Every time I talk publicly about being a woman at work, the first response is the same. It’s never "that sounds hard." It’s "well, I had a terrible boss once, and she was a woman."

Yeah. Okay. Women are allowed to suck, too. Plenty of men suck and we just accept that as fine.

So this episode is about the two women you’re allowed to be in a workplace that was not built for you. The one who shrinks to fit — who gets told she’s too big, too loud, too many ideas, and folds all of it up inside herself, hands her ideas to somebody else so they’ll get heard, stops saying the thing she knows is going to go wrong. And the one who strikes to kill — who was taught there’s only ever room for one of her, so she leaves no space for the next one coming up behind.

They’re the same woman. Same message, two ways out. You are not allowed here, you should feel lucky we let you in, and if you’re uncomfortable with how we do things then you should shut up or leave.

I’ve talked to thousands of women over the last five years who live inside that, and I lived inside it myself. I’m the person who had to hand her idea to the nearest male coworker because it would be taken seriously from him and ignored from me.

All of that is evidence of a problem with the workplace. It is not evidence of a problem with you.

You are not intimidating. They’re intimidated. Nobody is going to make them do the work to find out why you’re such a threat, so you’re going to stay a threat — but you do not have to make yourself smaller to fix something you didn’t break. You’ve been the same person the whole time.

You are not too much. They are not enough.

Plus: breaking news on the semicolon rant, in which four actual English professors turn up to tell me I was right. And an Ask L2 from Kieran, who wants an exemption from the don’t-fight-with-pigs rule for a pig who owes him $4,000.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 "You are not allowed here"

00:00:23 Welcome to You’re Not Too Much

00:00:37 What always happens when I talk about women at work

00:01:08 Women are allowed to suck, too

00:01:46 I wish you the success of the mediocre white male

00:02:25 Persona one: the woman who shrinks to fit

00:04:13 Persona two: the woman who strikes to kill

00:05:09 Both of those are the same thing

00:06:37 Thousands of women, same paradigm

00:07:57 Give it to your nearest male coworker

00:08:19 A problem with the workplace, not a problem with you

00:08:28 You are not intimidating. They’re intimidated.

00:09:03 What you actually owe a job you need

00:09:44 You are not too much

00:10:04 They are not enough

00:10:57 Do enough to survive, then find a place that doesn’t suck

00:11:05 Ten thousand levers you don’t need to pull

00:11:20 You’ve been the same person the whole time

00:11:55 Your five to nine is better than your nine to five

00:12:03 A toxic waste dump and no hazmat suit

00:12:31 What professionalism actually means

00:12:57 Why the show is now called You’re Not Too Much

00:13:25 Breaking news: the semicolon rant, vindicated

00:15:26 Ask L2 — "This pig owes me $4,000"

00:16:37 You can have whatever tone you want

00:17:15 The strongly worded email

Every episode: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com

Leave me a voicemail: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

Come find the rest of us: https://alwaysquirky.com

You are not allowed here.

You're not supposed to be here.

You can either feel special by making sure that nobody is ever offended by your

presence, and speak only when spoken to.

If you want something to be paid attention to, you have to give it to your nearest

male coworker because they'll take it seriously from them and ignore it from you.

Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken

Network, a podcast about how you're not too much, they're not enough.

Space expands, so let's fill it.

There's one thing that kind of always happens when I talk about safety for

women in the workplace or how to exist while female, how to work while being

a woman. And how workplaces are not constructed to be hospitable to people

who are not middle-aged white guys.

And one of the first things that I always hear is, "Well, I had a terrible

boss once, and she was a woman."

Yeah.

Okay.

Women are allowed to suck, too.

Plenty of men suck, and we just accept that as being okay.

Like, women don't have to be exceptional just to be allowed to exist.

There's this idea that if you're a woman in the workplace and

you're not exceptional, you are therefore not even welcome there.

