Category Archives: Workplace

Commentary on the evolving definition of “etiquette” or “manners”

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I had two onsite meetings at the same company downtown today. So instead of my usual work-from-home routine, I actually had to get dressed to meet customers in person and was out the door this morning for in-person meetings starting at 11am. I try to get to onsite meetings well in advance of the actual start time for multiple reasons. First, as a sales leader I worked with at a previous company said, “If you are not fifteen minutes early, then you are fifteen minutes late.” Secondly, a lot of buildings have security protocol like government ID checks, bag scanners, metal detectors, etc., that they need to go through before they let you through their doors or into their elevator banks. And thirdly, it’s always good to get to a meeting early, feel composed, straighten out your shirt/wipe off sweat/use the restroom well in advance of the official start time. But when I met my three colleagues at the check-in desk today at 10:40, one of my colleagues had a look of disappointment on his face and asked if I had checked my email in the last two minutes. I had not. He told us that our main stakeholder, who had actually invited us to this onsite meeting, simply emailed and said he was not going to be in the office today, and gave the first name and phone number of the person who should get us in and check us through security.

All of us were shocked and dumbfounded. It was so rude to be told about 20 minutes ahead of an in-person meeting that our host would not be showing up. And for me, it was even more rude to a) not apologize, b) not give any reason for the sudden change in plan, or c) express zero remorse or regret. It was beyond ridiculous. Either way, we went ahead with our onsite meeting; 16 people ended up coming from their side, so it was certainly not a wasted effort. But the whole thing left a really bitter taste in my mouth and did not make me feel good about this person.

I later texted Chris to tell him what happened. And he said that yes, it was terrible, but it was not simply poor manners; it was just flat out unprofessional. This person has most likely done this with other professionals in his time in the workforce, so this would not be an isolated incident. It’s just really upsetting to hear that people actually think it’s okay to operate like this. It should not matter if it’s your boss, your peers, your vendor partners, your friends — this behavior should not be acceptable, period.

It made me think about the concept of “etiquette” or “manners,” and how people seem to be so loosey goosey and nonchalant about things like this today as though it’s not a big deal. And it reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend earlier this week, when she told me that she spent several hours writing out recommendations on how to change the pitch deck of her friend’s new organization (this would be fully unpaid work, done as a favor for her friend) given her work background… and the friend never thanked her or even gave an acknowledgment of receipt of the work. It really upset my friend, as this happened over two weeks ago, and she was still fuming about it.

Sometimes, I think I might be “getting old(er)” for even getting annoyed at things like this. But these things aren’t done by people younger than me; they are usually around my age or in this customer’s case, clearly much older. So it’s really not about age. It’s about a general lack of etiquette and sense of professionalism, or even common decency, that apparently we’re just supposed to “accept” today.

“Focus on what we can control and influence”

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Participating in the workforce and working for someone else is probably one of the most frustrating, infuriating, and annoying roller coasters a person can ever experience. And a lot of the time, I wonder if it’s all even really worth it. My dad always told me that the best thing you can do is to work for yourself because then, you don’t have to answer to anyone else. While it can be liberating to not have to answer to anyone, that also comes with immense pressure and responsibility that not all of us can handle… and not all of us frankly have the skill and ability to do. When he used to say this, especially after I became an adult, graduated from college, and entered the workforce, I always thought, but never said out loud to him, that I actually admired that he was skilled enough to make this leap for himself… because I don’t think I was ever brave (or creative or skilled) enough to do this for myself.

I was supposed to have a relatively relaxing day at the coworking space today. I originally had two meetings on my calendar and blocked off some time to work on some slides. And then suddenly, I got some bad news that came crashing down, and it was all hands on deck trying to figure out how to remedy a customer situation. I could not even believe how frustrated and angry I got, and I was even more pissed that this had to happen on a Friday at midday. A few colleagues and I were ranting about it, and everyone kept on repeating the same thing to try to ground ourselves: “focus on what we can control and influence.”

