No More Working for Jerks!

Jacquelyn Carter, 26, did not think she was going to quit her job at the start of the pandemic. She was working at a nonprofit in Houston, and she had been taught by her mother, who had worked at the same place for 30 years, that it was important to stick with a team for as long as possible.

But the slights started to add up. Some colleagues regularly forgot her name. Others talked over her in meetings. A manager at the organization called an idea of hers “stupid.”

And, as a Black woman, she found herself fielding insensitive remarks from white colleagues.

“When you get to be home in your own space, you realize, ‘I don’t have to deal with someone passing me in the hallway and commenting on my hair,’” she said.

She watched TikToks of other people celebrating their decisions to leave jobs they didn’t like — QuitTok — with its posts featuring Destiny’s Child’s “Bills, Bills, Bills” and Cardi B’s “Money.” One prime example of the genre: A trio of women dance their way offscreen to text that reads: “the company would rather lose 3 reliable hard working employees than fix their toxic management.”

Ms. Carter decided that a mean colleague was as good a reason as any to leave her employer, so she started looking for new opportunities, and then joined Ms. Darrisaw’s firm.

The bad-boss-goodbye posts also inspired some to jump from retail to office jobs, including Kristofer Flatt, 23, who used to work at a big-box store in Arkansas. He said his managers ignored his pleas for more protective gear, gave him time-consuming tasks with no explanations — “change the item in that aisle to charcoal, not birdseed” — and questioned his request to take time off for a funeral. In spring 2020, he quit and moved to a corporate job.

“If you’re a business leader and you want to recruit the best talent you can, you need to start prioritizing and doing the work of creating conscious culture,” said Janine Yancey, who runs Emtrain, which provides workplace trainings.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/business/managers-boss-jerks-workplace.html