Whereas you get these dudes who have only ever failed up and never actually

successfully done anything in their career, aside from looking busy maybe,

and they keep getting promoted, but if you get a woman who's just good at her

job and not giving in 1,000% all the time, she's somehow a disappointment.

So yeah, women are allowed to suck, too.

They just are.

I wish you the success of the mediocre white male because it

seems to work out for them, and they don't have to put in 1,000% just to

get a modicum of the recognition.

It's always one of the things.

"Well, I had a boss who was a woman, and she wasn't friendly.

She didn't help other women.

She didn't make the workplace any better for other women." Yeah, that happens,

but why do you think that happens?

I'm a firm believer that there are really, like, two personas, or

historically, I think this is changing now by having conversations like this,

but there are historically two kind of women's personas in the workplace.

One of them is the woman who I became when I was at my most unhappy in corporate.

It's the woman who gets feedback that there's something wrong with the way she

does things, or that she's rubbing people the wrong way, or gets feedback that

she's doing things too big, too involved, her laugh's too big, she's got too many

ideas, whatever, and she shrinks to fit.

She takes all of that brilliance that was oozing out of her and that was

making her better at her job, a better teammate, more dynamic in the workplace,

more promotable, and she shrinks them all inside of her so that she fits into

the box that she was told she needs to be in and doesn't ever branch out of it.

And when she has an idea, she gives it to someone else so that they

can claim it as their idea because it will be received better from a

different persona other than her own.

And she doesn't speak out about the things that she knows are gonna go wrong.

She doesn't pipe in when she's the expert in the matter because she

doesn't think it'll be received well.

She has to orchestrate getting things done in a way that won't ruffle any feathers.

There are so many women who exist in that place in the workplace because

it's the only way for them to feel like they can survive, like they can

have security, like they can keep their jobs, like they can not become a target.

For all of the ridiculous bureaucracy that's sitting around them.

That's one of them, and I feel like that's maybe the one that

we hear about more often, right?

The one who has been silenced, the one who's been made to feel small,

the one who has forced themselves to be small rather than being whoever

they are in the workplace because it's not safe for that person otherwise.

They've been told that person is not professional, which is bullshit.

But then there's another person.

There's another way it comes out, and that's the woman who strikes to kill,

and she doesn't leave a lot of space for other people to come up with her

because she's been told over and over that there's only room for one of her.

We can't have two women in leadership.

We can't have two women in the same role.

We can't have two women in the same field because you have to be exceptional to be

a woman in your field around mediocre men.

So if you want this space, you can't bring anybody else with you, and

she will eat other people alive.

She will seem aggressive in certain situations that don't require aggression.

She lives in the boys' club.

She acts like the boys.

She was brought up in an environment where if she wanted to succeed,

it meant other women had to fail because there couldn't be too many.

This was not a hospitable place for too many women.

Both of those personas are the same thing.

Those are the same thing coming out in two different ways.

Now, does that make it acceptable to stomp on other women in your

workplace and make their lives harder and make their jobs harder?

No, don't do that.

That's shitty.

But it all emerges from the same place that you are not allowed here.

You are not supposed to be here. This place was not built for you, and you should

feel special that we've allowed you in.

And you can either feel special by making sure you're the only, or by making sure

that nobody is ever offended by your presence, and speak only when spoken to.

Those are the same thing.

Both of those people have been told that they are too much, that their

ideas were not welcome, that they were not rewarded for being innovative.

They were punished for authenticity.

They were made to feel like being themselves was not

allowed in this environment.

They were hired for something, and then it was immediately snuffed out because this

is not a space that was built for them.

Whether you realize it or not, this space was built as a boys club, and

you should feel lucky to be here.

And the fact that you are made uncomfortable by the way we do things

doesn't mean that we do things wrong.

It means that you either should shut up or not be here.

I have literally talked to thousands of women over the last five years who

fit into that paradigm, who have had that impressed upon them over and over,

who had to leave a toxic environment.

I'm one of these people who had to leave a toxic environment that

fed their head with so many things that were not true about them.

