Latest / You're Not Too Much / They Called Me "Difficult". Turns Out... I Was Right!

Transcript

They Called Me "Difficult". Turns Out... I Was Right! · You're Not Too Much

0:00
There is this idea that women have to compete against each other to be
0:04
successful. This idea of difficult wraps into this
0:07
idea of competition. Fine, if that makes us
0:11
difficult. I'm difficult. Let's start Team Difficult. All right, here
0:15
we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm
0:18
pressing record. Boop. Hi, everybody.
0:22
I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not
0:25
Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that. That there
0:29
are a lot of people in this world walking around feel broken, and the reality
0:32
is you're just different, and that's fine. If you've known of my
0:36
existence for any period of time, you might be familiar with this
0:40
thing that is on a lot of our shirts that is actually trademarked.
0:44
By the way, I have a us trademark on this, which is something that I
0:47
have not said out loud yet, but I did receive my us trademark on this
0:51
and several other things. This one is Team Difficult,
0:54
which came from something. This is going to shock you. This
0:58
is going to shock you. It came from something stupid I said on the Internet,
1:02
but it stuck. I know, I know. You don't believe
1:05
that I would ever say anything stupid on the Internet.
1:08
Apparently L2 said something stupid on the Internet, like
1:12
jaw droppingly stupid. It's everywhere. Wow. What did they even say?
1:16
As if that is not what my entire brand is built on or what I'm
1:19
doing right this very minute. But we were having
1:23
a conversation at one point, or I was responding to a conversation at one point
1:26
about this kind of thing that gets hurled at women as, like, an invective
1:30
where a woman doesn't just say, yes, sir,
1:33
whatever you want, sir. And then all of a sudden, they're difficult. And
1:37
so I started saying, fine, if that makes us difficult, I'm difficult.
1:41
Let's start Team Difficult. And I put a hashtag on it, and I thought it
1:44
was funny. It was really the reason I did it. And then people started calling
1:48
themselves Team Difficult. Yes, we're Team Difficult. Stronger than the toughest
1:51
storm. We rise, we fight, we transform
1:55
together. Ever bold and putting it in their bios. And I was like, oh, well,
1:59
this is a thing that is happening. So, of course, being me, I made shirts
2:02
and I sent everybody shirts that say Team Difficult. Because of course I did. Because
2:05
of course I did. And people stop me all the time and ask me about
2:08
my Team Difficult shirt. So, like, what does that mean? It's usually women.
2:12
And I'm like, oh, well, have you ever been called difficult at work? And they're
2:15
like, oh, yes, I have. Almost universally. Absolutely. I
2:19
have. And I was like, if they're going to call us difficult, we're going to
2:22
be difficult. We were up in New Hampshire once, and I had dropped the dog
2:25
off a daycare. Mind you, my children never went to daycare, but
2:29
my dog went to daycare. Just if you want to know what the hierarchy of
2:33
living things in our house is. Anyway, so I was driving back from
2:36
dropping my dog off at daycare, and I, of course, had to stop at this
2:40
gas station that has the crispiest Cokes. And
2:44
I was wearing my Team Difficult shirt, and I walked up to this woman behind
2:47
the counter, and she said, what's Team Difficult? And
2:51
I explained this to her, and she looked at me, and she goes, oh, my
2:54
God. Oh, my God. That happened to me at my last job. Somebody was stealing,
2:58
and I told them that the person was stealing, and instead of
3:01
listening to me, they told me I was being difficult. They fired
3:05
me. They kept him, and now he's in jail. And I
3:09
was like, are you in jail? And she was like, no, I just work at
3:12
a gas station. And I was like, that sounds better than jail to me. Good
3:15
for you. I'm proud of you. When I went to drop off the dog the
3:18
next day, I stopped at the same gas station. I brought her a shirt and
3:21
a mug that said team Difficult. And I was like, you're one of us, baby.
3:24
She was like, this is so nice. And I was like, we're forever friends now.
3:27
But anyway, I mean, it came from my own experience and feeling like if I
3:30
said anything in this meeting or if I responded to the way that somebody responded,
3:34
that they were going to think it was just me being a problem and not
3:37
that there was an actual issue that they needed to resolve. And it got so
3:40
bad that at one point, I was having a
3:44
male colleague go share my ideas in
3:47
meetings. I know you already have a stack of proposals, but these are the ones
3:51
I think will move the needle. All right, let's hear him. Because they would accept
3:55
it from him with no problem. But if it came from me or one of
3:58
the other women on my team, it always represented conflict. Always.
