a brain tumor.

Hello, hello, my brain tumor sister, husband brain tumor sister. Knock on wood, we don’t have one, but you know, our husband’s dead, okay. He started having seizures and had to go to an inpatient hospice.

My director called to tell me I didn’t get a promotion I had been fighting for. And also to tell me my bonus info, which was less because no promotion. Anyway, at the end, he said, not bad, huh?

I was so angry, I even had to be on the call. Not sure what I said. FYI, my husband was sick eight months and died.

My director never once said anything to me about it. I swear to golly gee, if you work at a company where you want to call people teammates instead of employees, if you want to work at a company that says, God, we just really care about people.

If you are calling a person whose husband is on hospice to let them know they didn’t get a promotion, and also if you end it with, not bad, huh? I pray that that haunts you. I pray that that haunts you.

And I’ve made it very clear on previous episodes of this podcast, I am a very biased host, okay? I agree with whoever I’m speaking to in the moment, all right? And wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Okay, let’s get another. I was working part time as a marketer for a prenatal yoga studio run by a local personality. I gave birth and wrote a social media post for them.

Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Of course you did, of course you did. Of course you did that, I get it.

There was an era, I hope we’re out of it, there was an era where it was like, I mean, it was the lean-in era. You remember it, right? It was like, don’t let a child slow you down.

Don’t let like having a baby, a lean-in baby, okay? Like, I mean, you just had the baby, like what more could you do? You already did the hard part, like tap out a little social media post.

My God, okay. My job was generous for an American company. Zing, it’s a little dig for you, okay?

And offered five days of bereavement leave when my wife died. After two days, my boss called and asked if I’d like to come back to work. Fucking guy.

Like, what kind of job could possibly be so important that they’re like, look, I know your wife just died. I know we gave you five whole days off. Like, what are you even gonna do with all that time?

How sad can you possibly be? It’s been two days. Don’t you wanna come back?

Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you wanna meet some KPIs?

Don’t you wanna find some synergies? Like, yes, your wife just died. I know.

And we are over it. And we want you to be too. Come on back.

Come on, bud. Come on. Do you want to?

I’m just offering it to you in case you want to. I was picking up a vibe out in the ether. I was sensing, he wants to come back to work.

He’s at home. He’s bored. Come on.

Grief is itchy.

Okay.

July 2011. Working the grind in accounting for a multi-billion-dollar company. It’s in the middle of close.

Day two at 11 p.m. on a Friday night, to be specific. This has got to be an accounting term.

And I mean it when I say it. I’ve said this to my accountant. I think accounting is fascinating.

I think people who do accounting are fascinating.

I don’t know half the stuff you’re talking about, but I agree with it, and I’m glad that you’re out there doing it, because there’s people like me who hear the sentence, it’s in the middle of close, semicolon, day two at 11 p.m.

on a Friday night, to be specific. And I don’t know what you mean, but I know you’re indicating the stakes are high.

Okay.

Attempting to shut down and call it a night when my manager yells at me in front of 15 coworkers, I’d better not leave if I don’t have it figured out. It being an $800 million expense to credit card fees that hit the P&L. That’s profit and loss.

I know that one, baby.

For a process I had no knowledge of on a platform I didn’t have access to that transacted credit card payment from corporate customers that incurred fees as a result during a time when I was undergoing intense surgery and chemotherapy for breast

cancer. The only words of that that I understood were breast cancer and that this situation, not fair, okay? Same company that I received the CFO award for not three months prior to diagnosis.

Same company that upon my return from FMLA engaged in retaliatory practices, which resulted in my resignation six months after said return from treatment. Also of interest is the judgment in my favor from the ensuing EEOC complaint. Get them.

Get them, girl. Those are some texts we also have. We got some voicemails.

Should we do voicemails? Should we switch to voicemails? I like love, love, love, love listening to voicemails.

So.

