How to Escape a Toxic Workplace (Correct)

actually a hypothetical. You might have heard a lot about Uber in the news last week. A former engineer there wrote a fairly explosive article alleging that she was pretty extensively sexually harassed and that so were other women working at Uber, and the company really didn't do anything about it and even sabotaged her and other female colleagues. Yeah, that was what was striking about it, right, that it

was pretty institutionalized. And there was this follow up New York Times article that dove into how that's the culture at Uber, how there's bullying and people are protected if they are quote unquote high performers, and how management is against some employees and it's not just women. According to this article, right, like, it isn't only women being sexually harassed. There men getting bullied as well. Yeah. One example was that a manager threatened to beat an underperforming employees in

the head with a baseball bat. Um. That was one. Yeah, that's really weird and scary kind of can you imagine that happening to No, I can't. And I think that's where you cross over into what we kind of call a toxic workplace. It's a little bit of a buzzword, but I do think that it's useful to think about what it means to work someplace that is toxic. What does it mean to you? So when we dine our sexual harassment episode, our guest said that had things will

happen when you get a lot of people together. So the very fact that there is somebody sexually harassing someone at work doesn't necessarily make the workplace toxic. It's the fact that at uber it seems that they don't address it and they may even protect these people. So that thought, to me, is what really makes a place seem like somewhere I wouldn't want to work. What about you, Francesca, Yeah, I think it's exactly that that it's not just one jerk or you know, one person you don't get along

with it work. It's it's a bunch of systems that really make you feel powerless. I mean, I know I've worked in places, certainly not now or any time recently, but I have at least one job that comes to mind that I would I would call a pretty toxic work environment. And the reason it was that way was not just because I had a mean boss or I

had a mean coworker. It was because there was a manager pretty high up who I would describe as a bully, and I think that his management style trickled down to the managers below him and the managers below them, and it really felt like there was nothing you could do.

There was no way you could get justice, so to speak, for the way that you were being treated at the job, and if you were going to stick around, you had to kind of come up with coping strategies, Like it was all about just how to get out of bed every morning and go into work and know that something you felt really unfair was going to happen to you that day. That kind of brings me to my question about this, which is how people get stuck in these jobs and why they stay and then what finally gets

them to leave? Yeah, the obvious answer would be money, Like it's hard to leave jobs and you can't really leave if you depend on the paycheck. But it's it's more nuanced than that, right. Yeah. I wrote a story about why people stay in jobs they hate, which wrote up some research that found often these people who didn't link our jobs for one reason or another, stayed because they were being overpaid basically at their current jobs. And why would you leave? But that cannot be the case

for all these stories we're hearing. I mean Susan Fowler, for example, as an engineer and uber. She got a job me or weeks later, but it took her an entire year. Right You hear all about the talent shortage in Silicon Valley. There's really it's not that hard for an engineer to find something new if they if they want to switch jobs. And there are toxic work environments and other high paying fields right here. These stories from all sorts of workers, not just people, are stuck in

their positions. Right, So there's a lot of coping that happens in mental thought processes that I think get You may be stuck in these environments for longer than you would like to be, and it's a perfect time to introduce our guest, who herself worked in a toxic work environment many years ago. Our guest today is Maureen Sherry, whose book Opening Bell is a fictionalized account of her time as the youngest female managing director at Bear Stearns.

Opening Bell is soon to be a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, and we're very happy to have Maureen with us. Welcome, Maria, thank you. I'm happy to be here. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about what the culture was like at Barristerns in the late nineties early two. Yeah.

So the culture of Bear and I think some other investment banks on Wall Street, particularly on the trading floor where I worked, was very much a meritocracy in the way that you could whatever you There's this terrible expression eat what you kill, but you were on commission and people were quite motivated to really be successful by bringing the most commissions or doing the most deal or that

sort of thing. And so as an outlier that you had this incredibly competitive environment that was probably nine it was male professionals, and so women were far outnumbered, and as you can imagine, it was a very very loose from a behavior standpoint. And uh, if you remember, the economy at that time had gone through a a blip and had really recovered nicely. So there was a lot of energy, there's a lot of money being made, and it was a pretty wild time. Can you give us

some specific examples of that wild time? So I think that as women were coming more into their own on Wall Street at that time, there was a feeling that almost a question of of place. Where they really hadn't been large breadwinners, they now were in some situations, and so I think for some, especially more senior men, it felt it was a little disconcerting. They felt a little bit, uh that there was a power play. There was a I think, a way that men asserted themselves in their

role of being more powerful. And one of the ways they did that was through a lot of fraternal jokes, a lot of juvenile behavior stuff that we've yeah, you've talked about people moving at you. Yeah, that's right. So one of the more awful examples was I had at the time just had my first child, and I was expressing breast milk, and so it is as you know, a very familial environment, very much like a newsroom where people sit quite close to one another. Nobody really has