4:02
But if he brought it to them, they were fine with it. If we convinced
4:05
our boss it was his idea that would work. I made myself
4:09
so insanely small because I was so
4:12
scared they were gonna hurl this word at me again. And I will never forget
4:16
the first time I heard it in that context. I had a friend who I
4:18
worked with. She was actually the person who got me hired. And our boss
4:22
had come up with a spectacularly stupid
4:26
idea. Like the kind of idea that could cost us clients and make us
4:30
look so wildly unprofessional and unprepared.
4:33
And we were talking about it, and I was like, well, let me just call
4:36
him and tell him that this is a bad idea. And she was like, I
4:39
don't know. I wouldn't do that. And I was like, why not? This is a
4:43
bad idea. This is gonna cost us clients. And she goes, you might just have
4:46
to let him do it. And I was like, but why would we do that?
4:48
It's gonna cost us clients. And she goes, listen, they.
4:52
They think you're difficult. It was like I had been stabbed in
4:56
the heart. I had no idea what she could possibly be talking about,
5:00
because in my estimation, all I had ever tried to do
5:04
was make sure that they didn't do the stupid things like he wanted to do
5:08
that was gonna create a massive problem. Somehow that got me
5:11
branded as difficult. I went from being
5:15
so secure in not so secure. It had taken me a while to get
5:19
secure, but secure that they trusted my
5:22
expertise. They knew that I knew what I was doing, that they had faith in
5:25
me to worrying about every single
5:29
word that came out of my mouth. I stopped speaking up in
5:33
meetings. They made a couple of really, really bad hires that I just let them
5:36
make that I normally would have said something about. One of
5:40
them lasted, like, all of three weeks. And I remember one of my bosses
5:43
saying, like, I can't believe you didn't call this one out during the hiring process.
5:47
And I just was like, oh, I must have missed it. And I'm thinking, like,
5:50
would you have listened? Of course I knew this person was going to suck. But
5:54
you've hired other people who sucked. You've had lawsuits on your
5:57
plate because of other people you hired who sucked that people told you
6:01
not to hire. Now you're wondering why I didn't catch it. Of course
6:05
I caught it. I'm not going to give you that information. You misuse it.
6:09
So she said this to me, and first I was mad at her. She was
6:12
not the person to be mad at, even though I
6:16
think we both had a lot to learn about what was actually
6:20
happening in that workplace. To this day, I think she still plays the
6:23
game a whole lot more than I am capable of, and I have never been
6:25
capable of it. Never. I can play it, but I'm miserable the
6:29
whole time. She's not miserable when she plays the game. This idea of the
6:33
difficult woman at work creates two kind of workplace Archetypes. And I think
6:37
we are evolving beyond this in some environments, but in some environments
6:40
not. There's like two women in the
6:44
workplace. Two stereotypical women in the workplace. There's the one who shrinks to
6:47
fit. She keeps her mouth shut and she stays out of trouble and she stays
6:51
out of the middle of conflict and she doesn't speak up unless it's
6:55
something that she's very confident in. And she just kind of lets things happen.
6:59
She shrinks to fit. She makes herself small to fit the environment so that she's
7:02
not disruptive, so that she doesn't get labeled something so that she can survive in
7:06
that environment. And then there's the other side of
7:10
the woman who like strikes to kill. This woman will
7:13
eat anything in her path so that she can be
7:17
considered one of the boys or have the same consideration that
7:21
some men get in the workplace. And those seem
7:25
like two very different things. And I think they're exactly the same. I
7:28
think those are both survival mechanisms. Now, are
7:32
some women really just awful to work for and with? I'm sure.
7:36
But is so much of it probably learned behavior? Because
7:40
so many of us were taught as we were coming up that there can't be
7:44
two women in leadership. So you better eat everybody for
7:47
dinner or you aren't going to succeed or you aren't going to get to progress.
7:52
There is this idea that women have to compete against each other
7:56
to be successful, to be individually successful.
8:00
Competition is a myth that exists to stamp out community.
8:04
Because community is a problem for them. If you and I support each other
8:08
and have each other's backs and don't let them divide us.
8:12
And this is more than just in workplaces. This is in kind of every
8:15
fraction of humanity. But if we let them, let us believe
8:20
competition is the only way to succeed, that we
8:24
have to compete against each other and be better than each other, then
8:27
we'll never have community. So our ability to grow is
8:31
greatly stamped out. It's greatly
8:34
reduced. Whereas if we stop looking at each other
8:38
as competition and look at each other as a resource
8:42
and start lifting as we climb, then we aren't looking
8:46
at one leadership position for five women. We're looking
8:50
at replacing the whole board with women or women and non binary individuals
8:53
and non white men and whatever of people who have
8:57
not historically been there. This idea of difficult
9:01
wraps into this idea of competition. It's all
9:05
the same thing. Make you small, make you quiet,
9:09
make you distrustful of the people in your environment.
