I have a habit of saying the obvious things most workplaces avoid.

Hi, I’m Lauren Howard. You can call me L2. Like other people do.

In this episode of Different, Not Broken, I break down why basic human standards at work get treated like radical ideas, why return to office policies are deeply ableist, and why so much “innovative leadership” is really just common sense wrapped in better language.

This episode is about simplifying what’s been overcomplicated for years.

You’ll hear:

1. Why psychological safety isn’t a perk
2. How bad management hides behind complexity
3. The real reason companies are pushing return to office
4. Why clarity often gets mistaken for controversy
5. What actually changes when you treat people like humans

Once you’ve been inspired to brag, here’s where you can do it!

https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

Useful stuff

Stuff that helps you become awesome even if you’re different: https://stan.store/elletwo

My grown up job: https://lbeehealth.com/

Chapters / Timestamps

00:00 – Why saying the obvious sounds “radical”

02:08 – The bare minimum we’ve stopped expecting at work

03:47 – Psychological safety isn’t a perk

04:38 – Why return to office is deeply ableist

06:36 – The real reason companies want people back in offices

07:46 – Bad management disguised as productivity

09:05 – Treat people like humans and they quit less

10:36 – Listener brag: feeling on top of life

11:15 – Why I hate “love languages”

11:49 – The science and art of a crispy Coke

13:49 – Big bubbles, bad Coke, and betrayal

15:31 – Freestyle machines are not acceptable

17:59 – Small Talk Listener Question: grieving a late neurodivergent diagnosis

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The push to return to office is deeply ableist. If you treat

people like humans, they will want to quit less.

Is it possible that everything feels exhausting? Because everything is exhausting.

All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record. Cause that feels right.

Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,

everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different

Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.

That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And

the real you're just different. And that's fine.

So this came up at a conference I was at a few weeks ago.

I was doing a fireside with this amazing facilitator, and she

said, how is it that you say these things that get people

thinking so often? And I think she meant

these, like, very, very simple things that I. Well,

I think are simple, but these things that, like a paycheck is not a permission

slip for abuse, that I say all the time, that are. Seem to turn the

lights on for people who don't understand why they're stuck or what,

situate, you know, why they can't get out of the situation they're in or why

things are happening the way they're happening. The reality is she kind

of caught me off guard, which is pretty hard to do, especially when I'm,

like, doing a fireside because, like, I'm up for anything. I'm, I

think, on my feet really well, and I didn't exactly have an

answer for it. I think she wanted me to say that I have this

curated list of responses that I give

in very specific situations, and that they're well crafted and

that we've spent many years putting together this information,

and we kind of have in that I have

been running my mouth on the Internet for a long time, and

we have an arsenal of things that I have run my mouth to say,

but none of them are planned. It's not like I'm out here like

I'm gonna deliver this message. It's just like, I heard this thing

that I think is stupid, and I wanna push back on it. And I don't

think that people should be responsible for the things that they're told or the things

that they hear about themselves or the ways that they've been thought or taught

to think about themselves or whatever. But the reason it caught me off guard

was she asked me how I say these

things that basically that people need to hear. I think

I know I do that, but I didn't. It's not

intentional. The point being, I'm not saying anything. That to me feels

revolutionary. I'm saying the very obvious things that

are sitting in front of me, like, your job shouldn't be allowed to abuse you.

Workplace abuse is the same thing as getting abused at home. You should

not accept abuse just because they're paying you to exist in their

environment. None of those things are revolutionary.

And people respond to them as if I've blown their

minds when I am literally asking for the bare

minimum. The bare minimum. You should be

psychologically safe in your workplace. That's not

a shocking request. That is something that people should

have at the bare minimum. Psychological safety is not a fringe benefit. It

is not a thing that you get just for being an executive

who sets policy for the company. You should be psychologically

safe in your environment. You should get paid the

same. Regardless whether you

participate in the workplace politics or not, you do get paid

the same. Meaning, screw the stuff that you don't get paid for.

You don't have to participate in things that make you

uncomfortable. None of that is revolutionary.

And so she caught me off guard, asking, like, how did we come up

with these things? And I'm like, how did nobody else.

I can't be the first person saying some of these things. I know I'm not.

I might be the first person you've heard it from, but I'm not the first

person saying these things. And if I am, that's terrifying

because this shit is like baseline humanity.

