That Time I Burned a Bridge

bridge burning. Everybody has the fantasy of quitting their job and leaving in a blaze of glory, telling their boss exactly what they always thought of them, I don't know, tearing up somebody else's cubicle, doing something really memorable that will make the company rue the day that they treated you badly. But usually we have the good sense not to do stuff like this because we've been always taught

that you don't burn bridges. Right, Yeah, you never want to piss someone off that maybe you'll need them for something later, right, And you never know who that person is going to be, so your workplace nemesis. Now, who's some other officer and that you hate could be the very person that is responsible for deciding whether you get fired, hired or fired at a future job. And yet we still hear about these examples of people doing exactly that,

just doing stuff that is so deliciously awful. But it is a really bad career move, and we love reading about it. Like, not too long ago, there was a customer service employee a yelped named Talia Jane who wrote a lengthy essay on Medium about how terrible her job was and how poor her pay was, and it generated a long back and forth on the Internet about whether she was an entitled millennial or whether she was completely

right to stand up to the man. But the whole point is we all got the joy of watching somebody live out our work revenge fantasies without any of the repercussions. Yet so fun to read these things because it scratches that itch that we have to do these things, but then we don't actually have to do it, right, But what happens when you burn a bridge and you don't even really know you're doing it as you're doing it. This week's show is going to be in a little

bit of a different format. We're going to dedicate the whole time to exploring an incident that could have burned some major bridges and that is a very personal story that comes from within our very own podcast team. Isn't that right, Becca? Yes, I'm I may have burned a bridge without quite knowing that I was doing it. To understand the tale of Becca's Big, bad bridge burning. You need a little bit of background, so we're just gonna launch you right into it. Sit back and enjoy back.

I was a blogger at The Atlantic Wire, and I wrote a post called Who's crazier bloggers are Writers? There have been an article in The New York Times about Joe Wisenthal, a blogger at the time at the website Business Insider. The story was about how much he worked. He woke up at four a m. He was always on Twitter, so much so that his wife had to tweet at him to get his attention. Even his bosses

described as schedule as insane. My job at the time was to respond to the news of the day, so I wrote a post about Joe, which was mostly about the way we talked about workaholic bloggers versus other types of people who are dedicated to their jobs with the same intensity. I used Robert Carroll, one of the most famous and celebrated biographers, as an example. The story was also a criticism of Joe, though it had some harsh lines.

You said that it sounded like quote his life sucks and that he was quote feeding his own ego and the page view beast that is Business Insider. It was a controversy when I went up Business Insider, people including Joe, tweeted mean things at me, but it wasn't that out of the ordinary for a day in the life of blogger me at the time. And after a day of Twitter squabbling, I moved on with my life and I have to say I didn't really think about the article again.

So three years later, you get a job at Bloomberg and Joe wasn'tal now works here. Now you work with this person that you had burned. I knew he worked at Bloomberg. There was a lot of press about it, but honestly, hadn't remembered that story. I didn't even think about it when I was interviewing for the job that it somehow might affect my chances of getting the job.

But it turns out that Joe remembered it. I think he was he heard your name in a conversation about the interview process or that you had just been hired or something like that, and he was like, that's the woman who like tore me to shreds on the internet. That was Aaron rot copp An editor at Bloomberg who was very involved in hiring me. Not only did Joe remember, but everyone at Bloomberg had been talking about it before I started. We definitely all had like a real big laugh.

I think there was like, uh, some reading out loud from your post about Joe wise atal um, not in like a sarcastic way, but like where we would read lines and then all laugh and Joe would laugh too. I might have remained blissfully ignorant until on my second day of work and editor here brought it up to me. He said, didn't you write a takedown of Joe Wisenthal and now you're sitting right next to him. At that moment, I was mortified. I was brand new at this job

and had already jeopardized my relationships. Did my bosses and colleagues think I was this terrible person? Even worse, I had made a tactical error and offended someone I was going to work with. Basically the first time that he heard your name come up as like she's coming to work here, he was like, I have to ask her about that, or I don't remember. I don't remember how it came up. I just said yeah, as soon as he found out you were working here, that that conversation