9:14
So that you don't form bonds strong enough that they can't break
9:18
them. That's what they're designed to do.
9:22
I support the woman who strikes to kill just as
9:25
much as I support the woman who shrinks to fit because it comes from the
9:28
same thing. One of them seems more harmful.
9:33
One of them is like aggressively more harmful. But they are both the
9:36
same thing. They keep other women small either by setting the example
9:40
or shutting them up. And I say women in this environment, but that is
9:44
really. It's not unique to women. That is my experience. It is not unique to
9:48
women or it is unique to everybody who is not a 45 year
9:51
old white male who the workplace was built for. You are
9:55
not difficult. You are not a
9:59
problem. You are not too much. They're not enough.
10:03
You are not difficult. You are team difficult. And those are
10:06
two separate things. Last weekend my husband
10:10
and I did something we don't do very often.
10:14
There's this club in town and we are very old
10:17
people. So even saying those
10:21
words in any order is just terrifying. But it's one of those
10:25
clubs where there's like a long
10:29
line to get in and it's members only. Like you have to have like a.
10:33
I don't know, there's like some. I don't even actually know how that works. People
10:36
actually ask us if we're members all the time, which is kind of weird. I
10:39
don't know why it comes up so often. I also can't believe that we can
10:42
say we're members. But that's. That's like a whole nother thing that came
10:46
from like a whole nother thing. But like there's a line to get in.
10:50
You have to go at specific times. It's a
10:54
little hit or miss. It's even wild to say this.
10:57
People go there literally to get drugs.
11:01
There's actually a line to get out, which is also weird.
11:05
Especially if you're like me and don't like being around a lot of people.
11:09
They do have like specials and stuff inside, which I sometimes have
11:13
to get acclimated to. We certainly don't go on weekends very often.
11:16
I feel like he probably goes more often than I do. Like a lot of
11:20
our life is built around this. And that is
11:24
very midlife of us. Like very midlife of
11:27
us. Like exclusive club built around this. Don't go on
11:31
weekends anyway. It's Costco. And we
11:35
went last weekend and
11:39
I regretted it so much
11:43
that I was literally willing to take an entire day off this
11:47
week if we needed something. So I would never have
11:51
to go on a weekend again to be Clear. That is the
11:54
only club that you are catching my husband and I in 100%.
11:58
My husband was a much cooler person in his youth than I was at
12:02
the same age. Even though, to be clear, he is ancient
12:05
compared to me. He is like 150 years older than me. Not
12:09
exactly, but close. When he was enjoying his
12:13
misbegone youth, I was in middle school.
12:16
There's a story that his family tells about a time
12:20
that there was this giant family disagreement over a Christmas tree. Because
12:24
that's apparently something the gentiles argue about. I don't fucking know.
12:28
We're getting to the part of the year where I have to have the conversation
12:32
with fellow Jews about the fact that Christmas trees have backs.
12:36
To this day, I've been married to a Gentile for 15
12:40
years, and I still cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Christmas trees
12:44
have backs. That cannot be true. It can't be
12:47
true. Anyway, I forgot where that was going
12:51
because I got distracted by the world's most confusing
12:55
principle, which is that Christmas trees have backs.
12:59
But I was very willing to take, like, an entire
13:03
day off work if we needed to go to Costco because
13:07
there wasn't parking. The parking lot was
13:11
full. Not like we had to park in the back, which
13:14
is fine because we park in the back anyway. Because if anybody touches my husband's
13:18
car, I have to bail him out of jail, and I don't want to do
13:20
that. So we park in the back. That's fine. There was no parking
13:24
in the back. There was an overflow lot.
13:28
That had no parking. So, listen, I
13:32
get that they have a $50 hot dog and
13:36
soda. I am
13:39
deeply, deeply appreciative of an inexpensive hot dog
13:43
and soda. Deeply appreciative of it.
