After my grandfather served in World War II, he was a Sears employee for decades. He worked hard and was fiercely loyal to the company, and he got a lot out of it in return. His children and grandchildren, myself included, wouldn't have the lives we have today if not for that loyalty and hard work. Eventually, after working his way through the ranks, he retired comfortably from the company. After that, he stayed in touch with his colleagues, and Sears remained in our lives, like a quiet member of the family.
I actually live in his house now, and Sears is everywhere. It's in the books that line the shelves he left behind — the ones I can't bring myself to get rid of just yet. It's on the names of the appliances. Every once in a while, I'll find it somewhere I never would have suspected. I even work on his old executive desk some days.
That kind of professional life seems to be the exception rather than the rule in modern times. My parents' generation had a similar work ethic, but they weren't typically met with the same appreciation and security from their respective employers. By the time my generation went to work, it was almost completely gone. In 2009, in the midst of the recession, I turned to the gig economy to stay afloat, and I've been there ever since. And I've watched many of my fellow millennials switch their traditional jobs seemingly along with the changing of the seasons.
People like to dunk on those of us in our twenties, thirties, and forties for being flaky or shying away from hard work, and while that may be true for some, many of us are just facing a world of work that looks nothing like the one our parents and grandparents had access to. I hesitate to use this term because I think it's overused, but many of us end up in a "toxic workplace."
When I say toxic workplace, I don't mean it the way many young people use it now. I'm not talking about having a boss who's kind of a jerk or getting your feelings hurt because you have to compete with your co-workers to win accolades. I think a little bit of that can be healthy. If you were never exposed to these things, you probably wouldn't get very far in the world anyway.
Chris Rock actually does a bit in his Netflix special "Tamborine" in which he says the world needs bullies.
We need bullies. How the f*** you gonna have a school without bullies? Bullies do half the work. Teachers do one half; bullies do the whole other half. And that’s the half you’re gonna use if you’re a f***ing grown-up. Who gives a f*** if you can code if you cry because your boss doesn’t say ‘Hi’?
But to me, a "toxic workplace" is much more than that. For 15 or so years, I've worked as a freelance writer and/or journalist in various capacities for dozens of clients, but for over a decade, the majority of my work came from one place. It was never perfect. Communication from leadership was lacking and flaky at best. I often had to pick up the slack for deadbeat employees. Projects were given out or taken away without warning.
Heck, one time I got thrown under the bus and fired just to appease a client — they had to put the blame somewhere — only for them to come crawling back, apologizing a few months later. But the money was amazing, and it allowed me the flexibility to work from home and take care of my sick mom, to travel when I wanted, and not to have to leave my animals home alone all day, so I dealt with it. Every workplace has drama, right?
Eventually, things changed for the worse. Leadership developed a taste for manipulative mind games, and you never knew who would be the victim. Cliques formed. Friends were hired and favored over people who had been loyal to the company for years, even if they did subpar work. People lied about you behind your back. Employees would send emails and texts pretending to be someone else or attempting to get you to say something bad about someone else so they could report back to them. I could go on, but I think I'm still bound by an NDA.
Other former employees tried to warn me that it would only get worse, but I thought surely grown adults don't act like this. Boy, did I learn the hard way how wrong that was. I continued to put up with it because that's what my father and grandfather raised me to do. Plus, I'm willing to put up with a lot more when the money is good. But in the end, I realized that even the money wasn't worth it.
It got to the point where I wasn't getting paid the correct amounts, was having to depend on other freelancers to do their work to get paid, or, even worse, having to ask when I'd be paid over and over again, only for them to respond with hostility. My paycheck for work I'd completed was often held hostage or dangled over me like some sort of prize I had to figure out how to win.
By last summer, it was making me physically ill. There were nights I was so angry that I couldn't sleep because it felt like my heart would pound out of my chest. I was in such a panic all the time that I stopped exercising and taking care of myself. I gained weight. I started eating poorly. I thought maybe I was going crazy. I honestly thought it was going to kill me. In September, I reached out to someone very familiar with the company and asked her for advice. "If you can afford to do it, run," she said. "Or they will ruin you."
And I did. It wasn't easy. I had to make lifestyle changes. I had to fall back on savings. I had to humble myself a bit.
I can't tell you how worth it it was.
In late October, I finally took my friend Chris Queen's offer to start writing here at PJ Media. He'd been after me for a while, but the last thing I wanted to do was entrench myself in news and politics again after checking out from it both personally and professionally for several years. But, as it turns out, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Our team here at PJM and beyond is about as far from toxic as you can get, or so has been my experience. Our leaders are largely open, honest, and communicative. For the most part, we all get along. Chris — and our managing editor, Paula Bolyard — took a chance on me, and I really think it saved my life. Who knew politics could be less "toxic" than marketing? Life is a lot better these days.
I've done a lot of research on the topic of "toxic workplaces," and it seems as though they've become more prevalent these days. But at the same time, my generation and the younger Gen Z are waking up and doing something about it. We're raising our expectations and walking away to find something better.
We're setting boundaries. We're prioritizing our mental and physical health over loyalty to a company that will replace us without a thought when we die, a new person at our desks before our obituaries go to print. We're unwilling to spend one-third of our lives in a place that is detrimental to our lifespan. Older generations may point to that as one of our weaknesses, but I think it's one of our strengths. Our parents and grandparents may have taught us the meaning of hard work, but we also learned by observing what their jobs did to them when they were stuck in ones that made them miserable.
On top of that, our country currently faces a mental health crisis. Issues like addiction, depression, and anxiety are at an all-time high. Experts say the pandemic is largely to blame, and I agree, but I think in more ways than one. Those years of uncertainty forced many of us to take a closer look at our lives and realize how precious and fragile they are. We don't want to wait until we're in our sixties and seventies to be happy.
It's part of what led to the Great Resignation that took place earlier this decade. In 2022 alone, 50 million people in the United States quit their jobs to find something better. Countless surveys and studies from the last five or six years show the same results: People will work for less money if it means spending their time in a healthier and more productive professional environment.
Once upon a time, I thought that was stupid, but I get it now. My grandfather's loyalty to his employer helped him build the happy, comfortable life he wanted for himself and, more importantly, his family. My generation is doing the same; it just looks a little different because the world around us has changed. We've learned that life is too short to be miserable.