So much of what happens at work, with colleagues, customers, projects, data — is out of our control. We try to create narratives that this deal or opportunity happened because I did x, y, and z, and that person did a, b, and c. But chance and luck are very much in there as invisible drivers. People don’t like to openly acknowledge that, though, because unfortunately, we cannot replicate or quantify chance or luck. So in times like this, I just want to escape and do things that help me mentally escape. Tonight, I ended up double boiling and heat aerating a pot of chai. I added extra ginger because I figured I could use the extra spice. I find the process of making chai very meditative, and I can attribute that to watching many “chai meditation” Instagram Stories that Sunny from The Chai Box records every single morning. I used to watch her chai double boiling and meditation almost every morning when I was on maternity leave, and I always looked forward to it. And now, I still do it when I want a little mini escape.

Work can really suck. But chai meditation always helps.

Workplace camaraderie when virtual

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As a parent of a young child, I find it hard to fathom a life where I actually was required to be in an office five days a week full time. That’s a pretty privileged and spoiled thing to say since the majority of full-time working America only knows what that is like, and not what remote or hybrid work feels like. But I was remotely working full time once the pandemic started. I got laid off from that job during the pandemic, then six weeks later got hired at another company that required me to be 100 percent remote in New York City, where my company has no offices. So for over five years now, I’ve only been working remotely. And while I have loved the flexibility, especially with Pookster in tow, I know I still really miss in-office camaraderie.

It’s really hard to “make friends” at work when you are fully remote. Pretty much any “meeting” you have with colleagues will be over Zoom/some other video chat, and virtual meeting fatigue is a real thing. If you have all these internal and external meetings throughout the day, the last thing most people want is a friendly “coffee catchup” over yet another Zoom call. So the very small handful of people I consider “work friends” are actually people I do commit to chatting with 1:1, at least once a month or once every other month, and we chat about work and non-work things. And it’s a relief to chat with people about things that are not work related because it acknowledges that we’re actually human and have things that matter to us outside of work.

I spent almost four hours hanging out with a work friend who is based in the Raleigh area over dinner and drinks last night, and we had so much fun just talking about all things work, positive and negative, and also our lives outside of work. We were laughing so much that our bartender/server seemed a bit left out of the fun and kept checking in to see if he could possibly join in (half joke). But all that reminded me of the fun I used to have when I was at the office, when it was easier to make friends the “normal way” (as in, in person!) and get to know people over work happy hours, dinners, and just by the water fountain or kitchen. At my last company, I was basically the culture queen, organizing work socializing events and getting people to mingle. Here, no one thinks of me that way since we’re all virtual. All of that in-office fun seems like a very distant past, even though it was just over 5.5 years ago.

Coworking spaces in New York City are not all created equal

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Since I started using my coworking space work perk last October, I’ve only visited one coworking space, which is The Malin SoHo, just an eight-minute walk from Kaia’s school in Chinatown. It has a great location, near lots of food and shopping, and of course, its proximity to Chinatown. The space is clean, premium, with lots of lighting, healthy snacks, proper kitchen setups, a fancy coffee machine, and upscale soaps and lotions in the bathrooms and kitchens. Although initially I found the clientele a bit snobby, I’ve gotten used to the vibe there and found areas that I camp out in, so I’m pretty settled in there. Now, I go about once a week, so the staff always recognizes me.

I was planning to meet a friend for lunch today in Nomad, and I figured I’d check out a new coworking space in the area given the lunch location. I chose a space called Nomadworks, which is walking distance from Madison Square Park, Flatiron, and Koreatown. The booking fee, which my company pays but I can see, is less than half the cost of The Malin SoHo. I took a quick look at its listing on the coworking space booking app, and it seemed fine. So, I booked it on a whim the day before.

I came in and immediately felt the difference. The coworking space is essentially a bunch of open tables with outlets and monitors you can use. There’s an option for standing desks upon request. A handful of phone booths are available for private calls. The “kitchen” has no sink or fridge, though the description in the app said it had a fridge. A few bags of Doritos were at the entrance upon coming in. There’s premade drip coffee for all, which I’d never dare to have because I am 1000% sure it’s revolting. Oddly enough, there’s a variety of several loose leaf teas. There are little compostable paper bags for you to use a teaspoon to measure your tea leaves into, and then you close the bag with a drawstring on top. I used the China jade green tea, and I really think the bags gave an off flavor to my tea. I did not enjoy it and just ended up having hot water because I wanted a hot beverage, but did not want to deal with weird tea bag off-flavor or awful drip coffee.

The space also has rare rooftop access, which I will check out shortly before I leave for the day.

