Category Archives: Workplace

Customer relationships: relationships for life

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I’ve been in a customer-facing role at work for about 14 years now. As with any type of customer work, it can be pretty annoying, painful, and thankless. In my role, I have to get used to the fact that people will not always show appreciation for anything you have done for them, regardless of whether it fits your exact job description or whether you’ve truly gone above and beyond.

However, I do have a handful of customers over the years I’ve held in really high regard and have built really positive, mutually respectful relationships with. A number of us keep in touch via LinkedIn and occasionally still message. A handful actually follow me on Facebook and Instagram. And I have one customer who nearly made me cry about a week ago when I was transitioning off his account and handing them over to a counterpart on my team.

I announced on this call that after 4.5 years of working with these folks that I’d be transitioning off. They were my first customer at my current company since September 2020, and the only customer I’ve had since day 1; that’s 4.5 years of working together and chatting about everything regarding work and life. It was a bit bittersweet to be honest, as I really liked this group of people, but this decision wasn’t in my hands to make.

One of them took some time on the call, with my current colleagues taking over on the Zoom, to explain why it was so hard for them to see me leave. He said that among vendor/partner relationships in his 20-plus-year-long career that I was a rare breed. He never felt like I was trying to sell him or make him buy something he didn’t need. I was always straightforward and shared what I really thought could help them as a business. I was genuine to the core, inside and out, he said, and consistently so. And he could tell I truly cared for him and his team as people. He recounted the time, about three years ago, when his nephew had suddenly died in a tragic motorcycle accident. His nephew was like another son to him, as they were very close, so he took the news quite hard. He was out on bereavement leave, and his colleagues had shared this sad news with me. I immediately reached out to get his address and had some flower arrangements sent to his home to send our company’s condolences. No other colleague or vendor partner had done this, he had shared. “I will never forget you and will always remember how kind, generous, and compassionate you were at the time. You will always, always have my trust,” he said on the call.

To be honest, I had forgotten this had happened. I hadn’t thought about it much at the time, because to me, a gesture like that seems like a no-brainer regardless of whether we had a working relationship or a personal relationship. But when he mentioned it on this call, I was so shocked and caught off guard that I started tearing up that he even remembered this. “Ahhh, this is too much for work!” I exclaimed. I felt so embarrassed, especially with two of my colleagues on the call listening to this and watching our faces.

Work can be shmerk. But it’s in moments like this when I realize the real value of my job, and what I will remember long after I have left said industry and said company, which is, at its core, helping others.

A tragic plane crash and frustrating flight delays

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My flight going back to New York today was originally scheduled for 11:35. Then it became 11:55. Then it went past noon. It changed about every 20-30 minutes once I got into my Uber to get the airport, until finally at around 1pm, they said that we’d actually be departing at 3pm local time. This means I wouldn’t land at JFK until 11pm ET. I was definitely not a happy camper, but it’s not like there was anything I could do to help the situation. I just had my laptop and a bunch of crappy chains to get food from in this terminal.

I was thinking back to a few nights ago when I was at dinner with colleagues, and we were all getting push notifications on our phone about the tragic AA plane and military helicopter crash into Potomac River. People went around the table, saying that they were flying on Delta or United or Southwest. When I said I was flying AA, everyone went silent. It was as though they were holding their breaths for me given that this plane crash was AA, so who knows if my plane would crash, as well….?!

Chris made a good point about this when I shared this anecdote with him. He said that it was dumb people would react this way given that fatal car crashes happen literally every single day in Toyotas and whatever other mainstream car brand there is, yet none of these people would hesitate to get into an Uber ride with any of these cars; they wouldn’t even think about it. So the same logic could be applied to airlines.

Well, I’m still waiting for my very delayed flight. I’m also wondering what the heck I’m supposed to eat for dinner.