Like, this is the bare minimum of how you should treat other

humans. There's this whole push, and really we're at the last

legs of it now for all of the jobs that went fully remote during the

pandemic to get pushed back to the office. And

you hear a lot about how RTO is so important for team building

and how people do better in an office and teams

work better in an office. Nobody's talking about the fact that return

to office is deeply ableist. It completely

changes the playing field for likely neurodivergent individuals who

work better in their own environment, who work better in a controlled environment,

in an environment that they set up. And not even just neurodivergent individuals

work from home made it possible for people with lots of different disabilities

to succeed at work because they were able to do it from their own environment.

It created environments for people with all types of

different disabilities to succeed. So the push to return to office is

deeply ableist. But also this bullshit that they throw at us

about team building, about how you can run a better team if you're all in

the same place all the time. And if meetings are more productive, if first

off, I am substantially less productive in an office, and I say

that as the person who literally runs the show. I lose hours,

hours of work in an office. There's prep

time for getting ready. There's travel, there's

schmoozing and palling around with the people that you work with.

There's meetings that run over. There's all sorts of

distractions, there's long breaks for lunch. I probably get

three to four hours less work done in this

supposedly more productive office than I do from my home,

where I still interact with all my coworkers, where I still spend lots of time

with people, where I have everything that I need within my

grasp, where I can be

shoeless and in soft pants, therefore comfortable, therefore working

harder, I work drastically better in my

own environment. Does that mean you should never be in person with

your team? No, but there are ways to facilitate that. And there

are ways to facilitate really good remote meetings where you get the same kind of

collaboration. What nobody's talking about return to office

is that a lot of these companies invested in very

expensive buildings, very expensive buildings that

are the primary holding that that company

has. When nobody's working in an office,

property values go in the toilet. Local

governments don't do well when property values are in the toilet.

They are incentivized to get people back to the office.

Businesses suffer when their primary investment,

I. E. A large skyscraper,

has no value because everybody was working from

home. So now, instead of

selling the damn building that they don't need, they're dragging

everybody back into the office because they care more about property values than they do

about people. That's what it is. That's what's driving the return to office

movement. It has nothing to do with camaraderie and better teams. There

are plenty of really good tools to manage remote teams. And if you can't

figure it out, it's because you're a bad manager. Not because there aren't good ways

to manage remote teams. You need a different manager. There are

so many good tools to manage remote teams. And then there's also the whole thing

that, like, if you treat people like adults and pay them fairly for their work,

they'll do their job and you won't have to worry that much about actively managing

them day to day. There's that every time I have someone

tell me that they can't get their employees to work, the first question I ask

them is, what are you paying them? And it's always Met with silence,

always. Well, we can't afford to. Well then

you can't afford to run your business. If you can't afford to pay people,

people fairly, you can't afford to run your business. You

don't have people who are not performing because they're

bad people. You have people who are not performing because you're paying them shit and

expecting them to work at a job that where they should be

making double, if not more. Every single time I have some

dude tell me that a remote team would never work for his team because

if they're not actively monitored, they don't work. My first question is, what

are you paying them? And it is literally always met with some kind of objection

about how that's not relevant. If it wasn't relevant, you would

tell me, you would tell me how much. You would say we pay them so

well and we give them full benefits and they get good vacation and they still

are bad at their jobs. That doesn't happen. I was just kind of

floored by this question that I got because like all of that is common sense.

It's literally supply and demand. That's what that balancing

scale is. That's common sense. It's well

documented. There's plenty of arsenals of documentation

on how well paid employees do better work, how happy

employees stay longer, how they don't need as much management,

how you can run an effective team if you're not being a cheap asshole.

None of that is revolutionary. So the thing to gawk at is

not that I say anything that is

revolutionary or different or anything beyond

literally the baseline of how we should treat humans.

The shocking thing is that it's of any interest at all

because other people aren't saying it, or not even that other people aren't

saying it, that it's not the common knowledge. I'm saying, like this is baseline

stuff. If you treat people like humans, they will want to quit

less, they will feel ownership in the company,

they will want to perform, they will want to stay in your company.

Shocking. That's common sense. I'm

so tired of being treated like I'm doing or saying anything that is

revolutionary when the reality is the problem is that everybody else

is running really bad operations that treat people like shit. And I

don't say everybody else. There are good companies out there that are doing things. But

the point being there is nothing earth shattering about anything that comes out of

my mouth. The terrifying thing is that it's not widely

accepted as how we should treat humans. That's the terrifying thing

is Parroting the things that to me seem so fricking

obvious, and the fact that it shocks anybody

as innovative leadership should be more

terrifying than it is. Just treat people like humans and

you'd be surprised how human they act.

And now we're going to hear from some of our listeners with their weekly brags.