That they were too loud, that they were not a team player, that they couldn't

operate as a function of the bigger team because they weren't willing to

do what management said when management was giving them something that was gonna

be abjectly harmful to the company.

That they didn't just say yes and do whatever it was because they knew better.

And instead of being rewarded for having the insight of knowing better, they

were punished for being insubordinate.

We're not talking about people who are written up, though

sometimes that does happen.

We're not talking about people who get suspended for being insubordinate.

We're not talking about people who get pay cuts.

We're talking about people who get left off of meetings. We're talking

about people who don't find out about things until after they're

already done because they knew if they told them it would be a problem.

We're talking about people who do bring up things and then get ignored.

We're talking about situations, and I had this happen to me multiple times,

where if you want something to be paid attention to, you have to give

it to your nearest male coworker because they'll take it seriously

from them and ignore it from you.

And I've lived that.

I've experienced that, and so I fully believe it when other women tell me

that they have it happen to them, and it happens, and I hear about it all the time.

The point of that is all of that demonstrates problems with the

workplace, not problems with you.

You are not intimidating.

They're intimidated.

They probably need to do some work to figure out why

you're such a threat to them.

Now, nobody's gonna make them do that work, so you're just gonna stay a threat,

unfortunately, but you don't have to make yourself less of a, quote-unquote,

threat when you're not threatening them.

You're not doing anything other than existing.

The only thing you have to do in those environments is the things

required for self-preservation to keep your job or to keep whatever

thing if you need that paycheck.

And so while I would love for you, love for you to give these people giant

middle fingers and walk out, that is not realistic for a lot of people, and that

is not something that I want you to do if you're not in a position to do it.

But I do want you to get it through your head that you are

not your toxic work environment.

The way you feel is a by-product of the fact that place is messed up,

but there is nothing that you have done that creates that environment.

You are trying to exist in that environment, and because you are

the person who is affected by it, it physically hurts you. And that's not okay.

But at the end of the day, you are not too much.

You are not too big.

You are not too loud.

You're not too opinionated.

You are not too wild.

You are not too bossy.

You are not too much of leadership material.

You are not too ambitious.

You are not too anything.

They are not enough.

You are not too big for any space.

The spaces are lucky to have you, and if they have created environments

that are not hospitable to a dynamic, communicative, brilliant person who

was hired for that role for a reason, that is not a reflection on you.

So the outcome of that is at some point you have to make a choice to

decide that you're not the problem, and that doesn't mean that you don't

try to exist in your workplace.

It doesn't mean that you don't try to do your best at your job every day.

Or, like, do what they're paying you for.

I don't know if you need to do your best if that place sucks.

I think you just need to do enough to survive.

Like, maybe just do what they're paying you for and don't go above

and beyond, and find a place that doesn't suck when that comes up.

So that's another thing.

But those environments are built to make you feel like if you change

something, it will be better for you, and you are gonna go pull 10,000

levers trying to change what needs to be better in you so that they see you

for who you are and what you can do.

You've been the same person the whole time.

There is not a change within you that will make them suck less.

There are changes within you that can make them hurt you

less, make them upset you less.

You can make the conscious choice that if they do something that is shitty

for the company, that's their money and their time, and good for them.

Enjoy it, and you're just not gonna take it personally.

You're not gonna let it affect you, and you're not going to accept

the overwhelming burden that's gonna get put on you when they

realize what mistakes they made.

You can make that choice.

You can make the choice that your five to nine is better than your nine to

five, and you're not gonna let your nine to five affect your five to nine.

That's a good choice, but you do not have to make the choice where you internalize

bad messaging from them that there is somehow something wrong with you when

the reality is you're dealing with a dump of toxic waste. It's always been a

carcinogen, and there's no cleaning it up.

And you didn't bring a hazmat suit, so fuck 'em.

You are not too much.

You are not too much to be successful.

You are not too much to be professional.

