Pull over on the freeway, it’s a PowerPoint Emergency! | Corporate Horror Stories Pt. 2 with Becca Platsky of Corporate Gossip

In this second installment of corporate horror stories, Nora is joined by Becca Platsky of Corporate Gossip to hear all of your work horror stories – the good, the bad, and the juicy.

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

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Hi, I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you. And I want to start this episode with a story. The year is 2011, and my boyfriend, soon to be husband, is getting brain surgery.

They discovered a brain tumor. In his brain, they had to take it out. They had to open his skull and remove that brain tumor.

And a VP at the ad agency where I worked had a laptop brought to the hospital so that I could work on a PowerPoint presentation, a deck, as we called them, for a new business pitch.

Because, as this person joked, I wasn’t doing the surgery, and I would have a lot of time on my hands, and I did that. I did it.

I honestly, I want to say I did it happily, even though looking back, I think I did it happily simply because I did not want to sit with the fear, the terror, really, the grief of what I was experiencing.

And you might be thinking from your 2025 point of view, from your fully-baked adult point of view, who would do that? Who would do such a thing?

And to that, I would say many people, most people who have had a job have had some kind of, and I would say most people, I would say most people who have a job know what it’s like to give a little bit too much at the office.

We do need our jobs, most of us, especially in this, what kind of economy? What do we call this uncertain, unstable, bizarre economy? We all need jobs.

Most of us need more than one job. We are navigating a world where lizard people, billionaires are lording over us. We need jobs to make ends meet and put food on the table.

And also to give our lives structure, sense of purpose, money. Money is very helpful.

Not everyone has the guts, the privilege to have the guts to say to their boss, I really can’t answer this email right now because my family member is in the hospital.

Or I need to take the day off because someone I love is dying because that’s not the world that a lot of us live in. And a lot of bosses are unfortunately cold corporate overlords who don’t fit compassion into the company budget.

That’s not a KPI, compassion is not a KPI for a lot of corporate environments. So here’s what I will say. I will say that I am older now than I was in 2011.

Wild how that happens. I am a different person now than I was when I worked at that ad agency.

I’m a different person now than I was when I accepted that laptop and said, I will not let a simple brain surgery, a simple brain tumor, just incurable brain cancer keep me from climbing the corporate ladder. I’m a different person now.

I have a lot of compassion for the people who are in that position now.

I have a lot of compassion for people who are struggling through work every day, waking up with a pit in their stomach, feeling anxiety just coursing through their veins alongside of or in place of their blood.

People who are compulsively checking email and getting jump scared by notifications and who are living in fear of losing their job. Work is necessary, but work can’t be the center of our lives.

Not every single email or message is an emergency unless you are a doctor or a fighter fighter. Fighter fighter? A fighter fighter.

That’s a person who fights fighters. Or if you are a firefighter in EMT, and even then maybe you deserve free therapy and also days off boundaries. So mine is not the only work horror story out there.

I actually think it’s maybe a little bit tame to some of you. But a lot of you called in, a lot of you texted with your worst corporate horror stories. And this is part 2 of Corporate Horror Stories.

And today I actually have a little special treat. We have a guest. We have a guest today to help us wade through this.

It is Becca Platsky of the Corporate Gossip Podcast. Becca is a CPA scorned. Becca has made it her business to report on business and give it the Bravo treatment.

So we are going to lean in today. We are going to leverage synergies. We are going to touch base.

We are going to circle back. We are going to get our marching orders. And I will ping you at the end of this episode so we can pick that low-hanging fruit.

That was Corporate Nora speaking. I’m also embarrassed by that.

Let’s go.

Okay, joining me today, we have a very special guest, the host, co-host of one of my very favorite podcasts. I was, I believe one of the very first listeners to the show, an original fan, a super fan, if you will.

We have Becca Platsky from the Corporate Gossip Podcast.

Nora, I’m so happy to be here. Not only were you one of the first listeners, but such a big support early on. You’ve been like my podcast big sister, giving me so much good advice.

And I’m so lucky that you found us and that you liked us. And then I get to have you in my life, because it really has been, it’s been a blessing. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that, like straight up, but really it has been.

Oh, God.

So the pleasure is all mine. I love an independent podcast. I love the way that you guys are doing it specifically.

I just think it’s so, so smart.

And part of the reason is you are not encumbered by corporate interests because what you and your brother co-host, and I love a brother sister, Dio, what you do so well is really examine corporate culture, these people who are shaping our country,

It’s Tom Sandoval.

You take that exact energy that we had around Skandoval and just move it over two notches to David Zaslov, CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, and yeah, that’s absolutely the energy. You captured it perfectly.

Yeah. So corporate America, I have not worked a corporate job in over 10 years now, so I believe that I’m fully feral and unemployable, but until very recently, you were corporate America and you were also reporting on corporate America.

Yes. Yes.

So the disclaimer I want to give before I give any of this advice or thoughts is, the energy that I’m bringing today is like, your unemployed aunt that’s been living off the land for several months, because yes, up until three months ago, actually

thanks to your advice, I was still working in corporate America, because years ago I had asked you, should I quit my job? Should I do this full time? And you were like, don’t quit your day job until you absolutely have to. So I hung on to that job.

Literally at the end, I was like, wait, how have you guys not laid me off yet? Like, I’m focusing all of my time on this podcast.

And at that point, I had we had gotten into a place where I was financially OK, and I got laid off a couple of months ago. And still it was a surprise for some reason. I was like, damn, you finally got me.

You know, I felt like the last soldier that was finally found. But anyway, so so up until that point, I had been working. I started my career as a CPA because I went to school during the financial crisis.

And they were like, you have to be a CPA in order to get a job. So I did that. Then I did consulting management consulting for a couple of years.

Internal management consulting for a couple of years, both at big companies that are over 100 years old, both of them, classic American companies.

And so yeah, throughout that entire time, I became incredibly disillusioned with a lot of the things that I was seeing when I, you know, I went to business school, right? So I’m always reading ink and fortune.

I’m like, this just like really reads like full on bullshit.

And the more digging I did and the more I really understood that so many of these CEOs are actually completely brain-rotted and have truly no clue what they’re doing, they back into almost every decision so that shareholders can, you know, to

shareholders benefit. That’s when I became fully unhinged and started the Corporate Gossip Podcast where we, you know, dive into kind of some of the personal stories of these CEOs and hopefully poke a little bit into that veil of these untouchable,

mostly men, who make millions and millions of dollars a year. And, you know, maybe they’re not as smart as everybody says they are.

I have learned through your podcast that they just aren’t, they just aren’t. And part of American mythology is self-mythology, the self-made man, that people who are wealthy deserve it.

Whether or not they are overtly religious, there is just woven into American culture for prosperity gospel, God wants you to succeed, manifest destiny. All that stuff is really wrapped up in corporate culture.