Hey, Nora. I saw your prompt on stories about crazy bosses. And a few years ago, I was working at a small business.

We have maybe 25 employees. I was the only marketing or communications person. And the founder, one of the co-founders, really had trouble letting go once they hired me, letting go of those responsibilities.

And I sent an email once just like to a customer or to a vendor or something.

And she didn’t like the way I worded things.

And she said, from now on, before you send an email to anyone outside of the company, you have to send it to me first. And I’ll read it and proof it and give you some feedback. And then you can send the email.

But I have to be CC’d on everything. So for two years, every email that I sent, she had to approve first. And it was a lot of fucking emails.

Luckily, I don’t work there anymore. Wish her well. But as long as it’s not around me, I’m happy.

Thanks and love everything you’re doing.

Okay, I had a similar situation with a boss who wanted us to write. She wanted us to write like her.

And she was a very wealthy older woman who had grown up with money and just spoke like she was from a different era and a different planet, which I loved, right, but it’s her voice, not our voice.

And we were working with clients who spoke more, wrote more in our voices.

And she made all of us write a draft of every communication that we were going to send to a client, print it, bring it to her with red, so she could edit it with a red pen, with a red pen, and then bring it back to us.

We had then edit it, and then she would re-approve. She’d come over our shoulders, make sure that we got all of her edits, and then we could hit send on an email. One of the affectations she had was she wanted every email to be signed all best.

I wrote about this in Bad Vibes Only, all best, all best, all best. And I’ve heard of all the best, I’ve heard of best, but all best, all best. And it was just so straight.

Everything we wrote sounded like it was coming from a newscast in the 30s, like a radio broadcast. Pleased to report that over here on our end, we’ve got some beautiful updates ready to share with you. And post-taste, it was bizarre.

It was bizarre. And I think it also made all of us feel really confident in our abilities.

We were all, you know, English or journalism or PR or communications majors who had not spent any amount of time reading, writing, learning how to communicate things. So I think it really made us feel confident.

I think nothing makes you feel confident than someone having to line edit casual communications. I think that’s okay.

Hey, Nora, it’s Renee calling from Minneapolis, Minnetonka to be specific, but I have a story for you.

If you weren’t from the Minneapolis area, you wouldn’t understand that when somebody says Minneapolis, but they don’t mean the city of Minneapolis, they will quickly update. They will say, you know, I’ll be specific.

I live in Minnetonka, which is a suburb of Minneapolis. Sometimes people from Minnesota will do this even when they are meeting somebody who is not at all from Minneapolis. And it’s very interesting to me.

Because I grew up doing the same thing, but guess what? I said, no, I’m actually from Minneapolis. I’m actually from the city of Minneapolis.

Hair toss, hair toss. I just love it. I think it’s so cute.

I’ll tell you about toxic work environment.

When my two sons were much younger, my oldest was in kindergarten and I had this job at an advertising agency. I know you’re very familiar with that. And I was a struggling single mom.

I had these two boys. I had very little child support. Life was rough, but I was making it work.

And so I have this kindergartner and I thought, I want to be able to do some of the things at the school and be a part of that. So I signed up for Book Nook, where you go in and you read to the kids. Very simple, in and out in less than an hour.

And I do that and I came back to my company, where leaving for lunch was not exactly encouraged.

So many companies like this, so many companies where you cannot take a lunch. I don’t think I took a lunch.

Even right now, I have to force myself to take a lunch because for my entire career, maybe we would walk out and get a salad, we’d bring it back and we’d shake it and we’d eat it at our desk.

Going to lunch, taking the time out of the day to go to lunch, even though you are working much longer than your, you know, constripped, conscripted hours, right? Which is allegedly like 8 to 5 or 9 to 5, like 8 to 5 for the lunch break.

You’re never getting a lunch break. You’re never getting a lunch break. I know this anxiety.

I know this situation.

You kind of got side-eyed and things like that. And I came back from Book Nook and I was like full of dopamine. I just felt so good.