I texted Chris about this, and told him that at least the staff is very friendly and nice, and there’s ample natural light. He responded: “Of course they are friendly. What else do they have when they don’t even have a sink? Sounds like some shitty studio apartment in some dump.”

This type of response is one of the many reasons I truly love my husband.

Grown men who cannot handle direct feedback are an embarrassment to society

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One of the things that I have always struggled with is confrontation. I don’t necessarily mean about really big, deal-breaker things, but I mean about sharing any type of “constructive feedback” to people that is ultimately not a compliment. You never know how they are going to receive the feedback. You never know if they will really understand or hear, even if you state it, that your intentions are positive, and you just want them to be the best version of themselves. Oftentimes, people will hear constructive feedback as a personal attack or a tear-down of who they are, take it really personally, get defensive, and just shut down. I think we’ve all been there, and it never feels good. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized exactly how important it is to be honest and forth right about constructive feedback, even when it’s difficult. It benefits the relationship in the long run. It’s transparent. It’s not passive aggressive. It’s direct. We ALL need to work on being more direct with each other, while also not being total assholes.

On my team, we actually had a “taking and giving feedback” session at our offsite last month. It was very introspective, and it was also a practice in… just being a damn adult. But it probably was needed because like most organizations, our company is full of people who clearly cannot handle getting feedback from their colleagues. A colleague of mine who I’ve worked with for over 4.5 years was sending me really passive aggressive Slack messages yesterday. He was insinuating that an email I had sent to a customer was going out of my swim lane and that he was “concerned” that I was not aligned with him on roles and responsibilities. I re-read his messages a few times, compared it to the benign, friendly email thread I had with the customer, and felt very confused. He was clearly overreacting, and I have a feeling it’s because of pressure on him to hit his number this year as a sales person, especially since he missed it last year. So I very directly told him over Slack that I found his commentary counterproductive, that I had done nothing out of bounds, that my manager was aligned with my approach, and I would appreciate it he could get on a call with me to talk this through.

Instead of looking back on what he said and reflecting on our interaction and wondering why I would react this way, he instead shut me down and said, “If you don’t like my approach, then you can talk to (your manager), who can talk to (my manager), who can then address it with me. I’d like to avoid this type of confrontation in the future. Thanks.” He also made excuses about being “too busy” to get on a five minute call with me for the rest of the week.

The way I read that message from his side is: I’m a late 40s/early 50s-year hold grown man who is incapable of receiving direct feedback from peers or being introspective at all about areas where I could potentially be wrong. I would prefer that you tattle on me to your mommy, who can then discuss with my mommy, and then my mommy can determine whether I get a punishment or not.

I responded with, “I think that after 4.5 years of working together and given that we’re both adults that we should be comfortable enough to give each other direct feedback. If that is not the case, then clearly there is a disconnect between us.”

Work doesn’t have to be awful if your colleagues aren’t awful. But it’s in moments like this where I wonder how people get older and never really grow up?

To my mom, “work travel” = free meals

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Ever since I first started working, my mom always gets excited whenever she hears I go on business trips. For her, all she seems to hear is “free hotel and food,” and so she thinks it’s extremely luxurious to have the privilege of free lodging and meals. While yes, it is very nice and convenient to have your temporary housing and food paid for, it’s not like it’s just a “you take” situation. You are getting free food and housing in exchange for your professional services that you are offering on behalf of your company. It’s very much a transactional expectation.

It has not always been that luxurious, though: at one company I worked at, I only had a $75 per diem, so that was challenging when I went to larger, more expensive cities, especially once you factor in tax and tip. Today at my current company, I have $125/day, which is the highest I’ve had anywhere. It’s a nice and reasonably generous allotment, but again, dinner time tends to be challenging to stay within guidelines if you’re in a larger city.