13:46
But I should not have to park in an overflow lot
13:51
to go to Costco. And that, to me, seems like
13:55
a strong indication that you need another
13:58
Costco. And to be clear,
14:02
Sam's is not Costco. Sam's will do in a pinch,
14:07
but Sam's is not Costco. I think if you wanted to really,
14:11
really make me, like, endlessly happy for at
14:14
least a couple hours, because that's about as much
14:18
unabashed happiness you're probably gonna get outta me. I am Jewish, by the way. But
14:21
that's. It's just not. We're not effusive people, but if you could clear out a
14:25
Costco and just have it be me walking
14:28
around with the little snack ladies and not be
14:32
judged for eating all the samples as I walk around my
14:35
very Quiet, very giant Costco. That would make
14:39
me really happy. So I'm just saying those are my goals.
14:43
Is enough Costcos that I don't have to park in the
14:47
overflow, overflow lot or a completely empty Costco
14:50
just for me with like a parade of snack ladies.
14:54
Snack men are fine too. Snack. They's are fine. I'll take them
14:58
all the she's, they's gays of the snacks. I'm
15:02
here for them. Bring me all the snacks on
15:06
little toothpicks. Anyway, that is the only club that you are going to catch. My
15:09
husband and I ate and even that is becoming too raucous
15:13
for me in my old age. It's too much.
15:20
So this is kind of a new experience. But I was at an event a
15:24
couple weeks ago and somebody came up to me with basically a live small
15:27
talk. I had just gotten done speaking at the conference
15:31
and she cornered me. Seems aggressive. She was very nice.
15:34
She was not aggressive at all. But she found me, I guess is a better
15:38
way to put it afterward. And she was like, I follow you on LinkedIn and
15:41
I need to ask you a question. And I was like, go for it. And
15:44
so she basically looked at me in the face and was like, what do
15:48
I do if I'm buried under burnout and there's no way for me to get
15:51
out of it? I was like, that is a big
15:55
question, but a really good question.
15:59
She basically asked, you know, what does she do
16:03
to get herself back after being in burnout for so long? That's really what
16:06
she was asking. So we started talking
16:10
and she did a thing that a lot of women do when I talk to
16:13
them. She basically recounted a
16:17
horrific several years, including
16:21
having a new child under really horrible circumstances, where she got personally
16:25
ill, where she had long term complications from it being the breadwinner for her
16:29
family, having some interpersonal issues within her family that are a problem
16:32
and a challenge. I mean, the things that she recounted
16:36
were in no way shocking because I hear about them all the time,
16:40
but they certainly weren't okay.
16:43
She works at a job that she really likes, but it's a small company
16:47
and so they can't give her all the benefits that she would have at a
16:50
bigger company, but she's worked at bigger companies before and that was really awful too.
16:54
And she has a partner, but she's the breadwinner and her
16:58
partner hasn't been able to move up in his job and. And she
17:01
still does the lion's share of the stuff at home, even though she has a
17:05
partner who has more free time than she does, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
17:08
blah. And she was like, well, how do I get through it?
17:11
And I was like, I mean, is anything going to change?
17:16
And this is not an unreasonable question. She was asking,
17:20
how can I make this life that I'm living more
17:24
manageable without changing anything? Not because she doesn't want to change anything,
17:28
but, like, what are her options? She doesn't have that many options in front
17:32
of her. I don't want to set an expectation that that was an unreasonable
17:35
question. She should want better. She is buried in a whole lot of shit.
17:39
But also this expectation
17:44
that there's something that she can change to
17:48
undo all of the things around her. That's not how
17:51
it works. And so I said to her, if you weren't
17:55
burned out, I would be really concerned.
17:59
That is an unsustainable amount of stuff that is piled on you,
18:03
and you're asking how to not be burned out instead of how to get more
18:07
support. I was like, do you have any help?
18:11
And she has a partner who is helpful. And first off, her partner shouldn't
18:15
be helpful to her. Her partner should be doing his fair share. I'm not saying
18:18
that he's not, but I'm saying that language and of itself, and you see how
18:21
quickly IG faulted to it, that language is harmful in and of itself.
18:26
That's not the babysitter. That's her partner. That's the
18:29
person who is responsible for 50% of their burden
18:34
and depending on the time, sometimes more. And
18:37
so, you know, she rattles off the list of support, quote, unquote, support that she
18:41
has, but it's clear that she either isn't maximizing it, doesn't feel like she can
18:44
maximize it, or it's support in name only.