What were some of the things that you saw as a management consultant specifically that disillusioned this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed CPA coming to rescue us from the financial crisis?

The number one thing that I always remember is how a lot of these executives can’t write. And I think that writing, your writing is a pretty good reflection of your intellectual capacity. And then I realized most of these executives don’t read.

So I’m like, wait a second, I thought they were smart, but they don’t know, I mean, let’s go back to David Zaslov, who took over a massive media company and had no idea what a residual was.

A residual, by the way, is a pretty big, it’s the way that you cut checks to people who have been on shows that you might have had before. So for example, that’s why Jerry Seinfeld is continuing to make money. You didn’t know what a residual was.

A lot of these guys don’t know, they’re trying to sell to, you know, they’re trying to globalize their country. They can’t name countries on a map. It blows your mind.

But the first clue that I had was like, I was like, you wrote that? That’s like a third grade writing. I mean, really, really unbelievably bad.

And I’m like, and no one’s telling these people because they have comms people who will, mostly women, who will clean up after them.

Yeah. What are ways, because we’re about to go into some corporate horror stories. What are ways that people can maintain their sanity and their sense of self while existing in corporate America?

Because, you know, for not better and always for worse, like, this is the system that we have.

Yeah. You have to, my number one advice is, you have to have something that validates and fulfills you outside of work. So a lot of my peers put a lot of their, the validation that they get, the self-worth into their work.

So when they get a bad performance review, and maybe they’re getting that bad performance review because the CEO has indicated that layoffs need to happen. So now managers need to go in and just give bad performance reviews willy-nilly, right?

Maybe this person didn’t deserve it, but they’ve put so much of who they are as a person into this job that it destroys them. It’s psychologically torturous. And if you don’t have something outside of that, it could be anything.

I mean, you know, it could be your kids. It could be any, maybe you’re the president of a local organization. Maybe you’re involved in crafts.

Maybe you make stuff, whatever. You have to have something outside of that, that when you do that, you say, I’m a good person.

I’m a competent person, because otherwise you become really subject to the whims of often unhinged narcissists at these companies, because a lot of the people who rise up the executive ranks are also very unwell mentally.

So you got to have kind of like that grounding force outside of the computer.

Yeah. It’s so strange to me, you know, my parents are boomers, and they did not have like traditional careers at all. They both worked in advertising.

They both moved jobs a lot. Like they were freelance, you know, ad people for a long time. I actually didn’t know what that word meant until I was much older, and I would just tell people my parents were freelancers, and they were like, what is that?

I was like, they’re freelancers. I don’t know what to tell you.

Did you know the origins of that, by the way? No, this might be misinformation, but something about a lance is a knight that doesn’t have, this could be full of misinformation.

That’s what I always imagined was a knight with a lance.

Yeah. So I think it’s a knight that doesn’t have a home base.

Yeah, could switch teams at any moment.

Yeah, switch teams at any moment. Yeah, exactly. Yes, not un-unionized knight.

Un-unionized, so much has changed in work.

But typically, I would say, my in-laws are a good example of this. They stayed in the same career with pretty much the same employer, state employees, unions, which also barely exist anymore. They stayed in those careers.

And with those employers, their entire careers, I have never held a job longer than this, the longest job I’ve ever held. Otherwise, I was moving every 18 months, right?

But I would also put in routinely like 12-hour days, 14-hour days, go in on a Saturday, go in on a Sunday to catch up. You never catch up. It’s like shoveling sand at the beach.

The tide’s gonna bring more in. And from that culture of like, you just dedicate yourself to this company, to like, oh, this company is my family, sort of.

Although, I mean, I would, I’d leave, apparently, watch out, if you’re my family, I’ll leave you at the drop of a hat. If they’re gonna offer me $5,000 more a year, okay? $10 a paycheck more, I’m out of here.

But like, there’s also this, I graduated and entered very quickly into the like, girl boss era, where even if we weren’t entrepreneurs, and most of us were not, we were sort of like taking that same energy into a job that if we lost a client, like

you will get, you’ll get let go, right? An agency can only support as many creatives or account people as they have clients while also turning a profit.

But it’s just so strange to me the way that like, my parents could leave their work at the office because they didn’t have email.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I gladly took a BlackBerry from my job and I said, oh my God, thank you so much. I can’t wait to check my email literally all night.

I’m going to sleep with it next to my bed.

And we were, I mean, you look back at it and I mean, some are more obvious than others, like WeWork, Airly Amazon. But like that, those were cults. And we were trained as millennials and elder millennials that, yeah, hustle harder.

And it was a bragging thing. We would say, oh, I’m so busy.

And if you weren’t busy, I mean, I still have to, when I was working right before I got laid off, I still had to beat that out of younger people to be like, hey, if you’re not busy, take advantage of that. Go to the library, read a book.

Like, it’s actually insane that we would ever think that whatever systems that we have created means every single person’s job is 40 hours a week.

What other perfect system do you know that that could possibly happen that every time, whether you’re a copywriter or a teacher, or that doesn’t make any sense. We’re like, 40 hours a week, like we’re coming out of work as millennials.

What work could we have possibly been doing early in our life that would have benefited from doing 80 hours of it a week? I know what kind of garbage I was spewing out at that age.

I was the decks I put together. The social media plan I put together for a massive oil company, I had no business to be on social media. And I remember saying, I don’t think they should be there.

I don’t think so. And everyone was like, well, you have to put together a proposal and it better be good. I was like, okay, here’s how you should use Twitter.

Don’t do that. I can’t imagine following this.

ExxonMobil is like, you know, pizza is great, but have you ever gone to an un… I can’t make this joke right away, but hopefully you do cuts. Let me try it better.

Pizza is… Wait, sex is great, but have you ever gone into an untapped oil field in the middle of Alaska?

I mean, you know what? Ducks. Man, you know what they say rolls off a duck’s back?

Everything, but oil. And we’re partnering with Dawn Dish Soap, which is, by the way, that association is so solid in my mind.

I think about that all the time.

I’m brand loyal to Dawn Dish Soap for this reason.

Isn’t it fucked up, though, that they’ve kind of been like, oh, this soap is so good that it will protect animals who have literally been… For every little duckling that’s cleaned off from oil, there’s like 500 of them that died.

Just dead, just dead. They’re like, okay, and also…

A brutal death.

Oh, are we using Dawn Dish Soap to clean off these ducks? Get a camera out there. Get them out there.

Only the live ones.

Don’t pan to the left. It’s insane. It’s like, that’s one of the best brand…

That’s one of the best… Yeah, that needs to be studied more. I think about that a lot.

Yeah, there are certain companies that…

You know, oh, this is actually what I was going to say.

I think also a part of what I enjoy about your podcast and your point of view, too, is that to exist in the US specifically in 2025 is to live a life of, you know, constant moral injury, like constantly having to make moral compromises.