It was great to see my little boy and all that. And my boss, who at the time was single, no kids, said to me, Oh, where you been? And I said, Oh, I’ve been at the elementary school for Sam’s class.

And I got to read to the kids and it was so great. And I did Book Nook. And she’s like, Oh, well, I’ve been here working on new business.

And I’m telling you, I’m hoping we can get so much new business. You won’t even have time for Book Nook.

Okay, okay.

I wish you no work life balance. Oh, okay.

I was so stunned. I wish I could say it.

I hope you’re never, basically her boss was like, I hope you never feel the joy of reading to a group of small children again. My goal is to be so successful at this job that you never see your kids.

I could say I quit on the spot, but I didn’t because I really freaking needed that job. But little devastated that that was the environment that I was in for a job.

And lo and behold, few years later, that same boss had a baby and she did change her ways to a point. But boy, was I let down on that experience. So there you have it.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

Yeah. Love that you read to kids. Don’t let it happen again.

You went and read books to children during the day. Oh, and it made you feel good. We’re going to make sure that never happens again.

That’s what we’re going to make sure. Good golly. Also, advertising is, I mean, I haven’t worked in it many years.

I will be honest, I’ve not worked in advertising in 10 years. It’s got to be one of the most toxic work environments imaginable. I watched my parents work in it, and I watched my mom be just like so mistreated.

It like really boggles my mind. I wish many of those men the worst. And then I like followed them right into it.

I was like, I’ll do that too. I’ll do that too. This looks like fun.

I mean, you got like beer at the office. Wow, like you can play ping pong cause you’re going to be there forever. Cause you’re going to be there forever.

All the time, all the time.
Hey, Nora, it’s Kimberly. I’m calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I just saw your post on Instagram about waiting rooms in hospitals. And I just wanted to flashback.

I was almost nine months pregnant, and I got a call that my mom fell off of a horse and was being airlifted to the hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

I lived in Minneapolis, so it was like a three and a half, four-hour drive for me to get to her in Sioux Falls, because she was bleeding out and possibly going to die.

And my manager, I was sitting in the waiting room, and my manager called me and wanted to make sure that I had submitted my PTO for that day since I was out of the office, because my mom was in the ICU after being airlifted, after being thrown from

Jail, prison time, prison time.

I think some people truly need to have their brain studied. We have to say, you’re donating your body to science as soon as you go. You don’t have to go right now, but when you go, we’re going to study your brain.

Because if you find out, wow, one of my colleagues, her mom is being airlifted to a hospital, it’s four hours away, she’s got to drive four hours through some of the flattest, most boring land, no offense, to western Minnesota and South Dakota,

eastern South Dakota. It’s flat. Okay, you gotta stay locked in for those four hours. Your adrenaline is pumping.

Your mom is possibly dying. She might arrive to a dead mother. I have to call this woman and make sure she has taken her PTO.

I need her to know this ain’t, we’re not giving her the days. No, no, no, no, no, file the PTO. Can you not just do that for her?

Could it not be a phone call? Could it wait? Could it wait?

Yeah, I just wanted to double check that I had the time to submit the PTO for the next couple of days and how long I was going to be out.

So it was terrible. And again, I was very, very pregnant. And I thought, you know, this is a big fuck you.

Hopefully we can clear on this. I don’t really know. Anyway, thanks for posting this.

I just had this flashback to that wonderful time in 2018. Okay, thanks, Nora.

Bye.

2018 is too recent to be called. 2018, we did have the technology. You could fill out somebody as a PTO.

I know, I know, I know, I know. You could contact HR. If you didn’t have HR, you could let it slide.

You could let it slide. You could let it slide.

Like the amount of brain poison that we have ingested to say, I have got to, I’ve got to make sure that this woman doesn’t take one extra vacation day if she’s already wasted one, seeing her mom possibly die. Like, I can’t let this go.