office stores that they closed. So I did keep a pump under my desk. I would have to go to We had a barber shop at bear Stearns, and I would go in there to express breast milk. And when I would get up and pull the bag out, sometimes traders, seeing me leaving the desk would move and you know, you would blush and it was funny, and and yet part of you felt very sad about it. It seems like these incidents can add up like that wasn't the only thing that happened right, right, And you have to

remember that part of it is acceptance. Like I don't think these were necessarily bad men who were trying to like objectify me in any way. I think it was we worked very closely together. They thought it was funny. Sometimes men performed for other men in a very fraternal and as I know, some people call it now the broke culture of Wall Street. And so that's the environment I worked in, and so I think this was part

of it. Was the environment toxic for men in ways? Also, I would say not because they had been the establishment for for quite a while. I wouldn't say toxic. I do think that the women who were coming in and women that I recruited to join the firm, who were younger than me, had a much stronger sense of of right and wrong behavior. And so one thing that was of great frustration to me was so many of them

would leave. They would last about two years, sometimes three, and then just say, you know, I I can make a living in a different way. I don't like the culture here. And so so one thing that myself and some of the other professional women did is we formed this group and we didn't want to, you know, make class action status or or or sue or do anything like that. What we wanted to do is change the

culture of the place we worked. And so we called jokingly, we called ourselves the Glass Ceiling Club, and the Glass Ceiling Club just aimed to call men on behavior that we thought was unacceptable and that we thought other women that it was causing other women to leave. For ourselves, we felt like we had been there for so long that we almost had accepted it, or felt we had a thick skin. But I really felt like with younger women that was no longer going to to work anymore.

Why did you decide to stay and spend some time trying to change the culture rather than just finding another opportunity. You know what I think it's interesting about that question is when you're in it, I didn't say to myself every day, Oh, I should really leave this is this is abusive. I felt a little beaten up sometimes by this constant drum of call it sexism if you will, But I stayed for so long because it starts to

feel familiar. Like a lot of people who are in even a bad relationship, it feels familiar, it feels comfortable. Obviously there's financial security, and so I think that had a lot to do with it. To some of us, this can sound like a time a long time ago, and things have changed. And you even said younger workers have different reactions to this. But you've been interviewing traders working on floors now as part of research for your movie.

Are these things still happening? So yeah, it's been very interesting to go around with the screenwriter and to go to a trading floor, and we really targeted women who are really on the professional track doing great, and to talk to them incredibly frankly, and they're mostly women who have been referred to us by other women because there's a lot of this, oh you should hear what happened to her, But they they share stories sometimes, but nobody really wants to be the one who is raising her

hand and saying, you know, we need to do something about this. But for us, because it is sort of, um, you know, kind of this little safe environment to speak with, we've gotten a lot of really good feedback and so so things have changed as far as the overt, uh really overt awful stuff that would happen on a trading floor. We think partly that's because stuff is far more documentable now. Right, everybody has a camera phone, We have messages and emails

and things like that that are evidence based. And so what's different now is that they would say it has gone to be a more covert sexism. So, for instance, one woman gave us the example where she had had she has a young child, she returned to work. Another woman had a child and decided to be home with her family, and so at her going away party, their mutual boss stood up and said, I'll call her Jane. He said, you know, let's all raise a toast to Jane,

she's going home to be with her baby. She's doing the right thing, and everyone had to toast to that. Well, you can imagine how this makes this woman who's not home with her child all day feel. It's stuff like that. We had really countless examples, and so to keep this story current in the movie, we're trying to use examples more like that. Do you have advice or thoughts for how women can deal with that more more covert version.

One thing that has struck me with the numerous cases not just on Wall Street, but we've seen this now in the news area. Obviously we're talking about it now and with uber women not speaking to one another, is that something that nobody has really explained to me very well. And so one very senior woman said to me that she felt she was so kind of honored to have been chosen to become a partner at an investment bank. There are so few seats at the table for women.

She felt really grateful to be there for her to start raising her hand and and kind of like kivetzing with other women and sharing stories with other women didn't really seem like a good career move. And so that is one thing that I felt, if women can break that habit and and look out for each other more, but even more importantly to have men look out for

women in that way. So, for instance, we talk a lot about mentorship, and often it's a senior women being assigned essentially a younger women who she's supposed to to bring in and to to help her with career advice and things like that. And the women I spoke to generally didn't like that relationship, only because sometimes it works out and it's terrific, sometimes it feels very artificial. I think that I would say to younger women, speaking to

other women is great. Finding organic relationships is great. I also think when you do that, if there is some sexism or or I al would say non promotion from men, to have a male mentor or a good friend who can look out for you, I think that helps immeasurably too. So I talked a bit about why people's day and why you've stayed and partly, yeah, it's because you've built this great career and you've invested so much time and