You can cancel your Amazon Prime, but your website is still going to be posted on Amazon Web Services, even if you don’t think it is.

You know, it’s a true monopoly that I don’t think any of our legislators understand fully or maybe willfully choose not to understand. You can support unions at your local coffee shop. I don’t know if this has happened in Brooklyn.

I’m going to have to cut this part out. But Minneapolis went through this phase where they were like, we are unionizing this coffee shop. And I was like, okay.

These people are not making a huge profit on selling. Unionize your Starbucks, for sure, for sure. But like, okay, okay.

No matter what, you’ve got to make a compromise. You’ve got to make a compromise. You have to engage with a company that you do not agree with, and you might not even know that you’re doing it.

Right, right.

I mean, I think it’s, it’s tough, but I think we’re also way too hard on ourselves, too. I mean, it is challenging, and it’s a monopoly, right? So from a judicial perspective, we do live in a monopoly.

So I think don’t be too hard on ourselves in terms of, yeah, we have to use, what we’re recording on right now is probably saved on Amazon Web Services. There’s not much we can do about that, right?

However, I found out about this service, Open AI.

Oh, yeah. I mean, but it’s all, yeah, it’s everywhere. I mean, look, I just got this book.

I got so many books. I mean, it’s like, it doesn’t matter. Like, it’s a full on empire, right?

I mean, but I think just being knowledgeable about it and also not giving in to the excuses that they want you to give into. Like, for example, oh, I don’t really have time to go down to my local store and get something from Amazon.

Okay, well, just think about, just be cognizant of the effects of the long term effects of this. Like, I just did a TikTok where I was talking about, listen, like, I know, I know you have young kids, right?

And you don’t have time and you want to get stuff from Amazon. I get it. But in 10 years, when your kids wants a first job, the only option they’re going to have is Amazon warehouse.

There is no dick sporting goods. There is no ice cream shop. There is no, because a lot of these services have been taken away or we can’t, we just can’t support it as a community because our money isn’t going into our local community.

It’s going into Amazon.

So, like, I think as long as you’re making an educated choice and saying, like, listen, like, for this specific thing, I’m going to use Amazon, but for other things, and maybe I’m going to slowly reduce my dependence, I think that’s a better choice.

But it is hard. And it’s, I mean, but I also don’t think that we would ever live in an environment.

I mean, whether we’re in capitalism, whether you’re in communism, whether in socialism, any type of human created society is going to have things where you’re going to have to make compromises.

It’s just like making sure that you have your own set of specific morals that you can live by, and you know where you can, you know, make exceptions and you know where you can’t.

And I think that’s where you kind of, I mean, that’s, at least that’s what I do. I’m like, there’s like ChatGPT for me is an absolute no-go. Anybody that works with me, I’m like, absolutely no, no ChatGPT, no AI of any kind that I can help.

I use bra, that’s for me, but other people have their own things. So I think making sure that you just, you have a point of view. And I think that people struggle with that, creating their own point of view.

People struggle with it and it’s also, I think people sort of collapse into exhaustion and complacency, which is also a part of this system too. If you are so tired from trying to work, now it’s really not enough to have one job and companies will.

My niece is experiencing this right now. She works for a corporate coffee shop. She is 19 years old.

She is an assistant manager. She gets 36 hours a week. So just enough to not have to give her benefits.

Just enough to make sure that she’s not really getting a meaningful pay bump and she doesn’t have health insurance and she doesn’t have a retirement plan. And that’s by design.

And when you’re so exhausted that it feels like depleting or you simply don’t have the time to stop at Ace Hardware, my personal one, my favorite stops to buy a carabiner for something.

It just makes more sense to spend two seconds buying it off Amazon and waiting two days for it. Yeah, that’s one thing. And I try to be gracious with other people because I have my own compromises, right?

Yeah.

I have my own compromises.

I’ve made a video about going to Goodwill and someone’s like, you should never give them any money. And I’m like, well, you know what? Either all that stuff ends up in a landfill.

Exactly.

Or, I know, you know, like, yeah, yeah.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to make these choices. But to the point that you brought up at the beginning of our conversation where I said, don’t quit your corporate job. Keep it as long as possible.

You know, there are a few reasons for that. And one is people do need security. People do need security.

And that sort of, oh, everyone’s an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial mindset from the inside of a company.

I hate that. That’s just, by the way, that’s just anti-union propaganda. Yes, yes.

Pretend it’s your company.

But it’s not. Honestly, you have no stake in it whatsoever. But pretend it is.

Care that much. Care that much to give up that security where are, for many of us, if you are lucky enough to get those 40 hours a week and get a full-time job, that job is tied to your benefits. It’s tied to your health care.

You really are stuck there and it’s like no small thing either.

And when we sort of like glorify, oh, like I never would judge somebody for having a freaking nine to five, like all those TikTok girls who are like, I would never, you would never catch me trading my time for money, which is like the girl boss

anthem. What are you talking about? That’s all you do all day, no matter what you do. Either you have one boss or a tier of bosses above you at a company or everyone’s your boss.

Your listeners are your boss. Your subscribers are your boss, whatever. In my case, like, sometimes the advertisers we have, those are a form of bosses.

Like, there’s always somebody, you always owe something to somebody that is a part of life. And like being on your own, working on your own, it’s not without its challenges, you know?

Like, it’s, you’re kind of only as good as like the next thing, the next episode. Like, you got to keep the wheels turning, you got to keep things going.

And you can build a different life for yourself, but 10 years in, Becca, this is the first year that I’m doing that. I brought all of those, like that corporate workaholic mindset to this.

Yeah, I mean, because you’re who you are. One of the things that I always remind people of is any personality deficit or issue that you have outside of work is also there inside of work.

Like, for some reason, in the 80s, managers decided that once you walk through those doors, your personality just completely, you know, changes, and you’re a perfect person.

And it’s like, no, if you’re abusive outside of the office, you’re going to be abusive in the office.

If you are, if you constantly seek validation from your parents or your partner outside of the office, you’re going to pop, you’re going to do that inside the office, you know? It’s like, those things happen for good and for bad.

But when we don’t think about that, when we think for some reason, we can, you know, I think, I don’t watch the show, but it’s absolutely right, that we can sever our personalities. It’s, that’s what gets us into trouble.

And I think, I mean, this is why I always say like exactly, I think if you become a millionaire, you need to take state mandated therapy because the like, trauma that you can inflict on other people at that level is tremendous.

And it’s like, I mean, not to get too dark, but there are people who lose their lives over this kind of stuff because they’re managers.

They really are.

Yeah. And it’s like, we see it all the time. We saw it with Boeing.

Like, I mean, it happens all the time and I don’t know. I think, so, you know, just taking that a little bit further. I mean, yeah, you, cause you are who you are.

And especially when you’re working for yourself. Now me, I’m a slacker. Yeah.

