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Zoom Trauma
I work as a social media manager at a nonprofit. This past year I convinced my organization to sign a two-year contract with a third-party app to help with our social media tracking and analysis. A year into the contract, I met with our rep at the app on a Zoom call to discuss the app’s overwhelming glitches.
Toward the end of our hourlong meeting, which had so far been just the two of us peering into our respective laptop cameras, something flesh-colored crept into the corner of her screen and blocked her shoulder. To be polite, I’ll just say it appeared as a dildo. I was flabbergasted and kept talking like I didn’t notice. A few minutes of me filling the silence passed and the dildo crept up again. This time she couldn’t hold back a giddy smile. We ended the meeting, and I didn’t know what to do.
A few days later, and after what felt like a ritual in humiliated silence, I told my manager, who immediately understood the discomfort I must have felt and agreed that we needed out of that contract immediately. My organization’s legal team and managers met with the app’s team, who said I was wrong: According to them, an oddly shaped, flesh-colored “vase” crept into the frame, and that’s what I saw.
I was then told by my managers that, as a result, we were locked into a two-year contract that we couldn’t escape. The shame didn’t go away, and now I can’t even open the app because I am so angry. I have no legal recourse. The experience has left me feeling humiliated. What should I do? Leave my organization even though they did what they could?
— Anonymous
What should you do? I think you should examine your feelings of shame.
I recognize this is a bit woo-woo, and not the kind of proactive, cut-to-the-chase advice people hope to receive when they write in, but I think the most important thing you can do for yourself — and your ability to continue doing your job — is recognize that you have no reason to feel shame in this situation. You haven’t done anything wrong. You acted professionally and appropriately every step of the way.
Your counterparts at the app, unfortunately, did not. Even under the most generous possible interpretation of events, they created an uncomfortable working environment and then refused to take any responsibility for it, all while your organization continued to pay them for an app that doesn’t even work. Anger, I think, is an understandable response to that sequence of events. But shame seems misplaced. You did not fail here; you were failed.
I get the feeling from your letter that the shame you feel is at least in part about a worry that you’ve let down or disgraced yourself to your manager and co-workers. Not only is your organization still obligated to pay for another year of degraded service from a company indifferent to your concerns, your manager and company lawyers directed their time and energy toward the futile goal of extricating your organization from this contract. To make matters worse, I can’t help but notice that you specify that you are also the person who persuaded the company to contract with the app in the first place.
I can understand experiencing this kind of disappointment as a huge annoying waste, entirely attributable to you — and, in turn, feeling that your only option is to run away from all the people who spent time and energy on an ultimately fruitless endeavor at your behest.
But I’d encourage you to turn that instinct on its head: The fact that your employers were so willing to devote resources to making you feel safe and trusted is a reason to stay, not to leave. That your company’s lawyers were unable to break the contract says more about the difficulty of unwinding legal agreements than it does about whether your managers believed your story.
You will probably never get the satisfaction of a confession, or even an apology, from the horrible app people. But your employer’s reaction should be validating, and reassuring: Not many companies are so responsive to their employees.
I understand that “reversing your feelings of shame and humiliation and learning to see the unbearable Zoom dildo incident as a counterintuitively validating experience” is a tall order, even given the natural deadline of the expiring contract. Maybe you could ask someone else to take on the portion of your duties that requires interacting with this app. And if you’re having trouble doing your job more generally, you may want to see a therapist, to help you process the experience and develop strategies for getting through the remaining contract period.
But I’d encourage you to stick it out. Ultimately, the real humiliation would be leaving a job that otherwise works for you over someone else’s unprofessionalism.
When the Bad Boss Is Your Friend
I’m struggling with adjusting to a new working relationship with my former boss and dear friend. She was a key player in a major, multiyear project where there was a major disruption early on and a project manager left. My former boss took over running the project voluntarily, working more hours than she was paid to. For several months, my former boss held the project together almost single-handedly. I understand she has a tremendous sense of ownership in this project’s success.
Now there is a new project manager, things are settling down, and my former boss won’t relinquish the reins. When I was brought in, I knew that my former manager was bitter, burned out and unhappy. Her work behavior now is unrecognizable to me. She openly makes snide quips in meetings and rarely misses a chance to bring up past mistakes of others. She claims she wants to do less but initiates involvement in tasks assigned to others. She wants to take action on the spot and actively resists taking decisions to the leadership team. If she’s not working extra hours or doing a task herself, she complains about how things are getting done. She often jokes that she’s a benevolent dictator, but the benevolence is in short supply and she’s not the project leader.
The leadership team has stated openly it intends to ride out the situation. How best to avoid becoming bitter and burned out myself in the 10 months until the project ends?
— Anonymous
I have to say, leadership at your company sounds quite bad. The fact that the leaders have permitted this situation to develop — first, by allowing your former boss to overwork herself without proper compensation, and then by declining to intervene when her bitterness affects everyone else’s work — speaks extremely poorly of their management skills. They’ve effectively offloaded their job onto you, asking you to manage your boss’s counterproductive disposition either by affirming her (as they never did) or confronting her (as they are refusing to do now).
If it’s the kind of workplace where you feel comfortable doing so, I would consider making clear to the leadership team how badly it has handled this situation, which has now metastasized to affect an entire major project.
But I’d guess it’s not that kind of workplace, and you’re going to be left picking through your friend’s emotional and professional wreckage for the next 10 months. The good news here is that you’re asking the right question — “How do I save myself?” — rather than the wrong one — “How do I save my former boss?” (Or, worse, “How do I save this project?”)
This sounds like selfish advice, because your friend is going through it. But the quickest path to burnout and bitterness would be to make her day-to-day well-being your project. If there’s an appropriate way to communicate to your former boss that her behavior is hurting her career and workplace reputation, you owe her that as a friend.
But she’s unlikely to have a sudden revelation. The most important task is looking after your own professional and personal well-being. When the project is done and she’s had some distance and perspective, your friendship might recover. But until then she’s not safe to be close to at work.
The basic advice here is practical: Be as boring and professional as possible. Set firm but quiet boundaries; don’t engage with her snide quips and complaints, and refuse to take the bait when she brings up past mistakes. Politely but directly decline her help when she tries to involve herself: “Thanks, but I’ve got this handled. I’ll let you know if I need help.” Document your own work, and insist on confirmations to minimize the chance for miscommunication.
If you’re lucky, your former boss’s anger and negativity will burn out in the absence of the small conflicts and complaints that are keeping it fueled. But even if you’re not, you’re drawing a line between her project (externalizing the pain and anger she feels over her unrecognized sacrifices) and your project (the actual work project).
If you have P.T.O., be generous with yourself in taking it. It’ll be better for the project in the long run if you’re fully energized and engaged when you work on it. And, more important, better for you.
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