Conference time – not enough time to have real conversations

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Our annual sales and success kickoff is the one time a year when a large chunk of my global company is in the same place at the same time. It’s a rare occasion, not just because we are all around the world, but also because a large number of us are 100 percent remote employees such as myself. It ends up being a bit of a stamina show to see how many people you can interact with in the space of two business days. You can’t talk to everyone. You want to chat with people you like and work with for obvious reasons. But you also want to meet with new people who you may have worked with briefly, have heard about, or would like to network with just because you either respect them or think they are interesting. Then, there’s also the idea that you want to network and build relationships with those who are influential at your company or who you could personally benefit from. Honestly, I’m done with number 3, so I really try to focus on 1 and 2.

Day 1 was rough. I barely got to talk to anyone for more than 2-4 minutes without getting interrupted and derailed. Then, I’d move on to the next person, and the same thing would happen. So really, the only time I was able to have a real, proper, in-depth conversation with anyone is if we actually went away from the conference area and did our own thing. We try our best to maximize our in-person time together, but it still feels like we’re all being stretched thin. Then, once the conference is over, you realize that there were 4 or 5 other people who were there, but you never even got to say hi to, much less interact with in any meaningful way at all!

“What dish would you make to impress me?”

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I was at dinner last night with my team. I’ve always been cognizant that on pretty much every team I’ve ever been on at any company, I’m usually one of the rare people of color. On my team now, the people who bring “color” to the team are a Mexican American, a Persian-French Canadian, and myself. One of my colleagues, who had had a bit to drink, brought up that he remembered I’m really into food and like to cook. So he asked me this:

“If you could make one dish from your culture that you think would impress me, what would it be?” He paused and took another swig. “You know how if someone were Spanish, they’d say that they’d make me a paella or if they were Italian, they’d make me handmade pasta. What would the Chinese or Vietnamese equivalent be?”

This was a very strange question for me. I don’t think it’s necessarily a wrong or an offensive question. But the reason this question is strange is that in order to “impress” someone, there needs to be a basis of understanding of what that individual likes (and doesn’t like). Are there foods the person doesn’t eat or has allergies to? For Cantonese food, I’d consider a ginger scallion lobster or crab to be an impressive dish, but that clearly would not impress someone who had a shellfish allergy. Do they prefer meat or carbs or what? If I don’t know what you like or how picky of an eater you are, I’d really have no idea where to start thinking of ideas of what dish I’d make to “impress” you. The only real context with this person I have is that he’s a White male who lives in Texas, he eats a lot of fast food/junk food, and he’s addicted to Coke. What do I propose then — Chinese-style lightly battered fried chicken or Vietnamese cha gio (deep fried spring rolls stuffed with shrimp, mushroom, and pork, wrapped in thin rice paper)? I’m not sure.

I said I’d need to think about it, but I’d need more context. The conversation moved on. But it still just felt weird. It felt like I was being outed as “other,” and being put on the spot for it, and it didn’t feel that great. It was kind of a reminder to me that in Corporate America, I’ll always be a little different, and as such, I’ll never quite “blend in” fully.

Workplace assholes

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I’ve been working full-time almost 17 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of really good, really bad, and beyond egregious behavior. I’ve seen the suck-ups, the people who somehow manage to get by and barely do any work. I’ve seen people who have self-professed themselves to be a “dick” and manage to get away with being rude to almost everyone. I’ve seen people who are awful at their job who still manage to get promoted. I’ve also seen people who truly do go above and beyond get passed up for promotions — time and time again. But what I never really thought would happen is that someone this week would actually have the balls to go off at me for simply thanking them for something they did for my customer.

I’m on the customer success team at my company, which means I manage a book of business that includes a set number of customers. I interact cross functionally at my company with multiple teams, ranging from sales, renewals, solutions engineering, accounting, product, etc., to get my job done. In the last year, there’s been a solutions engineer who has been labeled aggressive, rude, demeaning, and even sexist by some. We’ve gotten along fine to okay most of the time, but I got caught off guard this week when I thanked him for taking care of a customer request in his realm this week, and the response was extremely unexpected.

He responded with, “Why are you thanking me for doing my job? [Insert task] is what SEs are responsible for. There’s no reason to thank me for doing my job.”