This is Candace M. On January 4th. Before my

official first day back at work for the new year, I have already

signed my son up for summer summer camp in August and

for slow pitch this spring. Really feeling like I have my poop

in a group. So 2026. Let's go.

I hate the idea of love languages. I hate them. Like, please do some

research into the background behind what

love languages are, because it was a book written by a pastor to

convince all women that all men have

touch as their primary love language. Which means that you should give your husband sex

whenever he wants and you should feel bad if you deny him sex. And that

all women are just, you know, complicated

creatures who. Who need things other than touch and have a different love

language. But if you want to make your man happy, just give him sex all

the time. That's what the love languages is about, really. It's all

very coercive to get women to give their husband unmitigated amounts of sex.

So, anyway, I don't use the term love language, but if there was something that

wasn't creepy, that was like a love language,

I would have one. And it is not

expensive jewelry. It's not big

gifts. It's not

sweeping gestures. It's not

anything that requires a ton of planning.

Show up to my door with a fountain Coke

from a place that, you know, I like the fountain Coke.

I will be forever in your debt. I will love you so

much. That is the greatest sign of love and affection to me is somebody who

knows she likes fountain Coke from Chili. So I'm gonna stop and

get her a fountain Coke from Chili's. And you could give it to me in

an unmarked cup and I would be able to tell you what restaurant

it was from, because that's the way my

brain works. But there is a certain. I don't even

know how to describe it. In some

soda that comes out of a fountain where the carbonation is

so fresh and, like, recently

replaced, there's so much CO2 pumped into

this thing. It, like, tickles your lips. Then it burns your lips a little bit

and it tastes so fresh. Usually, I have found

I've actually been told this by people who worked in restaurants and

maintained soda fountains that it Means the fountain is very

clean. If they clean the soda machine a lot

and replace the CO2 correctly, you

get what is affectionately known as a very crispy

Coke. And that means the

carbonation is sharp, it's big bubbles. If you take too big

a sip, it usually makes you burp almost immediately because you are literally

inhaling CO2. You're like. And it's not

attractive. It's the right syrup to bubbles

ratio. Again, I can

tell you where a Coke is from by taste.

And a fountain Coke from specific places versus a 20 ounce

coke versus a 2 liter bottle versus a can of Coke. Not the same. Those

are totally different drinks. I will tell you which one I'm in the mood for.

If it's all you have, I will take it. I'll be happy. But

it is not unlike me to send my husband on a

run to get me a 20 ounce coke. And if he comes back with

anything other than a 20 ounce bottle of Coke, I will

take it and I will side eye him because this is not

correct and he knows it. I am not particular about that many

things. Things, really I'm not. I am deeply

flexible on most things. But if I tell you I want

a Coke from McDonald's and you bring me

a Coke from literally anywhere else that is not on

my list of like one or two places that I prefer the Coke from,

I'm gonna be visibly disappointed. And if you're my husband

and this sounds awful, but just know he has a very good life and I

make sure of it. If you're my husband and you show up to this house

with something other than exactly what I asked for, when the ask

is for Coke fountain Coke, I should

say no other kind of Coke. Nothing

illicit. Literally brown stuff in a bottle that might also be

eroding my insides. But it's too late. The damage

has already been done. We are not undoing it. I was born

in the 80s. Our parents all but put it in our bottles.

We are damaged. There's nothing that we can do to undo it. It is the

one thing that gives me joy on a daily basis. I have tried many

times to stop consuming it. You are taking the limited

light that I have out of my day. Also, if

you dare darken my doorway with

a drink from a Coke freestyle machine, you

do not know me. We are not friends. Our

relationship cannot continue. There is no

greater disappointment to me than walking into an establishment thinking that

I'm about to get a crispy Coke and find out that it is a Coke

freestyle machine. I will get Coke from a bottle.

If that's the case, if I can, or I will. This shows you

how disappointed I am. This shows you how much you have failed me. I

will drink water. I will drink water. I

also say this as a person who, like, acts like I don't like water, actually,

really like water. Every time I drink water, I act like I have

discovered a new drink, especially water with ice in it. I

act like I've discovered this new drink that I didn't know I love. It literally

happens, like, twice a day. I'm like, oh, this is so refreshing. Why don't I

drink this more? Because it doesn't have empty calories in it. That's why.

Duh. It's not loaded with sugar. Ice water is

delicious. And I don't know why. I have it completely.

I have my brain completely convinced that I don't like it, which is not true.