Oh, love that for you.

I’m a slacker also when I’m doing my own project.

And I need people like my husband to keep me accountable and be like, hey, like, you know.

Hey, you’re gonna do this? And I’m always like, I also, I mean, trust me, I’m a procrastinator, but that’s because I live for the thrill of like, I need a, I need a gun to my head.

To really work.

Same. I’m like, something will be on my many to-do lists for the whole week. Oh, Friday.

11 p.m.

on a Friday. Oh my God, yeah, let’s go. Oh, and then it’s gonna be really good.

I’m the same exact way, Nora. Oh my God.

Oh, I got to pick up my kid at 320. Here we go. There we go.

Exactly.

There we go.

I’m locked in now. I’m locked in now. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So these, we’re going to get into people’s corporate horror stories, but we are who we are. Our workplaces do, they do shape us, especially when we are young.

When you come straight out of college or like right into the workforce whenever you enter it, like that has a hand in shaping you too.

And when I had, when I look back at bosses that I had who were unhealthy, unwell, and got their unwellness all over us, I also look at them and I think, someone did this to you.

Yes.

Someone did this to you. And so this is just normal to you. And it was normal to me.

And I know that I did that to other people.

When I was 21, I had a 25-year-old boss who I thought was so mature and she was just so old.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nora, she, I still have nightmares about this woman. I would go into work, sit down, immediately shit my pants because I was so nervous. She gave me the most tremendous anxiety I’ve ever felt in my life.

One time she asked me to print a PDF, and I was so like brain-addled. My brain was not working when I was working with her. She scared me so much.

I printed the PowerPoint, and then I went to the scanner, and I scanned it in, and I sent it to her, a literal printed and then scanned to PDF document, as opposed to doing file print, print to PDF. Like my brain wasn’t working.

I ended up getting fired from that job, but I like, I absolutely, now listen, did I have an undiagnosed anxiety disorder at the time that I’ve since been medicated for? Yes.

However, how many others have had that situation where they just think, I’m stupid, I’m incapable, and not this woman is maybe psychologically manipulating me because she just got out of her sorority and she’s really good at this stuff because she

hates girls for four years. I mean, that ended up being the case, right? And it’s like, this is insane.

It’s insane. And you were like, I’m actually a lunatic. I’m actually insane.

When I got fired from that job, that’s one of the reasons why I got medicated because I got fired from that job.

And I plummeted into a depression. It was awful.

Yeah. I think I spent, I also did not know, I mean, it was a simpler time.

In 2005, I graduated, like, you were not, you would go to therapy if you were legitimately, like certifiably insane in the Midwest, like there were no, and you definitely wouldn’t tell anybody about it.

And when I look back at like how miserable I was in my 20s, it was depression and it was anxiety, yes. And a lot of that stemmed from the fact that I was in these work environments where I was not, I did not belong.

Like I was never going to thrive there. I was, you know, I had a boss who truly practiced psychological warfare. She only hired girls.

I mean, you can’t call us women at that age. We just, legally women, but definitely girls.

Yes. Prefrontal cortex developed.

She kept us all, and she was the only person really with an office door.

She wanted us all to be butts in seats, dressed a certain way, definitely selected people for their looks, would pull somebody into her office, you know, maybe ask a few questions about another person.

Maybe she’d take you out to lunch, kind of almost offer you your boss’s job, you know? Then kind of like forget about it. She made this one girl go to her hairstyles and get her hair redone because she didn’t like her hair.

And not one of us was like, this isn’t good. Like, we shouldn’t be here. We were all like, we were all like, sorry, I had to go.

That’s why they do it.

They know, because these, you know who that sounds like, Nora? I don’t know if you read, ended up reading Careless People, but it sounds like Charles Sandberg. Yeah.

But, and think about, and she was, and Charles Sandberg was the queen of bosses. Like, she was the boss you wanted to be. And also she was, I would say, sexually harassing people at a minimum, emotionally harassing people at a minimum.

And yeah, I don’t know how this is going to come off, but at least in my experience, the most psychologically damaging bosses I’ve ever had in my life were women that I trusted. Same, same. Or I thought I would trust it.

And then eventually they, two of them, I can think of right off the top of my head that I still think about. And it was such a betrayal because I was like, I trusted you, I liked you, I thought we were friends.

So speaking of which, Lean In came out when I was on maternity leave. And that was such brain poison for me, that I truly, and I had to have a science baby, right?

Like my husband had brain cancer at the time, he was on chemo and radiation, like we did IUI because we were broke. I was like, IVF can’t afford it. Could you just put the sperm in me?

It works a little. Is there a thing you can do that’s almost free? Like when you think about it, would you?

Do you have a discount where like, I don’t know, for people like us? And I had this baby and my husband had just had a second brain surgery weeks before this baby was born. So I’m taking care of two of them.

I’m like me, why would I have any needs? Like I’m about to go back to corporate America and I can’t wait. Like I’m chomping at the bit to, I’m not going to let this baby hold me back.

And that’s like, to think, I mean, of course now, right?

We’re like, you just did one of the most incredible, most difficult, hardest things that anyone could do, but you’re getting your validation from clickety clack.

From clickety clack, from clickety clack. And I went back. I was like, I will get there so early that I have time to pump before work.

So I’m dropping my baby off at a corporate daycare center that’s at the edge of the parking lot from my office. I drive 45 minutes through the Minneapolis suburbs to get to this office. I am working with mostly men.

And there’s one nursing room in the entire building, one room, like one lactation room for the entire building. Knock down, drag out fights with other pumping mothers.

Like truly, like I booked this and it’s like, oh, well my meeting went over because nobody cares about me. All this stuff. And the way that I truly was like, I, none of this matters.

I don’t matter. Like keep my baby at daycare till the moment it closes because the most important thing that I can do is create shareholder value.

And that is why I am here on this earth, because someday this entrepreneurial mindset is going to rise me to the ranks of where.

And the reason that I think, you know, to your point of like having really negative experiences with female bosses is if you look at the top, there’s only so many spaces. Yeah. There really are.

And like you can say that there’s space for everybody, but there isn’t.

And yeah, I mean, it’s cult. I think it’s also like they’ve been brainwashed by the cult too. I mean, the more you look at it, the more you realize, holy shit, the rules in corporate aren’t actual societal rules.

They’re made up by men to make us insane. All of us, including the men at the top too. I mean, I study them.

They’re all insane. And it’s like, yeah, and it’s quite sad. But I will say, the one thing that makes me optimistic, I think Gen Z has a lot of challenges ahead of them.

However, their overall perception of work and their disillusionment with corporations and disillusionment with billionaires, when we were younger, I would say, oh my God, you’re, me, me, when I was 18, 21, I said anybody who doesn’t like Sam Walton

is just jealous that he thought of something that you didn’t think. That came out of my mouth, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So to have these Gen Zs at the same age say, oh, I know why Sam Walton, founder of Walmart is rich, because he exploited people, he exploited the US government. And, you know, good, hell yeah. They’re already starting way further ahead.