She might sneak in an extra vacation day. I got to get on the horn. I got to give her a call right now.

I got to make sure she knows that I know that she’s got to fill out the PTO. She’s got to do the right paperwork, okay? Like, yes, I know your mother was thrown from a horseshoe.

She’s experiencing internal bleeding, but did you fill out the PTO? Truly, truly, truly bonkers stuff here, guys. Bonkers stuff that people have lived through and are living through.

Okay.

Hi.

I just heard Nora’s Instagram story about worst work moments. And I worked somewhere a few years ago where my awesome mentor died by suicide, and he cited work-life balance in his note. And we went to work the next day.

So, maybe that, it’s too much to get into on a voicemail, but you know, it is like…

I’m so stunned. I’m listening to these all for the first time with you. I am so stunned.

Everyone went to work the next day. Whether or not the note said what it said, which said part of why I’m doing this, ending my life early, exiting this earth, is because of what happens at this company.

Whether or not that was a reason, just you would think decency in general would just say, guys, let’s take a day off. This person did not mention what they do for a living.

So maybe they are doing something that is just so vitally important that nobody could take a day off after losing a colleague tragically. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it.

Take a day. Take a day, take several days. That’s a traumatic loss.

And we’re just all going to work. We’re just all going to work. I’m like, sorry, your boss died by suicidal.

So we said it was because of this job. Come back tomorrow. We might, we might.

I was going to say maybe we’d pick up lunch. We won’t do that, though.

Holy shit.

There’s life back out there. Anyway. Thanks for all you do.

The anniversary.

Hey, hey, hey, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. And.

The anniversary of his death is in like a week, so very top of mind.

Always glad to get a chance to just say out loud how absolutely wild it is that I worked in an environment like that and lived through it. So, yeah.

One thing that I love about people, but especially people who listen to the show is like, they will tell you the most devastating thing and then the big anyway.

Like we dropped the terrible, but we also know that like we just we all have a little bit of terrible and us forever. Like we get that we get that we get that. And this is like a specifically horrible one.

And I’m so sorry that you went through that. I’m so, so sad for your boss. I’m so sad for your boss’s family.

I’m so sad for everybody who is affected by a job like that. It was like, well, yeah, this thing happened. Time to get back to work.

Like, you know, I mean, people, you get… Jeez, Louise. Yeah, okay, that one was a that was a that was a stunner.

That was a stunner. I did not see that one coming.

Wow.

Okay, so my worst work moment. The year 2011, I worked in Washington, DC for a year for a man who I know now is just like a man baby, just terrible, like the male version of Devil Wears Prada But Not Fun.

Male version of Devil Wears Prada But Not Fun.

And I believe that this color means by like not fun, it means like you’re not getting like perks, you’re not getting like clothes, you’re not getting a makeover by Stanley Tucci, you’re not getting like bullied by Emily Blunt, which is like those

things made that movie bearable. That’s why Andy stayed, right? She’s like, look, if you can get bullied by a beautiful English woman, it’s gonna be hard to leave. If Stanley Tucci is gonna give you a makeover, you’re probably gonna stay, you know?

Yeah.

And we had an earthquake in DC, and this is my first earthquake ever from Arizona. That doesn’t happen here. I’m also from, was born and raised in Chicago.

That also doesn’t happen there. So there was an earthquake. It was just him and me in the office, and I remember thinking, oh my God, if this is how I die, God is cool.

But so I left the office, and of course, everyone is trying to get home from downtown, trying to get safe, a lot of power outages, people trying to use the metro, which is underground, trying to figure out what to do.

I walked home, which was not close, and because I was too afraid to get on the subway, I’ve seen Earthquake, okay, the movie.

I haven’t seen Earthquake, the movie, but I mean, I, Earthquakes are probably like, well, those are one of my number one fears. As a kid, I thought that they happened in California every day.