Professionalism is a white supremacist trope that is designed to make

everybody fit into the box of middle-aged white men in tan suits

and boring shoes, and that is not you.

If you can do the job with empathy and kindness, you are professional.

If they're trying to tell you otherwise, they are wrong.

Please tell them I said to get bent and do it hard.

If you haven't caught on yet, this is why our show is now

called You're Not Too Much.

Because if you're me, you need to hear that over and over for a long

time, maybe a period of years, before you actually internalize it.

So we're gonna start.

You're not too much.

They're not enough.

But there are historically two kind of women's personas in the workplace.

This is a You're Not Too Much breaking news update.

Follow up to my semicolon rant.

Hold on.

Hold please.

There is a person I know from the internet who is a college English professor, okay?

And somebody made a comment about somebody misusing a semicolon or something.

There was a post that somebody made and there was a semicolon in it and it

was basically an erroneous semicolon and it was clear that the person who

used it did not know how to use it.

I was not trying to shame them for that by any means.

All I said in response is the first rule of semicolons is

don't use fucking semicolons.

And expected to get a fair amount of internet hate because there

are some pedantic a-holes on the internet and I am only one of them.

Anyway, so the first person who responded is this literal college professor who

was like, "This is a slightly more crass way of what I tell all of my

students after we talk about semicolons."

He was like, "I tell them this is how you use them, but don't use them.

Nobody uses them right.

You will be incorrect.

I will take points off." And I was like, "Vindication." And then

like three more English professors responded, "I do the same thing.

I do the same thing.

I do the same thing." And one of them had a semicolon tattoo on her wrist because

it's a sign for mental health awareness.

And she was literally like, "I have the tattoo and I still won't use

semicolons." And I was like, "I have found my people." And I said, "If you guys

want a really good rant on semicolons, there's probably going to be one on

the pod at some point." And apparently that's going to be our entire listener

base is like people who want pitchforks against semicolons, which I get.

Ask L2.

All right.

We have a question from Kieran.

"You told us not to fight with pigs, but this particular pig owes

me $4,000. Do I get an exemption?"

Oh, God, yes.

You get $4,000.

You get 4,000 exemptions.

You might even get more than that.

I don't know why they owe you… Okay, what do they owe you $4,000 for?

I guess, is really the first question.

If it's for work you did, yes, absolutely, you can scrap and

get in the mud with that person.

If you did something that would land you in jail, then you probably just

need to walk away from that money.

Just let it go.

But no, like, people don't get to not pay you, especially if you did the

work and you did the work to standards, and there's a contract in place.

And even if it's a verbal contract, like, you should be paid.

And so obviously, like, as professional as possible, up to the point where

they have exhausted all of the avenues for professionalism, and

then you do what you gotta do.

You are owed $4,000.

That's a lot of money.

That's two months' living expenses for some people.

Like, that's a lot of money.

Go get your money.

And you can be direct, you can be confrontational, you can be

even a little aggressive, and still be completely appropriate.

People are gonna tell you that it's not professional to change your tone when

somebody has done something incorrect, and the reality is, you can have whatever tone

you want when somebody owes you $4,000.

Pick.

You want me to give you, like, a wheel of tones that you can pick from?

Actually, let's have this tone.

You get to be whoever you wanna be when someone owes you $4,000.

And if you need me to write them a strongly worded email, my strongly worded

emails have made flowers wither before.

If you need me to do that, you can find me and let me know, and I'll craft one

for you that will leave somebody in tears without ever saying a harsh word.

It's one of my many skills.

Anytime my husband needs something written, he'll be like, "I need you

to write one of those Lauren emails." I'm like, "All right." And then he'll

read it and be like, "I don't know how you do this 'cause all of this

is very civil and polite, and I still feel like you're about to shank me."

I'm like, "I know. It's my skill." So anyway, do what you gotta

do, and if you need a strongly worded email, I'm your girl.

Thanks for being here, guys.

Have a good day.

Love you, mean it.

I'm so itchy all the time.

I'm just an itchy person.