So, you know, and granted, there’s, you know, there’s a lot, I could say a lot more about Gen Z on the flip side, but that at least makes me tremendously optimistic.

Every time I see a TikTok of a girl just shutting her laptop and saying, it’s five o’clock.

Yeah.

Like a part of me heals. The old version of me who never went to the dentist, who would ask permission, do you think I could go to the doctor? No.

You’re right. That was stupid. Yeah.

It’s my birthday.

My parents are in town. Do you think I could leave at 530?

Say no.

No. I don’t think you should. I mean, you can, but if you don’t care about the big account.

Even worse, they’d say, oh yeah, go out.

Thank you so much. Oh, that’s so nice. You’re the best boss ever.

Yeah.

Asking to go on a vacation and then having my boss say, I really don’t think so.

And maybe the one brave thing I did at age 26, I was like, well, I already booked it. So I mean, I was asking, but I’m also going because I did not book a refundable ticket because I couldn’t afford it. So I will be going, but don’t worry.

I’ll have my Blackberry on me at all times. So I really, but I’ll still count it as PTO, even though I’m truly working on Alcatraz. I’m not even enjoying the Alcatraz tour.

I’m not enjoying the Alcatraz.

You’re in prison, in prison.

Oh my God. Sorry.

We’re going to launch a new shampoo soon.

We’re going to launch a new shampoo.

It’s, it’s, it’s, yeah. It’s, I think one, yeah. I think what we’ve, what we’ve taught Gen Z is that the rules are made up.

Everything is fake. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Remember that, please.

Remember that.

It’s all fake.

Nobody knows what they’re doing.

Yeah. It’s all fake. It’s all pretend.

And it’s all pretend. There are no experts. Okay.

I’m going to play. I haven’t heard any of these either. So we’re going to listen to them live together.

Hi.

Can you hear that?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. There we go.

I saw your call on Instagram.

And in the midst of COVID, my father had a stroke. So we were not allowed inside the hospital. While this was occurring, my siblings and I sort of tailgated outside the hospital building while my mother was inside with him as he received treatment.

And I rushed in the afternoon to go get on a Zoom to prove that I was a good employee. My father ended up making a full recovery.

It was not the defining moment that it could have been, but I still look back on that afternoon and I think, girl, what were you doing? Thank you so much.

Okay.

Reactions?

I did the same thing when my dad was in the hospital with a heart attack in 2014. I did the same thing. Again, he made a full recovery.

It was fine, but like…

Do you think nurses look at us and are like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

I don’t know. No, I kind of feel like they get it, because it’s like, but I wonder, I mean, people in other countries do. Yeah.

I mean, people, older people do. People with more contacts and more experience do. Yeah.

I mean, the best I could say is that it’s brainwash, it’s anxiety. We make bad decisions when we’re anxious, and right, I mean, listen, every behavior that you make is driven from fear and anxiety.

So you’re ultimately afraid that something bad is going to happen to you if you don’t get on the Zoom call. There’s also an element too of like, just to give everybody a little bit more grace.

I mean, I know when my dad was in the hospital, I was like, I was pretty scared. So I was like, this is the one thing I can control. I can get on a Zoom call.

It did, in a sense, make me feel better. If something bad happened, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life. But like, so there’s that element too.

So I don’t want us to be too hard on ourselves.

Oh, yeah. It’s like, I’m not like, my judgment will never be with this person or you, or even me who did the exact same thing, Becca, like did the exact same thing.

It is more like a culture where if nobody said to you specifically, like, don’t get on this doom. Like, that is a broken work environment, right? And I feel the same way, right?

Like, it sometimes gives you, it gives you something that you can control. And looking back too, it was a way of me not being fully present with like the scariness of life, which is we are not in control.

And someone on our team just had a series of, you know, huge family health issues. And I remember, you know, I’ve said to them, like, don’t, don’t work. And they’re like, no, I literally, this is what I need right now.

And, but I at least have to say it, right? I at least have to say it and try my best to, like, take things off their plate.

Because what on earth could have been so vital to that Zoom that if your dad, you know, had not recovered or this, this caller’s dad had not recovered, that it would have been at all worth it.

And you know what? You bring up a larger point, which is I think when people talk about how crazy it is, I remember on January 6, for example, being on a Zoom call as the Capitol riots were unfolding.

And luckily, I was with the boss at the time, who I really got along with, and we were like, sorry, are you here? And we’re like, no, I’m not here. And, but the point is, I think we’re all doing this at a larger level.

Like, the world is increasingly becoming, people keep saying, we live in a very unusual time. Well, from a day to day perspective, I think most of us don’t actually feel that.

Most of us who are doing laptop jobs, don’t feel that because we have all agreed together to just have cognitive dissonance.

And regardless of what’s going on, regardless of what, you know, paramilitary forces disappearing people off the streets, we’re going to continue to clickety-clack. Now, that’s not unusual. That’s been happening for centuries.

That’s just like how us humans like deal with this tremendous pain that’s happening around us. The same thing happened during COVID.

Yeah. We’re the band playing while the Titanic sinks. Yes.

You know? Like, we’re like, yeah, somebody’s got to do it. And it’s me, baby.

Okay. And my instrument is a laptop. My art is a PowerPoint.

Okay.

All right, here we go. I’m texting you a text to read.

Okay.

Okay, I used to run a coffee shop in the Minneapolis airport. It was a grind, pun intended, with store hours from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m.

and staffing is one of my responsibilities. When I was pregnant, my boss and I talked game plan for going on admin-only duty in the last two weeks and not working on the floor.

The first day of my admin-only duty happened to be when I went into labor.

Two people did not show up for work and so unfortunately, I had to work the bar during the morning rush with no backup from my boss, timing my contractions on my phone while making coffee drinks.

Finally left when they were five minutes apart and drove myself to the hospital. I used to brag about how I worked half my labor, but now I see how fucked up the whole thing was. That’s actually insane.

I feel that she could sue, to be honest with you. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel that that’s, yeah. If something had gone wrong with her labor, feels like a workplace injury, but I don’t know.

Having a baby on the job, at a coffee shop, in the airport.

Also, I mean, I would have bragged about this too, because honestly, triggering several memories, I did the same thing. Not at a coffee shop, but I was working at home, firing clickety-clackin.

As I was in labor, I was too dumb to know I was in labor. I was like, man, I do not feel good. My stomach hurts.

It’s his due date. It’s his due date. I was like, God, I just don’t feel good.

I didn’t know I was pregnant.

What could this be?

Man, I just want to throw up. My tummy hurts. Man, what could this be?

Literally, until I go to the hospital. But yeah, imagine getting a cup of coffee and not knowing that the woman serving it to you is in labor.