So anytime my dad flew to California for work, I would be like truly beside myself, like my dad’s gonna die in an earthquake. Like to this day, when I go to LA, I just think it could happen, it could happen.

And if it does, I won’t be surviving simply because I will take no precautions. But if I survived one, I would not be getting in a tunnel. I would not be getting in a tunnel afterwards.

No, no, no, I would walk. I would walk, I would walk. I think that’s very smart of you.

It’s just, no, it’s not okay.

So I walked home. I just so happened to pass by a bar midway between my house and work. And I saw a friend of mine sitting inside and she called me in and we were chatting.

And so I ordered a beer, and I was like, okay, I’m on my way home. My boss thinks I’m almost there. He’s called me repeatedly, repeatedly after, I don’t know, maybe 20 minutes, and it probably took me 45 minutes total to walk home without the stop.

So I was to get back to work immediately, not knowing if my internet worked at my house, anything like that. I was just, it was a demand to get back to work. Like this Earthquake will not stop us.

He’s a horrible man.

That’s all.

That’s all, survived an earthquake, and he was like, get back to work, baby.

Guess what? It’s just me and you, and we’re gonna ride this thing out straight to hell. I’m gonna assume she’s no longer there, is what I’m gonna assume.

So Marcel pointed out something when we’re making this episode and we were pulling together all of these stories and talking about work in general, which is that the material nature of the universe does require physical work.

Even if we weren’t clocking into jobs, you’d have to get up and hunt food, plant food, grow food, sew it, S-O-W it. But the nature of our work should have a normal and reciprocal amount of input and output.

Like, you should work a job and be paid enough to live a life that’s comfortable without being anxious all the time, without being called and told to come back to the office after an earthquake, or without going to work the day after your boss dies

by suicide. We should not be, you know, working five jobs to barely be able to afford a place and then putting unexpected expenses on our credit cards and just creating debt that we can never really get out from. But we are.

A lot of people are and a lot of people stay at jobs like these ones because our jobs have also been connected to our health care benefits. And the health care thing is really big. I’ve been paying for my own health care for 10 years now.

Every once in a while, like I’ll have like just enough to be in the WGA and like get that really good union insurance. But otherwise, you know, it was tied to an employer, an employer I no longer have.

And so we’ve been sort of funding that on our own. And that is a huge thing for people. Health care is hugely expensive.

But we’re talking about the fact that we all, most of us, I know like three people who don’t need to work and you know what, they still do. They still do, they still do. And I think that’s because, like I said, work does give us structure.

It gives us meaning. And if you really don’t need the money, I think it’s like a lot harder to like really truly get stressed out about work because you’re like, well, I mean, look, I’m literally here for fun.

But the point is that the difficulties that we experience from our work should be commensurate in line with the work that we’re doing, and it should never be toxic. Like nobody should be crying over shampoo samples.

Nobody should be having a boss say to them, I can’t wait for you to never go read a book to a kid again.

But in reality, most of our jobs in the West now are both spiritually meaningless and extremely toxic for no other reason than just apparent greed.

Like you are lucky if like one of our, our texters, one of our callers, you get any bereavement leave at all.

If you get five days and your boss calls you and says, you want to come back after two, you are lucky if you get any paid parental leave at all.

You are lucky if your income keeps pace with inflation and if you have the benefits that actually benefit you. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs were paid 21 times what a typical worker made in 1965.

But by 2023, CEOs were paid 290 times as much as a typical worker. That’s a lot, that’s a lot more. But in 1965, I don’t think people were saying, hey, this company, this company is a family.

Unless they were an actual family business. They weren’t saying, we call our employees team members because we’re a team.

And while I understand that business is business, you know, like if this show doesn’t make enough money, I can’t pay people to make it, which means we won’t have a show.

That also means that we can’t expect people to give everything to what is literally an exchange for goods or services.