18:48
She makes a bunch of excuses for the job. You know, we don't have a
18:51
lot of funding, we don't have a lot of money. And so they can't give
18:54
me more support at work. They can't promote me, they can't pay me more. They
18:58
can't do this so that I can afford more at home. They can't, they can't,
19:00
they can't, they can't, they can't. And all of that boils down to
19:04
what does she have to do to fix it. She's responsible
19:08
for fixing all of these things where people around her are just abjectly failing
19:12
her. I literally asked her, I was like, so who are you failing? And she
19:15
was like, no one that I know of. And I was like, Bingo. What's
19:19
the point? So I didn't really have any
19:23
super advice for her except to say,
19:28
you are taking on a whole lot of onus for being in a really shit
19:31
situation and not expecting
19:34
anybody else to do anything to help.
19:39
You're not asking more from your job, you're not asking more from your partner, you're
19:42
not asking for support from your community, you're not trying to build a bigger community,
19:46
you're not looking for additional childcare, you're not, you're not, you're not that. And again,
19:49
that's not putting the blame on her for those things. She's putting the blame
19:53
on herself that she can't make this completely untenable situation work.
19:57
It's untenable for a reason.
20:01
She looked at me and she said, sorry, are you basically saying like that this
20:04
is the way it's supposed to be? And I was like, no, it's definitely not
20:07
the way it's supposed to be, but it's that way for a reason.
20:10
You're not gonna wake up one day and be able to juggle 47 things
20:14
better. That's not the way we were supposed to exist.
20:18
Reminder that this person is the primary breadwinner
20:22
and primary caretaker for a human
20:26
with all of the responsibilities that she has to take care of outside of work.
20:30
She also works a more than full time job. She also is not
20:34
probably compensated as she should be for that full time
20:37
job. And when I say compensation, I don't mean necessarily her take
20:41
home pay. What support does she have through work? What benefits does she have
20:45
through work? Are there caregivers, supports, Are there additional time off? Does she
20:49
have the ability to take paid time off? My recollection is that she said she
20:52
wasn't even paid for maternity leave, so like going out on another leave is not
20:56
an option. And so not only does she have this
20:59
historic backlog of deeply difficult things that happened,
21:04
but now she's trying to exist in a more day to day world,
21:07
carrying that where she has done no recovery
21:11
from that or insufficient recovery from that, and
21:15
piling more on top of it as she tries to exist through this very difficult
21:18
situation currently. And the only answer I had was
21:22
this isn't sustainable. You're looking for you to
21:26
fix a situation that is not sustainable in the
21:29
current incarnation. It's not fixable unless you're just going to keep existing in
21:33
it. And that's not even fixing it, that's just muddling along.
21:38
Burnout is often related to a set of circumstances
21:41
that are completely out of our Control, meaning
21:45
a work situation that's really bad, a personal situation
21:49
that's really bad, a caregiver situation that's really bad, sometimes many of
21:53
those things all at once. And
21:56
yes, we should turn inward to see if there's things that we can change to
22:00
fix them. But if you look at me
22:03
and say I need to take time off, but I don't
22:07
have that ability through my work because it's a small startup and we don't get
22:11
that benefit, that's not on you.
22:15
That's a bad situation, that's a shitty situation that you were put in by your
22:18
employer. And I get it. I run a small startup, I know how hard it
22:22
can be. But looking for a
22:25
solution to a whole bunch of external things
22:29
internally. First off, that's the thing that a lot of women and femmes do, where
22:33
we think that we're the problem when we've really been thrown into the deep end
22:37
of just a terribly shitty situation. She was nothing
22:40
that she said to me sounded like she had control over any
22:44
of the situations that were burning her out. And the first thing to
22:48
do was recognize that was the reality.
22:52
Burnout is a reasonable response to the sheer
22:56
number of stressors that were punching her in the head daily. And to stop
23:00
feeling guilty for not being able to do it all. None of
23:03
us are superhuman. And also, there's no medal.
23:08
You don't get a medal for shouldering the burden of everything and not
23:12
asking for help, and worse, not getting help if you
23:15
do ask. The only victory that you get at the end of that is
23:19
feeling disconnected from your whole life because it feels like everybody is taking
23:23
from you and no one's putting back in. It's just something to keep in
23:27
mind as you are working through burnout is that if you are put in
23:30
a bunch of really bad situations, sometimes the
23:34
solution for burnout does not come from inside. It comes from
23:38
fixing a bunch of things that are happening externally, getting out of
23:41
situations, changing living arrangements, getting additional help,
23:45
finding a new job, whatever. Because
23:49
you are in an environment that if you weren't burned out, I would be
23:53
concerned. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love
23:56
you. Mean it.
24:03
I have been waiting for that reaction since this occurred to
24:06
me last night. I loved
24:10
it. That is great. I was like, this one might actually break him.
24:14
This one might actually break him.