Well, that’s a whole other point about how… I mean, I don’t know if it’s an airport thing or a specific service industry thing that something clicks off in our brains that we don’t see when we’re in a service transaction.

People as humans, that’s a whole other issue.

That’s a whole other issue.

The dehumanization of people who are laboring for you is a whole other issue. But yeah.

Literally, laboring while laboring and going into labor is not a small thing. It truly is like a miracle, but this is also like, I mean, everything’s connected.

Like get out your red string, but rugged individualism, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, like dedication, entrepreneurial mindset, leaning in. And it’s all breaking. Game plan.

Game plan. Like it’s not a game. A baby is about to come out of your body.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and again, like going back to like where I’m, because I’m weirdly optimistic despite all the shit going on. But I do feel that it’s finally breaking, right?

Because all of that stuff only works when people, for the most part, are able to live their life the way they want to live their life.

Yes. Yeah.

But now we’re about to have a whole generation of people who can’t find jobs because they’ve all been replaced with AI.

All of us elder millennials and Gen Xers are realizing, oh shit, the retirement money that I’ve stayed for in the stock market is now not going as far as I thought it would. So all of these dreams are now being crushed.

And it’s really hard to keep up the illusion that the system that we have in America is working out when so many people are suffering. And I think, to be honest, it needs to break a little bit for us to realize that.

And that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be pain. And this is, I mean, I’ve said this on the podcast a lot. That doesn’t mean that we all aren’t going to have to suffer.

However, on the other side, I think we’re much closer to a, whether it be an economic system or a social system that works for more people, than we might have been had we kind of kept up the illusion a little bit longer. That’s my take.

Yeah, you got to see stuff for the illusion to actually dissolve. Okay, so I have a good one. I’m also reading these for the first time, but it already started with LOL, so I know it’s a good one.

Okay, because as soon as someone starts a text with LOL, you know that they’re about to tell you something devastating. Yes.

Okay.

LOL, my mom was getting brain surgery, and I worked the entire day of it. Then took the following day off, and my boss yelled at me for not putting up Christmas decorations on time.

Also relevant, they pulled me aside for a sit-down You’re In Trouble meeting a few weeks later, and told me I was a bummer in the office, and they needed me to be more positive.

You just come in and get your work done, and go home, and you’re bumming everyone out.

Wow. Yeah, LOL was necessary for like-

Nervous LOL, and also just like, could no one else put up Christmas decorations?

Was it?

Yeah. Sorry, I mean, one person is allowed to do that, and she didn’t do it. Why?

Because her mom was having brain surgery, okay? Not her. She wasn’t getting the brain surgery.

She wasn’t doing the brain surgery. Her mom was getting brain surgery, okay? So she couldn’t put up the streamers, all right?

And that’s bumming people out.

That’s like- that goes into the realm of psychotic torture. Like, that goes into the realm of hazing.

Like, this is what-

Yes.

Oh, you know what probably happened? That boss had some devastating event happen to them where they lost some moment with a loved one.

And now they’re saying, because I haven’t processed this pain myself, the only way I know how to deal with this is by inflicting it on you. So that way, to me, it feels normal. And it’s not so devastating.

And I don’t think that maybe I could have done something differently. That’s the thing. Goddamn.

So much of our modern workplace ails are a result of uninspected trauma. And I can say that with confidence, because I read books about these CEOs who have unresolved trauma.

Know who’s the biggest fucking, the biggest case study for that is Donald Trump.

Oh, yes.

Oh, my God. You go back into his childhood. But I wouldn’t wish his childhood on my worst enemy.

Not excusing, but explaining.

Explaining and explaining his children. Explaining his children.

We’re just going to continue that cycle.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Also it’s the same energy as people who don’t want student loan forgiveness because they paid off their student loans. And all I can say is, yes, I did work through a brain surgery.

I would never want anybody else to work through a brain surgery because I did it. I did not have student loans. I was blessed with a great aunt who survived the depression and kept a bunch of money and coffee and it’s really hoarded it up.

And thank you, Betty. Thank you, Betty, for the college education and not having any student loans. But guess what?

If you have student loans and you are up to your eyeballs in debt, I want them paid off. I want them forgiven the way that all the PPP loans were.

Can you imagine? I mean, keep this in or not. This is just a thought I’m just having.

I’ve never heard this. I’m sure other people have said this. But that would be like a freed person saying, I was enslaved, so I think you should be too.

Yeah. I never read that in my history books. Want to know why?

Because there’s something called solidarity. We’ve got none of it. It’s sickening.

And it’s like, and you don’t want to know why we have none of it? Because we’ve been trained to have none of it. There’s a wonderful book called There is Power in a Union.

And regardless of however you feel about unions in general, what we’re missing is solidarity. A sense of I’m on the same team as my neighbors.

And because of that, the rugged individualism that you’re just talking about, this, it all drives those behaviors. So you have a sense of individualism, a lack of sense of solidarity, and then you have these CEOs. Another example, Elon Musk.

Tremendously traumatic childhood. Tremendously. So you combine that with all these factors, and you put him in the center of the fucking tornado, and yeah, he’s gonna fuck some shit up.

Yeah.

I also have another book recommendation. Have you read The Hammer by Hamilton Nolan?

No.

I feel like also you’d really love his Substack. He’s very, very smart. He worked for Gawker.

He was one of my favorite writers at Gawker, and now he only reports on labor. And his book on unions is the one I sent my niece. And I was like, make it happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because more than anything, like I went to one of, not the most recent, I mean, I went to the most recent No King’s protest, but I went to another anti-billionaire protest a month ago. And here’s what I noticed. I was walking by myself, right?

I didn’t bring anybody with me. Nobody came with me, but I was walking next to one of the transportation unions. And I was like, damn, they all have shirts.

They all have chants. You know what they have? They’re a team I want to be a part of because they’re all friends.

And guess what we all yearn for to be, you know what I yearn for? I yearn to be on the softball team I was on when I was in high school. And we all do cheers.

Everywhere you go, people want to know who we are. And guess what they were singing?

So we tell them that.

That song, they were, we are the union, the mighty, mighty union. And oh, chills. I was like, fuck, I want to be a part of that.

And they, you don’t think that Ronald Reagan knew how much that specific chant just gets people riled up. Oh, he knew.

Because the best part of a union isn’t necessarily the things that we can do to get, you know, additional benefits and pay raises and whatnot. It’s having a bunch of people to hang out with where we all wear the same shirts.

And we all know the same songs.

And we all have the same songs.

Yeah. And we’re on the same team and people know what team we’re on. Like, I do think that that is something very, very cool.

So cool.

So powerful. I felt so left out. My process experience was way lamer objectively than theirs.

And next time, you will ask for a t-shirt and you will say, what do I have to do to get into this union?

You tell me.

But really, I mean, t-shirts are so powerful. Same t-shirts are so powerful.