Sometimes, I feel sad that my mom doesn’t know what it’s like to travel for work. She worked hard her entire life in a white-collar setting, but she never had the opportunity to “move up” out of the equivalent of an admin role. She looks at me going on work trips, and she thinks it’s all fun and games, wining and dining. She doesn’t quite see the “work” part about it; she focuses on the “trip” part of it. At the same time, I also get a little annoyed that all she focuses on is the “free” stuff I get. My mom grew up quite poor, as did my dad. Today, they have far more than they will ever be able to spend on themselves. Yet somehow, they are still obsessive about anything that is either extremely cheap or free; they are like the millionaires who jump at free stuff and hoard everything they humanly can. I can see how that’s the poor person’s mentality, especially with immigrants like my mom, people who had to work very hard to get to their comfortable standard of living today. But in my parents’ situation, they erroneously believe they are still poor or are at risk of being poor any day, so they try to take anything they possibly can that is free or cheap to make their money last even longer. I grapple with what to make of it. I would like for them to be comfortable, to enjoy life, to acknowledge that they have far more than enough and are quite privileged with all that they have (and have earned), but I doubt they ever will.

Family style eating goes awry (in a work setting)

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I’ve spent almost 17 years working full time. My happiest times with my colleagues were likely for about two years while at my second company, and about 1.5 years at my last company. Both times, we had a good group of people of different backgrounds, from different parts of the country (and occasionally, world), most of whom loved food (and drink) and were just fun to be around. I didn’t always feel compelled to talk about only work with them. In both situations, I was often known as the “foodie,” so whenever group happy hours or dinners had to be arranged, I was given the responsibility (and privilege) to choose where we would eat/drink, and to make the reservation. Price was rarely an issue, and the company (or vendor) always paid for it. And most of those times, we would share food, and people would leave full and happy… and occasionally tipsy to drunk.

Well, fast forward to today, when I’m on my fifth year with my current company, and my entire team is fully remote. We don’t get to spend much in-person time together. If we have regular “catch-ups,” they are usually on Zoom and inevitably 99 percent about work. We don’t really know each other that well. Though most people know I’m into food and cooking, my manager has been told that he has to stay within really tight budget guidelines for team meals. So he half jokingly told me he doesn’t trust me choosing a restaurant for us, though he has no doubt it would be amazing. Given this, when we’ve had team meals out, he typically will choose a place off the cuff, and it’ll be fairly basic. Other people on the team have made side comments to me that our manager’s taste in food stinks (he is known for his addiction to Coke and eats way too much fast food, particularly chicken wings, burgers, and bad pizza), and that our team meals are rarely things to look forward to because of it. He has plenty of strengths; diversity in or knowledge of food is not one of them.

For this past Wednesday’s team meal, he chose a family-style Italian restaurant right next to our hotel. When I’ve had family-style Italian meals in the past with colleagues, the great thing was that whenever the powers-that-be ordered, we’d always have a good variety of dishes: starters, vegetables, pastas, proteins/plant-based proteins, dessert. I always felt like the meal was well rounded, and we always ate well. This time, however, it wasn’t that well rounded, and I felt limited because of the limited palates of my teammates.

We started with a caesar salad with croutons, which I loved because the caesar dressing was particularly pungent with extra, extra garlic. We got a “Tour of Italy” plate, which was essentially a mixed plate of cold cuts, antipasti, cut baguettes, and cheeses — this was pretty disappointing looking, and I didn’t touch this. Then, for mains we had… pasta. Just pasta. No parmigiano. No vegetables. Nothing else. Our manager chose four pastas: baked ziti (this felt like it was for toddlers with how basic it was; I wouldn’t even order or make this for Kaia), spaghetti bolognese, meatballs with vodka sauce and spaghetti, and carbonara. I insisted from the beginning that we must have clam linguine. The table was silent. No one wanted to eat clam linguine with me other than one other colleague. My boss conceded and said we’d get a smaller portion of the clam linguine just for my one clam-eating colleague and me. One colleague said she had a shellfish allergy. Another said shellfish made her mouth itchy. A third said she’d have some (just one bite; she ended up taking none). A fourth insisted she would try “just a small bite” and didn’t touch it. On a team of eight people, only two of us ate the clam linguine. It was freaking delicious, by far the best pasta on the table. There was so much leftover clam linguine (well, actually, we had so much leftover of ALL the pasta) that would ultimately go into the garbage bin. It always hurts a little to see how much food waste we generate at these team meals. But that is the way with corporate life and corporate dining out in general, sadly. We were served family style, so everyone got a little bit of each pasta (minus the clam linguine, which the two of us served ourselves) on our plates doled out by our server. But almost every single person looked like s/he barely ate half their plate. I had felt bloated most of the day, so I only ate my clam linguine and a bite each of the other pastas.