My gut reaction to this response was, “Wow, you are truly an asshole.” But my general thought was, Oh, my. You must have had some really awful life experiences to get angry at someone for simply thanking you for doing a single deed. Clearly, this guy has a lot of pent up anger that he is choosing to misdirect, and to someone who is expressing a sentiment that is called “GRATITUDE,” that he should be meeting with grace. He is a good example of someone who is sorely in need of seeing a therapist, but is unlikely to have any self awareness to actually pursue to help himself.

We’re really in a questionable work setting when we cannot even thank someone for doing something without eliciting their uncalled for rage. Where do people get this idea that behavior like this is actually acceptable? I do not even want to know what his reaction would be if I actually tried to give him some constructive feedback. I’d likely get my head blown up — virtually.

Losing hair – the areas of concern for aging men and women

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While on a customer call with a colleague this morning, we waited for our customer to join and made some small talk. My colleague asked how Kaia was doing since I told him that I had to pick her up early at school the previous day due to a fever she had. I shared with him that she was at home with us today, and Chris and I were tag teaming between meetings to care for her. He laughed and said, “Yeah, it never gets easier. And my kids are the reason I have bags under my eyes that won’t go away and far less hair on my head!” 

I told him that while all that may have a hint of truth to it, he and the male species were not alone in their hair loss. While men lose the hair on their head, women start losing hair in our eyebrows, I lamented. I was certainly not immune to this. In fact, I remembered that at some point in my mid-30s, I started plucking my eyebrows far less frequently… because the hairs just weren’t growing back, or were growing back far more slowly. I’d never had thick, well defined eyebrows in my life, but once my mid-30s hit and then pregnancy and childbirth, it’s like it’s been all downhill for my eyebrows ever since. 

He chuckled at my comment. “Yeah, but at least with women, you can just draw them back on and it can still look natural. Men can’t draw back the hairs on their head and make it look believable!” 

Well, touche. He wins. 

The Malin SoHo co-working space

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One of the perks I get as a remote employee of my company is 12 company-paid bookings at co-working spaces through an app called Gable. My company rolled out this offering earlier this year as a way to get employees who work in remote locations to work and meet with other employees in the same area. I hadn’t had a reason to take advantage of this until Kaia started at her new school downtown. I finally booked a space yesterday so that I could attend Kaia’s school’s Halloween parade, and it was an interesting experience to be in a workspace where I was surrounded by total strangers instead of colleagues.

The Malin SoHo co-working space is a short 10-minute walk from Kaia’s school, and from the photos, it looked like a very modern, poshly furnished space. It is three floors of work space total. There’s a kitchen that is stocked with a proper coffee machine (flat whites or cappuccinos, anyone? And as a quirk, the only milk option built into the machine is oat milk), a water machine with multiple settings/temperatures, and with a claim to have “added electrolytes,” a fridge, microwave, and real ceramic bowls, plates, and silverware. The space has couches, diner-like booths, long desks, as well as designated work desks that you can reserve (and pay extra for). There are also a good number of private, sound-proof phone booths, as well as beautifully appointed and different sized conference rooms that you can also book and pay extra for. The space has good lighting and lots of natural light (of course, the areas where there is natural light, you have to pay extra to sit and reserve seats there, but well, if you are willing to pay…). The whole space looks like it was made to be photographed and put on social media.

As for the little details: The bathrooms are stocked with thick multiple-ply toilet paper. The hand wash is a Biography brand, First Edition plant based cleanser, scented with “Butterfly bush and white peony,” and contains “fine pumice/quartz blend” that “polishes without drying.” This fancy hand wash retails for $42 for a 15.2 oz bottle.

I understand the aesthetics are very important to them, but it wasn’t clear which spaces were “reserved” based on the way things were laid out because nothing was labeled. So in the morning, I worked at a reserved space without realizing it. When I tried to go back to it after the Halloween parade, someone let me know that it was reserved and I couldn’t sit there… even though that entire area was unoccupied.

The front desk receptionists were very nonchalant and barely said anything helpful. They gave me my Wi-Fi passcode and did nothing else to help me get acquainted with the space. It would have been courteous of them to have told me about the reserved spaces at the beginning.