It’s true. It’s a team. It’s a team.

We love teams.

We love teams.

Yes.

Okay, I’m sending you another text to read.

You want me to read it all out?

One second.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Early in my career, I was at work one morning and got a call from my dad saying my mom had attempted suicide and was in the hospital.

I left work immediately, went to the hospital for a little bit until she was stable, then rushed back to work so that I could sign something. Absolutely mundane. I still can’t believe I did that.

That I would say potentially is just a trauma response. And I mean, that seems like… Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I got to get back to work. I got to go control something.

And I got to go. There’s no way I could docu-sign this. I better wet-sign it and make sure this gets done.

It’s so vital. It’s so important. That is kind of the power of fight or flight.

Or freeze, too, is just like going on autopilot.

And yet, when you look back at it, you think, oh, God, like, you know, what if I had stayed, like, an extra 10 minutes and let my body calm down and let my brain feel all this happening and then just, like, you know, cried and cried and cried?

Because guess what? You’re gonna feel it eventually, and it’s gonna get you.

One thing I will say is, in terms of advice, is just check where you’re at in terms of anxiety in the workplace because you really can make a lot of dumb decisions, not only you, but remember, your CEOs are subject to that too.

So a lot of the dumb decisions that we see that CEOs make or executives make in particular, and I’m talking about them just because I have reporting and books have been written about this, but they are driven by your under pressure, you’re feeling

super anxious, and you don’t feel that you have the skills necessary to solve this problem. So you make dumb, impulsive decisions, and we are all subject to that.

Now, the difference is the CEOs later have an entire comms team that can justify the decision that they make, even if it seemed like a stupid one, you don’t have that.

But just, yeah, I would say your advice just now was take five minutes, take a breath, and see if that’s still the decision you want to make when you’re feeling under pressure.

Yeah, God, okay. I’ve got a text to read to you.

I once pulled over during rush hour on the side of 880, I’m assuming that’s a major thoroughfare, in the middle of my two-hour commute, okay, I love America, to hotspot my phone and update slides in a deck that never got used while cars whizzed by me

one inch away. That was seven years ago. On Friday, I was in a vet appointment for my dog, having my personal phone, work phone, and Slack blow up with messages like, I know you’re at the vet, could you just? I have an interview for a new job today.

Good, good, good.

I mean, yeah, that’s the other thing. How much waste did work? How many times have you been revved up into a goddamn tizzy?

For nothing, for nothing. Then the executive says, oh, you know what, I actually wanted it done differently because I can’t communicate my needs.

I knew that it was urgent and I knew that you needed it to pull over and do this right away because there was nothing more important to me than this deck and there’s nobody at this office who can possibly update a deck.

You are the only person who knows how to do this and also, you know what, I’ve learned over the years, no one’s reading the deck, you’re laboring over digital garbage.

Digital garbage and I hear this all the time, sense of urgency and urgency is also multiplied like because people ultimately want to make their job seem important so they don’t get fired, right? This is one of the risk.

If we had universal health care in this country, the number of bullshit meetings and bullshit work that we do would plummet because a lot of people want to just make themselves as performative busyness. I’m really busy. This is really important.

I have to do this. It’s not only so that we look good in front of our bosses, but it’s also so we make ourselves feel important because we realize that most of what we’re doing is complete bullshit.

But if it’s urgent, if it’s important, then it couldn’t be bullshit because it’s urgent. It’s a psychological game we play with ourselves. But yeah, I think the other thing is like, how many times have you heard a boss be like, what’s our strategy?

Do things faster. What’s our strategy? Do more things.

Guess what? That’s not a strategy, sir.

It’s barely even tactics. I mean, really.

How many times?

That’s just like a vibe.

We’re going to go at clock speed.

We’re going to go at clock speed. I heard that a million times in my old job. Clock speed, what other speed is there?

What does that even mean?

What are you talking about?

What are you talking about?

We’re adhering to laws of time.

Yeah, okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Sounds good. Sounds good.

Yeah.

Nobody says anything. Well, you know what the boss said? He said clock speed.

Yeah.

Okay.

Got it.

Got it.

I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. Okay.

Here’s another text for you to read.

I had a grandparent pass in September and another in December. My boss at the time complained that I had had too many people dying. Mind you, those were my last two living grandparents.

That boss faked to death.

That boss faked to death. That boss faked to death. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No.

Here’s how I know. Because my ex-boyfriend sharded one time at work. Instead of saying that he sharded himself and had to go home, he said his grandma fell and was in the hospital.

So next time you’re b… Now, I don’t want people to use… I don’t want bosses to use that against their employees.

What I’m saying is… And my ex was a… He won’t be listening to this podcast, hopefully, but he was a real piece of work.

So next time you have a boss that says, you know, every accusation is an admission, and just assume that your boss sharded.

And you should say, do you need me to… Do you just need a change of pants? Do you need us to go into like, at daycare, they’ve got like the…

When your kid craps his pants at daycare, they send him home. You’ll know, you pick him up, they’re wearing weird pants. They’re wearing weird, weird pants.

And by the way, you have to pack them extra clothes in case they crap their pants. Sometimes they crap all their pants. And then they come home in weird pants, and they live all day.

Everyone at school knows that they crap. Everyone at baby school, which is what I call daycare, knows, right? They’re like, I know, those aren’t the pants you came in with.

That kid should know what happened.

That kid should have himself.

Okay, just be honest. And also, did you crap your pants or did someone die?

Just say, also to my ex, if you shart at work, I think that’s an excuse to go home for the day.

Yeah.

Yeah, just say, I’m having tummy troubles. You do your work from home. It’s okay.

It’s okay.

You can work from home now.

It’s entirely possible. You don’t need to put up your pants. Imagine your grandma, like, she’s safe at home, hips intact.

You put that out in the universe. You put that out in the universe. My grandma is going to fall and be hospitalized.

Like, I don’t believe in the law of attraction, but you did just cast a curse upon your grandmother.

That would be my fear too. You cast a curse upon your grandma. I have poop in my pants now.

I would sooner say I am truly having violent stomach issues and you do not want me here.

I would honestly, I would go, I would leave. I would leave and see if anybody noticed.

I will say, I don’t think a woman would, this is the difference. I don’t think a woman would say, I think a woman would be honest and say, I’m having tummy problems versus a man who has to say, my grandma’s sick.

Trust me, my stomach, my stomach’s fine. I don’t know what you heard about my b-hole. It’s never had a, I’ve never released something that I didn’t want to on command.

So I’m fine, but my dumb grandma, she fell. She’s hospitalized, hips snapped, touch and go.

I have a proven track record of never having poop in my pants ever. And that’s not my resume.

Ask my grandma, she’s in the hospital. She’s in life support, actually, she can’t speak. But when she recovers, she’ll tell you, I’ve never pooped my pants.