It feels spoiled and bratty to complain about this, especially given I’m traveling on my company’s dime and won’t be paying for any of my meals during this work trip. But I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at how unadventurous my colleagues were in terms of their palates and what they were willing to eat. I felt like I was the “different” one and slightly being “othered” once again, and in this case, it’s crazy because it’s just clams in pasta we are talking about! It’s like they generally lack curiosity about different foods… and perhaps it could even be extended to say that they lack curiosity about other cultures and the world outside their own bubbles. I mean, how else did we get into the crappy predicament we are in with our current government?

Back in the “Mile High City”

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For the last three years, I’ve come to Denver once a year in Q1 for work. The last two years, it has been for my company’s annual sales and success kickoff. This year, it’s for my company’s go-to-market value selling workshops. We’ve always been based in downtown Denver for these events, and so it’s given me time to walk around and see what’s here, especially since the last time I was here was in November 2012 with Chris. The first year I came for work in 2023, I walked up and down downtown, and it was like a ghost town. It didn’t matter if it was peak lunch time or around early dinner time/get-off-work time, but I barely saw anyone on the streets. It felt pretty eerie. Last year when I came, there was a bit more life. I definitely wasn’t totally alone, but it was still quiet. This year as I’ve walked the streets in the morning and during lunch time, it actually felt like a semi-busy downtown. I saw lots of people having coffee, at cafes, grabbing lunch with colleagues, coming in and out of office buildings.

I always make sure to do morning workouts while traveling for work and stick with my usual exercise routine as much as possible, so I brought my workout gear. This morning, I went up to the top floor gym, where the hotel had a large, separate yoga room that was flooded with natural light. Although I do a semi-rigorous workout every weekday, which consists about 30-40 minutes of cardio and 30-40 minutes of strength/pilates/barre, here, I could actually feel that I was “mile high.” The last two years, I didn’t feel the altitude, but this year, I was breathing much harder on the treadmill and sweating buckets more than I normally do. Denver is 5,200+ feet above sea level, so it makes sense that my body was working harder than it normally does.

As my colleague said, we should take it all in stride: our workouts are more efficient here! If we workout for 60 minutes at higher altitude, that’s like 120 minutes at sea level, so we’re doing our bodies a favor! I suppose that’s one way to be positive.

Brown nosers: the absolute worst in the corporate world

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This work week has been particularly vexing and not even remotely fun. It’s never exciting to be in a situation where a customer is annoyed and is asking for a refund. So it’s even more un-exciting to have to rope in executive leadership from both your side and the customer’s side to have a “tete a tete” to talk through this and get this resolved. What does this actually entail? It entails lots of internal meetings where people who like to think they are more important than the other talk over the other, people who think they know more than the other talks over others, and even more frustration ensues. It also requires people who actually are in the weeds and truly do know what is happening (alas, that person is me!) to do the grunt work and fill out documents that explain everything, bit by bit. And then it also requires people constantly messaging me to ask if I have thought about x, y, and z thing to add to said document. As you can see, this is super riveting!

I will say, though, that of all the things that I hate in the working world, few things are worse to me (other than outright toxic people who gossip and spread fake rumors) than brown nosers. I hate people who treat executives and their managers like they are God, like their time is so holy and that they need to be thanked over and over for… doing their job. Yesterday, I was on an internal prep call for this customer call today, and a brown noser on my team said to our exec who joined, “Thank you SO, so much for making time to meet with us today. I know your time is truly precious, and we don’t have much of it. So, we will jump right in!”

I thought all of our time was precious? Or is this person’s time just precious because he happens to be in a VP+ position, and he’s your manager’s manager, and therefore you feel the need to kiss ass to him to be “seen” by this person? This is not the first example of brown nosing I’ve seen from this individual, but I really had to deliberately stare hard into the screen to not roll my eyes or just vomit all over my keyboard when she said this.

As I always play back in my head, in the rat race, even if you win, you are still a rat in the end. It stinks to have to be in an environment where people feel like they need to suck up to get ahead, but apparently it works with a lot of people who like to have their egos stroked. And it’s yet another reminder to me how out of place I feel in the corporate world when these things come up because I’ve never really been able to do this and not feel like I had zero integrity. But I suppose that’s what tends to happen: people lose the meaning of “integrity” in the race to get ahead in Corporate America to the point where “integrity” means virtually nothing.

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.