And it means that if we want to say that our company is different, and I know that there are people listening to this podcast, to this show, to this episode, who are in positions of power, who are making choices that affect other workers, if we want

to say that our company is different and cares about people, we actually have to do it. We actually have to do it.

So, if you like this episode, if you want to hear more about work, the ways we work, you’re going to want to go find the TTF8 Anthologies feed wherever you listen to podcast.

Anthologies is where we pull episodes out of the archives of the old terrible Thanks For Asking show, and we release seasons around a theme. We also include some new episodes in there too.

This season of TTF8 Anthologies is about job stress, job loss, things that affect all of us, things that affect everybody you called in, and everybody who listened today.

And this season of TTF8 Anthologies is sponsored by Fordham University’s Master of Social Work program. Again, that feed is called TTF8 Anthologies, and you can listen to it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you’re listening.

I’m Nora McInerny, this is Thanks For Asking, so thank you for being here. There are so many ways to support the show, listening to this show is one of them, so thank you.

We are an independent podcast, and that means that you, we are an independent podcast, and that is on purpose. I did not want a corporate overlord, I wanted to just kind of do the work we wanna do, when and how we wanna do it.

But we appreciate you, we appreciate you being here with us, we appreciate you sharing episodes that resonate with you, with people you think would like them.

We always wanna hear from you, you can call, you can text, like leave a voicemail, you can email if you want, the phone number is 612-568-4441.

If you want to support what we’re doing on another level, you can join, you can be a paid subscriber on Substack. The Substack is noraboriales.substack.com, because I cannot let go of that username.

I simply cannot, and I cannot have any brand cohesion. It would be too difficult for me. I can’t do it.

But over on Substack is where we have all the archives of the old TTFA, where we have all the episodes of Thanks For Asking and ad-free episodes. We do monthly book giveaways for paid subscribers. And it’s a nice way to connect.

It’s a nice way to connect with other listeners. The comments are super respectful because you have to be a paid subscriber to be able to comment. So, I want to give a special shout out, a big thank you to our supporting producers.

Supporting producers are Substack members who have said, you know what, there’s the annual level. You can also add a little bit more and be a supporting producer and get your name in the credits.

And these are the people who help us be a lot less dependent on ad revenue. And this is the part where I thank them.

So thank you to supporting producers Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey Demaro, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle in all caps, Elia Feliz-Milan, Lindsey Lund, Renee

Kepke, Chelsea Ciernik, Car Pan, LGS, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Marybeth Berry, Jothia Disopolis, Madd, Abia Rose, Elizabeth Berkeley, Kim F., Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica Latexier, or Latexier? I don’t know.

I don’t know. Beautiful though.

Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Byerjohn, Aaron John, Joy Pollock, Crystal, Jennifer Pavelka, Jess Blackwell, Micah, Jessica Reed, so many Jessica’s, so many Jessica’s, Beth Lippem, Chiara, Jill MacDonald.

Also, Chiara, I’m taking Italian right now, and in every conversational class, everyone’s named Chiara. Coincidence? I don’t know.

Jill MacDonald, Jen Grimlin, Alexis Lane, David Binkley, Kathy Hamm, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Jeremy Essin, one of my favorite widows. I don’t play favorites, but what if I do?

Andrew Brzezinski, Robin Roulard, Nicole Petey, Monica, Caroline Moss, Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Penny Pesta, which is the cutest name. If your name is Penny Pesta, who? Your parents give you such a gift.

Unless it’s your married name, in which case, combo gift. Penny Pesta, I cannot imagine a cuter name. You belong on Sesame Street, you belong on Broadway, you kind of just belong everywhere.

Okay, another Kaylee, Dave Gilmore, Gilmore, Dave Gilmore, and Jacqueline Ryder. Thank you so much. We will be back next week.

And if you have some corporate horror stories to add, text them in, email them, call, whatever, because I think we’ve got more in us, I really do. Okay, I’ll see you guys soon.