The clientele here… was pretty much all White. I was the diversity of the space for most of the time I was there until I noticed later in the afternoon, a couple of Asian males walked in with their laptops. I also felt like people didn’t “see” me. At least five people walked right into me as though I didn’t even exist, even though I always walked to my right. Only one of those five people actually apologized. It reminded me of the period in 2020 when George Floyd was murdered, and all these Black people on social media started sharing these awful stories of how they felt invisible in the presence of White people. They said White people constantly walked into them as though they did not exist, and some even reported being *SAT* on, on benches in public parks and other public spaces.

It’s crazy to think that a drop-in day rate for this would be $75 (it has since gone up to $90 since this booking). You don’t get any guarantee of privacy via a phone booth or a room; there’s no sign-ups or reservations for a phone booth. It’s basically just Wi-Fi, a seat, access to water and coffee, and a bathroom.

I’ll definitely be using this space again in the future when I want to attend school events or pick up early, as it’s a nicer and more comfortable space than other co-working spaces that are in the Gable app nearby. But I still think it leaves something to be desired for the optimal space to work.

No Stupid Questions Podcast: When do you become an adult?

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In the last year or so, I’ve gotten into the No Stupid Questions podcast, which is a spinoff of the very popular Freakonomics books series. Research psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth and tech and sports executive Mike Maughan ask a lot of questions, some that can, at a glance, appear to be “stupid,” and so they ask each other these questions and delve into them. Many of the questions are suggested by their listeners.

The latest one I listened to that made me think was on “When do you become an adult?” and how it’s been fairly arbitrary that 18 has been the designated “adult” age. Why shouldn’t people ages 16 and above be able to vote? Why can you legally drive at age 16, vote at age 18, but then you cannot drink alcohol until age 21 in the U.S.? They go through all these questions and the historical reasons behind them in this episode.

One of the things that really made think was what Duckworth called the “life history theory,” which says that these things that you think are just fixed, or are on some cellular clock, they are actually profoundly influenced by experience. There’s an evolutionary reason behind it: if you sense that you are in some chaotic, uncertain, and/or dangerous environment, you had better get to adulthood fast. “Get to adulthood, reproduce, and get the hell out of there! You don’t have a lot of time!” Duckworth says. Life history theory says: what if you have the sense that you are in a stable, rich environment where you will live years and years? Then you have an incentive to forestall puberty and whatever line you want to give yourself for adult roles. This theory says you can procrastinate on adulthood if you live in a secure world because then, you have time to learn from your parents, get more educated from your peers and develop skills.

This made me think about two individuals I know. One is a former colleague from my last company who was essentially the biggest child I’d ever known who was my age. Let’s call this person Amber. Amber came from a wealthy, prominent Bay Area family with all the resources and support you could ever ask for. Yet somehow, when she started working at my last company, Amber came across as the most needy and insecure 30-something-year-old adult I’d ever met. She was constantly trying to make friends with everyone and get everyone to like her. It was really confusing to me, and I kept my distance from her. But eventually, I found out that she seemed jealous of the role I played in the office. I was effectively the culture queen in the office and organized happy hours and gatherings, and she did not like it since she wanted that role. She tried to get people to call her the “office mom,” as ridiculous as that sounds. Since Amber was the first and only recruiter in our office, she was the land line to HR in our San Francisco headquarters, and she kept tabs on and falsely reported goings-on and “moods” in the office. I will forever and always remember this stupid incident that happened: She had the balls to report me to HR for not wishing her a public happy birthday message on our team Slack channel. Amber knew I had an office birthday list, and when I happened to forget to ask her when her birthday was, she got upset and actually reported me! On top of that, because I had recently co-organized a happy hour event for a departing employee (who left on awkward terms), she also reported me for being “exclusive” and not inviting her (even though 1) another colleague was helping me organize, who she never reported, and 2) I purposely didn’t invite her because I knew she would be out of town for a work-related conference). Instead of HR looking at this as some senseless, childish, and elementary-school-like behavior and dismissing it, they actually took it seriously (since HR at my last company was full of toxic, drama-instigating individuals who substituted activity for achievement every day). Our “People Partner” (what a joke of a title, by the way, as she couldn’t have been less of a “partner” but an trouble maker who abused her “power”) asked my manager to have a chat with me about it. My manager, who was relatively new at the time, seemed a bit helpless when he confronted me about it. It was clear he thought it was dumb, but he shrugged and said he was simply delivering a message that HR had asked him to share with me. In general, people at the office despised Amber; endless people would say she was childish, bratty, and lacked self esteem (one former employee who was on her way out said to me in disgust, “She is a child! She tried to force me to hang out with her after I left!”), but they were generally afraid of Amber since she was like a pseudo HR-representative in our satellite office.