I’m actually really good at always making it to the bathroom. I’m really good at always, but I know. I know.

And that is true, because I have had to leave work and been like, I’m having tummy troubles. And why am I having tummy troubles? Because work gives me so much anxiety.

But okay, I have a final corporate horror story to read to you. Here we go. I just found out I was pregnant with my first child.

I was really nauseous and I had a UTI. This is, UTIs are serious. I think, I did not know that till I was like, kind of, like we just were like, oh, it’s a UTI.

They can be very serious, especially if you’re pregnant. Okay, my boss made me come in a one and a half hour drive, one way, just to see the unveiling of his newly remodeled break room.

No.

Even though I said I wasn’t feeling well. I then got fired three days later after I told him I was pregnant. Sue this man.

Sue him now. Sue him.

Yes. Yes.

Sue him.

Sue him.

As he walked me to the door, he took my badge and said, this just isn’t your family.

What?

Oh, what a sicko.

Sick. Sick.

Demented. Demented.

You’re officially being orphaned. Like, what the hell?

The family voted and you’re out. You’re not one of us.

Not your daddy anymore.

Yeah. Good luck with the baby. I don’t think you can fire somebody.

No.

I mean, there’s definitely, there might still be very little labor laws in this country. Yeah.

That might be one of them. That one might still be intact and I would look into that and I would get a lawyer on contingency. That’s what I would do.

I think we got to get more comfortable. We got to get more comfortable doing that.

I mean, and definitely just know your rights. That’s another complete. Again, there’s not that many labor laws.

It’s not very hard to remember them. There’s very few, but know them because just knowing them gives you power to say, hey, you should check the whatever, the state laws or the federal laws that govern this workplace before you make that decision.

Yeah. Yeah, you should. Don’t sign anything.

Never sign anything. Just be like, I’ll think about it. I’ll have my lawyer look at it.

Do you have a lawyer? It doesn’t matter. You just said, you just conjured them.

I just need to look at this.

Law of attraction.

Conjure them 100%.

Yeah, I need a minute.

I need a minute before I sign this. My God. Okay, well, if you are living through a corporate horror story, you aren’t alone.

There are plenty of people who are going through the same thing. And if you are, may I suggest that you comfort, binge all of the corporate gossip podcasts. That is my prescription to you.

If you are feeling the work dreads, if you are feeling overwhelmed, if you are feeling disillusioned, listen to the corporate gossip podcast. I also love that they provide book recommendations. And I’ve learned very actionable things from you, Becca.

If you are a shareholder in any company, dial in. No one’s dialing.

Yes. Go to the meeting, especially if you live in a big city, if you live in Chicago, New York, LA, I mean, or wherever these companies are headquarters, go to the shareholder meeting, vote your shares. It’s super easy.

It takes two seconds to vote your shares. Whatever the board tells me to do, I just vote the opposite.

It’s, I think one of the things that, again, whether it’s our podcast or just reading stories that expose, I mean, because we really build on the work of so many great reporters.

At newspapers across the country, Vanity Fair, New York Times, so many good ones.

But reading those stories, I think, should cure anybody of their imposter syndrome, because you just realize, oh man, these guys are not only dumb in terms of their cognitive abilities, they also don’t know anything. They don’t read books.

They don’t know anything about history. And it’s wild. So be more, be confident in yourself.

That’s what I always tell people. I say, you are smarter than these CEOs. I know there’s an entire structure that’s built up to make you feel stupid, to make you feel, to second guess everything that you do.

That’s on purpose. When you start to second guess yourself, that’s on purpose. But just understand that these guys are stupider.

They’re more self-conscious. They’re very troubled. They’re mentally dealing with issues that they’ve had since they were a baby because somebody in their life didn’t love them.

And so they’re looking at you employees to love them. Who came up with the, we’re a family here. It wasn’t the employees.

It was the bosses who were struggling with their relationship with their parents. And that is a fact. And people say it’s true.

Becca, stop talking about daddy issues on your podcast. I’m sorry. It’s a thread that binds.

It’s a lot of these guys are trying to fix issues that they could have fixed in therapy by abusing their employees.

Yeah.

I’m Nora McInerny. This has been Thanks For Asking. We are a call-in show.

We love to get your calls. We love to get your emails. We love to get your text messages.

If you have more corporate horror stories, send them in. Send them in, baby. There are a lot of ways to support this independent podcast and listening is one of them.

By the way, if you loved our guest today, Becca Platsky, Corporate Gossip has so many episodes ready for you to binge. They’re such a great show. They are truly one of my favorites.

It’s a can’t miss for me. I love corporate gossip and support independent podcasting. Not everything has to be a part of a corporate structure.

We had the option. We could have gone with a lot of corporate podcast companies. We said, no, thank you.

We said, no, thank you. We’ll keep it weird. We’ll keep it small.

We’ll keep it the way that we want to keep it and reserve the right to change our minds because that is not something that you are really allowed to do once you’ve signed a big contract.

So the phone number, if you want to get in touch with us, 612-568-4441. This episode was produced, as always, by Marcel Malekibu. Our opening theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson, and the music you’re hearing right now is by my young son, Hugh.

Grace Berry is an essential part of our team. She took a little foray into the corporate world, and she hated it, and she came back, and I’m very proud of her. I’m very glad for that.

I’m glad she saw life on the other side and then said, I don’t need to do this anymore. So big thanks to everyone on our team, including our supporting producers. We don’t have Patreon anymore.

We don’t have Apple+. We moved everything over to Substack, which is also where I write every week, and it just felt good to have things in one place. So all the archives of the podcast are over there.

New episodes are over there, ad-free. There’s, you know, only people who have paid can comment, so it’s like a nice little community. There’s no pressure, of course.

I’m the world’s worst salesperson. You can join monthly. You can join annually.

Or you can throw in a couple more bucks, make a bigger investment in the work that we’re doing, and get your name in the credits like our supporting producers. These are our own corporate overlords. These are our board of directors for this episode.

We are talking about Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey DeMoro, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle in all caps, Elia Feliz-Milan, Lindsey Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea

Cernick, Car Pan, LGS, all caps, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, my high school gym teacher, Joe Theodyssepolis, Mad, Abby Arose, Arose? Elizabeth Berkley, Kim F., Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica

Latexier, Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Beyerjohn, Aaron John, Joy Pollock, Crystal, Jennifer Pavelka, Jess Blackwell, Micah, Jessica Reed, Beth Lippem, Kiara, Jill McDonald, Jen Grimlin, Alexis Lane, David

Binkley, Kathy Hamm, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Jeremy Essin, Ann DeBrasinski, Robin Roulard, Nicole Petey, Monica, Caroline Moss, my best friend, Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Penny Pesta, Kaylee, Dave

Gilmore, my best friend from college, and Jacqueline Ryder. We’ll see you here again next week. And that’s the last sentence.