this thing. How did you eventually get out? Well? I didn't leave because there had been any one big event. I felt beaten down because I had I have a number, I have four children, and so after each maternity leave, I would return to a lesser job. I think partly that was because I worked with men who, in general they were large income earners, their wives didn't need to work, so it felt to them a little strange to work

alongside a working mother. That wasn't that common back then, and I still think it's It's a much smaller percentage in the in the higher ends of Wall Street than than you can imagine. So when I did leave, it was a feeling. Yes, I felt beaten down a bit by my job. I had felt that when I came back, my accounts that I covered rare, always fewer of them, and I would often get them back, but it was through a lot of uphill work again, and so I

felt worn out when I left. What was really interesting is I went to our human resource department because you have this mandatory exit interview, and I wanted to be really honest because I felt like despite many meetings and trying to defend some women who had signed you fours and had left in the kind of in the dark of night, and it had gotten uh, gotten nice checks for their for their silence. I didn't want to do

anything like that. So when I sat down, there was this lovely offer for me to sign a piece of paper that was a nondisclosure agreement, and I had this very expensive statement that I said where I said, I said to her, well, how would my signing this help any women? Her coming behind me, and so it's sort of she sort of, you know, had her tongue for a little bit. And then I said, and what exactly

is this money for? And again she really didn't have an answer for me, and so I left, and I didn't leave with this intention to go and write a book about it. But as years went by and I saw these occasional class action suits come to fruition, and we saw enormous settlements, you know, Morgan Stanley, a smaller

one of Goldman Sachs City Group at JP Morgan. When you see these happening at so many places and you never hear the details because all the women are essentially handed checks for their silence, I kept saying to myself, whatever will make this change, And for me, the change was something I could I could do because I had not signed anything, and b I could novelize it. My intention was never to get certain people in trouble or

name names. It was just to describe a culture that previous I felt to this book had never really been described. Just give us a little bit more detail about that system. You know, what is the you for and what is in nondisclosure agreement? And how do they keep us from learning more about how common these stories can be? So

this isn't just a Wall Street phenomenous uh. And in several industries, on your first day of work, when you sit down and most people don't read the fine the fine print because they're so excited to have a job. It says that if you ever have an issue with this firm, you will settle it in house. You'll come to human resources, you'll describe what's bothering you. They will either verify it or not verify it. And that's the U for. That's right, that's the U four. And it's

an arbitration agreement. You will arbitrate and have this settled in house. And so everybody signs it. And when you do, you've given up your essentially your your civil rights to a day in court. Some people get out of that by forming class action when they have so many people on board that they're able to present as a group. But even with that, we we have never seen that come to a court where people testified. I'm wondering, since we've been talking about uber, when you read that, what

was your reaction? So I so my reaction was not one of great surprise. My reaction was here she has. I felt Susan Fowler had a tremendous amount of evidence, right she had. I guess I can't remember if their emails or text messages from her superior basically propositioning her very blatantly, and so to me to present that to a human resources department, that's a it's just a very

open and shut case. But when I read how long it went on for because he was a large income earner and and a great employee as far as bringing money, did it surprise me? It didn't surprise me. No. Well, yeah, I mean I think that it's just really interesting how you hear these stories yours and Susan Fowler's, and they sound really shocking, But the truth is that there may

be many, many more of these stories out there. I just wanted to add, you know, I had written an op ed about it, and one thing that really shocked me were the amount of else I got, not from women in Wall Street or banking, from so many industries.

It was women in research, women in education, women in science, and it went on and on, and so it made it made me feel emboldened to to talk about this more, because it is obviously not just isolated to industries where you do sign a you for, but many others where women feel I think sort of they just have somehow gotten themselves used to putting up with this coersive behavior that that to hang on to their jobs and of course financial stability, and maybe that's another reason why women

and people get stuck in these work environments. Where else do you go if it's happening at so many places and in so many industries. Yeah, likes you feel that way, I've I felt that way, and the and the again, the feedback made us, myself and the screenwriter, we were sort of marveling about the broad brush of of industry in the US and and how prevalent it is, and you know, maybe women just feel that this is part

of the cost of money. Well, thank you so much for talking to us, thank you, thanks for having me so Marian tried to change that culture from within, and clearly that did not work and sounded very exhausting. So then her other option was to leave the field completely and use the platform that she has now, which seems to be working a little better. Right. It seems like if you if you actually want to change a toxic workplace culture and not just leave it, those are your

two options. You can stay there and try to make things better from within, or you can leave and make it really public what happened to you. But as Maureen described, that carries its own penalties, and if you want to stay in your industry, you might be really reluctant to do that and burn bridges. But it also seems like