The second person I think about when I think of this life history theory is a friend of mine who is currently on her second divorce. We met in college and connected over our love of Chinese language and culture, food, and travel. Throughout college, I got to meet and hang out with her parents multiple times. They used to visit at least a couple times a year and were so generous to take me out to many delicious meals together. We talked about all sorts of topics that I’d never dream of discussing with my own parents. They treated me and my opinions with respect. I’d never felt so intellectually stimulated by another person’s parents in my life at that point. I always envied her relationship with her parents, and I had wished my parents could be more like hers. My friend married for the first time in 2011, then got divorced around 2015. The guy was literally a clown, as he was a professional clown artist and apparently a bit of an unstable fraud. She got married a second time in 2017 (to someone who, from any outsider’s view, was the total opposite of her, morally and politically), had a kid with this second guy in 2019, and then filed for divorce last year. Somehow, she has dug herself into a hole where she not only gave up her house that she is still paying bills and mortgage payments on, but she is also paying for a Christian private school that she didn’t want her child to go to. Because medical related decisions need both parents to sign off on them, he rejected my friend’s request to get their child therapy for how to handle the divorce. Their child is struggling and hating the separation, and she’s acting out because she doesn’t understand what is going on. Her ex-husband, who is unemployed, is making no attempt to work again given that he’s essentially living for free off my friend’s hard-earned money. She is so short of money now that her grandparents, who are well off, are paying for her rental payments for her apartment that she escaped to.

I wonder about the two of them, though. Is it possible that both of them were so loved, so supported, so coddled by their parents and grandparents and all the money and resources they had, that they are basically like living examples of people who never felt truly compelled to “grow up”? No one wants their children to feel unsupported or unloved, but according to life history theory, we may need to find ways to instill grit in our children so that they do not feel like they have all the time and endless resources in the world to “grow up” and be independent. No one will really respect you when you are in your mid-30s and crying to mommy when someone won’t wish you a happy birthday. Few people will respect you when your grandparents are paying your rent payments as a nearly 40-year-old.

The tech layoffs cycle: a continuation of the “tech-polcalypse,” just closer to home this time

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Once upon a time, in the world that my mom once worked in, people expected to join the workforce and stay at a company for 20-30-plus years. Job security was just a given. Once they hit a certain number of years of employment, they were guaranteed a pension until the day they (or their potential spouse) died. Both my parents were employed by their respective employers for 20-plus years and now are lucky to collect a pension. That world is quite foreign to me, as since before I even entered the workforce full time, I never expected to get any pension at all; in fact, I was repeatedly told that I not only would never get any pension at any job in my lifetime (unless I chose the government route), but I’d even be unlikely to collect any Social Security payments once I turned age 65. How fun for me and my generation!

My mom never experienced endless cycles of layoffs at her company the way I have at all my employers since I started working full time at age 22. My dad did have occasional layoffs based on demand (he worked in the glazing trade), but those layoffs were always temporary, and he’d get his job back once the demand picked up. So when I reflect back on my first job out of college and how I got laid off during the 2008-2009 financial crisis after just nine months of full-time employment, I recall speaking to my dad within an hour of being terminated. I called my dad while sitting on a bench in Union Square here in New York to tell him I was unemployed. And the first words out of his mouth, after a long pause, were, “Well, are they going to hire you back later?” To this, I slowly responded, “I don’t think so, Daddy.”