I do quite like it. I also really like a seltzer, which my kids call

spicy water. Not hard seltzer, just regular seltzer. No flavor.

You people who put flavor in your seltzers, it's not even flavor.

It's like a fart of some idea of a flavor. Like, you

get the, like, people who drink La Croix. It's like a

whisper of watermelon and metal, and they're like, would you

like a watermelon lacri? No, I don't want that. That's gross.

That's gross. You're taking something that was perfectly fine on its own and giving

it the suggestion of a flavor. No, I very

happily will drink. Actually. Aldi has really, really good

canned seltzer. And it is very crispy when you first

open it. And it has big bubbles. Not small bubbles, big bubbles. And it's

very inexpensive. And it's, like, the only thing I shop at Aldi for. I get

an Aldi delivery every couple of weeks of, like, six cases of seltzer so

that I drink something other than the crispy Cokes that I send my

husband on a retrieval for all the time. Because in my brain, if I

don't buy them and keep them in the house, then I will drink them less.

And instead, I just send my husband to retrieve them. And he

does it because he doesn't like the consequences of not.

Because if I'm asking for one, shit's happening.

It means I need emotional stability that I can only get

from a Grisby Coke.

And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's

small talk. I've only recently started thinking I Might

be neurodivergent. And I feel weirdly late to the party.

Part of me feels relieved and part of me feels angry that nobody

noticed sooner. Is it normal to grieve a version of yourself you never

got to be? Okay, so first I want to say normal is

bullshit. We don't strive to be normal. It doesn't exist.

But everything that you are describing is

a completely reasonable part of this process. You're going to grieve the

person you didn't get to be. You're going to grieve the little kid that you

were who didn't get the support that they needed. You're going to grieve the version

of yourself you could have been younger. All of that is

something people grieve over. And I encourage you

to grieve over it. Not that I want you to be sad and feel

sad and whatever, but because

the mechanism of grief is really important to learning things about

yourself and to figuring out how to

move to this next stage of your life. And so yes, it

is absolutely using the word I hate normal to feel

that way in this situation. It is. We

see a lot of people who voluntarily come in for a diagnosis,

get the diagnosis and then really struggle with the diagnosis,

even though they pretty much knew beforehand, even though they might have self diagnosed.

But there is something totally different about having a clinician agree

with you, even if you were certain before. It's just

different. And so there is no range of emotions that

is incorrect in this situation by any means.

And honestly, like that's the truth in a lot of

situations, like we act like there's some sort of

pre described set of responses that you're supposed to have

in major life changes or difficult

situations. And that's not the truth. It's not the truth at all.

I'm the type of person who gets into a

really tough situation and laughs until I can't stop laughing.

Like laughs until I cry. Like literally I will have tears streaming down my face

because my reaction is to laugh and not cry. And I could be in the

worst situation in the world. I cannot tell you

how much we laughed the day after my dad died. And there was some

heavy grieving going on and it was brand new and we were processing. But like

it also, there was some of it was just really

funny in my very twisted and adult brain. So outside

of even this particular situation,

you're entitled to whatever reaction your body and your brain have,

but also that feeling of just

uncertainty, not knowing whether

you're responding correctly, not knowing what the next thing to do

is that's the way it's supposed to be. Regardless whether you knew it before

or not, this is all new to you. This is a new path. There's no

roadmap for this. There's something else I wanted to address

that you said. There's this idea of late, and it's called

late diagnosed. If you're diagnosed older than, I think, 13 or

something. So late is kind of the correct clinical term.

Maybe. But there is no finish

line. There is no medal

waiting for you when you have this great personal epiphany. There

is. Like, in light, life does not put up a checkered

flag and a ribbon to run through

when you achieve something or when you get to a point in your life.

And so just kind of keep that in mind. It's like

you're late to this information. And. Yeah. Did that

probably make your heart, your life harder in some ways?

In some ways, maybe it did. But are you. Are you

running late for life? Are you. Are you coming to the

information later than you should have? I don't know that there's no

finish line. You came there, you got there. When you got there, you might not

have, you know, you did the best with the resources that you have. You might

not have had the knowledge. You might not have known about the conditions. You might

not have been surrounded by the right people. Like, life brought you there when

it brought you there. And there is. It didn't bring you there because you finally

got to the finish line. There's no finish line. You get there, and then you're

presented with 700 new hurdles that you're gonna have to jump over. That's the

way it works. So you're not late. You're exactly where you're supposed to be,

even if where you're supposed to be is gonna require some

untangling and redoing. Thanks for being here, guys.

Have a good day. Love you mean it.

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