it's the more effective strategy. Like even at Uber, in the wake of these two, you know, really high profile articles, the company and now it was going to do an independent investigation and bring in former Attorney General Eric Holder and Arianna Huffington and all these other people to figure out what had happened there and take it really seriously. And I can't imagine that happening if all the stuff

hadn't come to light. Oh, no way, no way. And it's a little unfair to make the victims do all the work if you're going to stay within the culture and try to change things, like that's just unfair that not only are you being bullied at work, but it's on you to fix it. It's kind of nice to see Uber getting aggressive and kind of on the defense

about it. And even if it's under these unfortunate circumstances, that this is how things are going to change, right, Like, companies really aren't going to have that much pressure to change if every time somebody leaves a toxic workplace they do it kind of quietly and they have to sign an NBA or do the you for arbituation and she was talking about, right, or even if you don't have to do those things, and you just don't want to ruffle feathers, you don't want to leave on a bad

note because you might have to work with somebody at that company sometime again in the future. Sure, I mean, I certainly know of plenty of people who have left jobs because they hated working there, but the reason they said they left was because they got a better job or they wanted to spend more time with their family. Yeah, you rescue reputation. And Susan tweeted that she thought people were trying to do oppositional research on her and smear her. Geez,

So it's already it's already affecting her. I mean, she has another job. Hopefully her reputation won't be ruined because she decided to speak up. But it's a risk, right, and then anybody that hires you down the line may or may not take that into consideration, the fact that you were a troublemaker your last jobble rouser. I just really wanted to say, rabble rouser. Yeah, you got that

in cossion. Well, let's hope that some of that rabble rousing actually forces companies to do better in the future. And in the meantime, I think it's time for half fake takes, happy faith takes. Becca. What is your idea this week that you haven't fully thought through but you want to talk about anyway, I would like there to be more sizes of drinks available when I go out. Interesting.

So the other day I was telling a story to one of our producers and saying that I had two and a half glasses of alcohol, and he was like, how could you have half a glass of alcohol? Well? I didn't want the full serving size, but in this society, we are forced to order one glass of wine. There's no like half glass or like I want more variation in the sizes of drinks I can have so that I don't have to waste them or like guzzle something

I don't want. That's that does seem to be true for wine, there's a certain pore for what like for for hard liquor, you can get a shot or two shots. Yeah, but you get like a double could and for that's the opposite of what I want. I want all our variations. I want like half a beer sometimes. And this isn't me being like, oh, I just don't drink that much. No, I just you know, I want to moderate in smaller doses. You know some places, and I think this is more

common in Europe that so omoous. I do think it's work common in Europe, though that some places will do a half point and that is a great amount of beer. It's a perfect amount of beers point. But you can't most bars here in New York. You can't walk in and ask for a half point. No, so I'm forced to be someone who doesn't finish their drinks, and I get a lot of crap for it, or I have to be someone who wants to do something I don't want to do. I choose to be a waster. That

sounds that sounds rough. Yeah, that's my happig. Take more variation and drink sizes. What is yours? Okay? My half big take is about how great cubicles are. So, cubicles are like this symbol, like they became. They became the symbol of workplace drudgery. You sit in your cubicle and you just like you don't even get a real office. You don't even have the dignity of being in a room. You're in like a fake play room. But honestly, it's

been years since I've had a cubicle. We've were I work in an open plan office, as do you, and I have for years, and I would give anything to be back in that cubicle. There was so much more privacy. I miss it. I missed my cubicle. That's my happy take. That is really controversial. Um. The thing about cubicles, it's like you feel like an animal. I guess now you're at a trough where you're in a pen. Okay, you're at a trough. So I have to be clear about

something because there are different kinds of cubicles. I'm talking about the kind of cubicle that has high walls, so it's it's almost like an office. Like I worked at this place where I had a cubicle. It had a little opening that was almost like a door. You could pin little pictures up inside and personalize it. You. You

kind of got some privacy. And I would be over the moon to work in a cubicle like that again, because right now we just basically work in a giant bullpen with open desks and there's not even really enough height on the walls that separate our desks or the divider's it's it's they're not well to put a picture of, you know, a loved one or your dog or whatever. Wow, standing up for cubicles. Cubicles, bring back the cubicle, I say. And this has been half big takes, half baked takes.

Thanks for listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter at at Francesca today and I'm at rs Greenfield. And if you have your own half big takes or just feel like tweeting at us, tweet them at game Plan. You can also call our hotline at two and two six one seven zero one six six. If you like this podcast, please go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast and subscribe. And if you write us a review, we will send you a cake. We won't actually send

you a cake, but please write us reviews. We really appreciate every single one. This show was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. The Head of Podcasts is Alec McCabe and we'll see you next week. See you, and you can also call our hotline at two and two six one seven. I don't know the rest of the numbers. I was like, did she have it ready? One s six