The only “good” way of losing your job is if you voluntarily quit or leave for whatever is the next step in your life or career. There’s no “good” way of getting laid off or fired. I’ve long debated in my head whether the “rip the bandaid off” situation in the U.S. (which I consider pretty terrible, inhumane, and abrupt, because it IS) with layoffs is better than layoffs that happen in countries like Singapore or France, where the employees have more rights and need far advanced notice. Regardless of which way a layoff happens, it’s always demoralizing for those who are directly impacted and those who remain.

At my current company, we’ve had two layoffs in the entire history of the company’s existence. The first happened in February 2023, when about 10 percent of my colleagues were let go. Just yesterday, we had our second layoff (with a pending restructure), during which about 15% of my teammates were let go. It’s unclear how many people were impacted across the whole company. But it’s been a sad and stressful period even when I haven’t been directly impacted. It’s made me relive the misery of getting laid off in my two prior times. It’s just tiring to always expect a layoff to be right around the corner. It’s exhausting and mentally taxing to always wonder if your job is safe. The “tech-pocalypse” as people are calling it has been pretty terrible the last two years for those who work in the technology industry. Once upon a time, everyone wanted to work in tech, and now, it’s probably one of the worst industries to be in when trying to find your next role. The market is too saturated with those who are unemployed who are in need of jobs. And there probably are not enough roles for all of them. Is this going to be how it will always be during the remainder of my working life: always waiting for the next layoff to drop? This is why working for someone else will always suck, just as my dad always told me.

Juggling working from home and childcare

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For the handful of days we’ve had in between San Francisco, Ottawa/Montreal, and school starting this Thursday at Kaia’s new 3K school, we’ve had to juggle having her at home since we already ended our time (and payment) with the last school. To say the least, this has been pretty challenging and annoying because I never really feel like I can focus on any one thing while she’s around. There’s the tug of work as in, hey, this is actually a working day for me, and I have things to do even outside of my regularly scheduled meetings. Then, there’s Kaia tugging at me because she always wants my attention, even when she’s doing something separate from me. The weather is still very nice outside, so I still want her to go outside to the park or playground, but between Chris and me, we need to tag team and figure out when the best windows are to take her outside. Since Kaia was a baby, she’s always hated it when we’re at our computers and not engaging with her. Now, she gets annoyed and says, “I don’t want Mummy/Daddy to work.” She knows that when we’re working (on our computers), it means we cannot play with her. She’s even tried pushing or hitting my computer in response. Yes, she’s jealous of an inanimate object.

These several days, while they’ve been fleeting, always made me feel a little guilty that my mind wasn’t totally focused on work or her. But it also made me sympathize even more with my friend who we just visited, who works 100 percent from home but also takes care of her son full-time — all at the same time. She gets zero breathing space from childcare because it’s all consuming 24/7. Granted, her work is a lot less meeting heavy than mine is, but I cannot imagine that she’s ever really able to fully focus on work while her son isn’t sleeping/napping. Even when toddlers do independent play, it’s usually in small bursts (or when they’re up to no good and wrecking the house). And they always want to know that you are paying attention to them or engaging with them.

These experiences also make me respect stay-at-home parents even more and how they’re somehow able to do all the childcare work, likely the majority (if not all) the housework and cooking, and still have it all together with themselves. I can barely clean the bathroom with Kaia around. I just don’t how stay-at-home parents do it all and don’t completely lose their minds even without “paid work.” Stay-at-home parents definitely do not get the credit or respect that they truly deserve. When you think about it, when there’s a stay-at-home parent, they pretty much never get a break. The parent who does “paid work” outside of the home gets an actual separate space to be an adult, do adult things/have adult conversations, and do something completely not child-related. They have the mental and physical space to separate family from work. Stay-at-home parents do not have that luxury when it comes to separating childcare, child’s learning, housework, cooking, grocery shopping, etc.

Shame on us as a society and world.