started again. That was Dashelle Bennett, a reporter at Bloomberg who works with Joe and who I had also worked with at The Atlantic Wire. If Joe remembered this story three years later, I must have really hurt him, kind of painted him as a crazy person a little bit that like, and that was but that in that craziness his appeal. It made a big deal about how little Sleepy got and how he like had carved out this niche as this guy who just gets up super early

in the morning. It beats everybody and everything just because he's never sleeping, and you know, and there was a big picture and the big name picture was like a stage photo of him and his wife in bed and she's asleep and he's awake on his laptop. And that was kind of a big deal. So it wasn't you know, it was totally fair based on what the story was about.

And and I also think that, like everyone knows that, you know, when you get featured in the New York Times about anything, you know, it becomes really hard to control what the response or the message of that story is going to be. So Becca had potentially burned a bridge and didn't even realize it. Joe could have blocked her hiring at worst, or at the very least, he could have ruined her reputation at work before she even started the job. In the end, I think everything turned

out okay, or did it so? Our guest today is one of our colleagues at Bloomberg, Joe Wisenthal arkets editor and co host of the Odd Lots podcast, and for a while, the center of some of Rebecca's most tense moments. Thanks for having me. I'm first of all, I'm really excited to be on the other side. You know, normally I'm interviewing when we do the podcast, so it's always fun to be a guest. So thanks for having me,

Thanks for talking to us, thanks for coming on. Well, I want to know about how you felt when you read the article that Rebecca wrote. So I was, first of all, I was. I was mostly amused and flattered. I was not like upset or like hurt or anything

like that. I was so when that New York Times article about myself came out, you know, obviously, like any sort of narcissist, I was saying what people said about it and or various people who said nice things, and some people were making fun of me because the article made me sound kind of crazy, but that one, Rebecca's, was like the only one that like really like went

after me. And the reason why I wasn't upset or like that I wasn't like heard right, it didn't like staying particularly is because the premise of the article was that I wasn't as talented as like the most talented biographer of all time, which I thought I just seemed like so I was like really like amused by like the premise. That's like, here's this person who is widely regarded to be like the lb j's biographer, Robert Carroll, right like that was how the article was set up.

And it's like, yeah, guilty, I'm not well. I have gone back and read the article and it kind of has two points to it, which kind of shows it was kind of a bad, bad piece, but it was good in some ways. But the one piece was kind of saying that the media treats bloggers unfairly by saying that like portraying you is like a workaholic, and but like it's in a bad way. But when Robert Carroll's a workaholic. It's a good thing, and so I kind

of tried to make that point. But then I was like, but but why do we think Joe's brand of borkaholicism is bad? It's because what he's doing is dumb. Basically, Yeah, yeah, I think I guess that's right. Like, I mean, it's been a long time since I've read it. So there was one thought, which is that the premise of the piece was such like felt like it was set up in a way that like, of course I couldn't win,

so I wasn't too bothered. But then and this is gonna sound really sanctimonious and obnoxious and everything like that. But then my other thought, and again it is gonna. I kind of felt sorry for you that you wrote that, because my thought was, like I don't know, like who edited is or like thought it was a good idea proposed, and I guess I just felt like this struck me

as something clearly regrettable to write. And and that's fine, like I've wrote, I've written so many things in my life when I was younger that are worse or regrettable, like everyone does it. But you always sort of hope like that, you know, sometimes someone catches them and say like, this isn't really very like good piece or like a good idea, And sometimes editors do that and sometimes they don't.

And I've been on both sides because I've written some things or like oh I wish someone had said don't write this. Did you feel bad because you felt like, oh, this inexperienced writer is going to get some backlash now, or just because you thought, oh, this person wrote a thing that isn't very good or I or you know, it wasn't it. It was more so we know what it was. More. I didn't think there was gonna be any back particular backlash, and there wasn't. I mean, I

don't know. Maybe some there was people not backlash, but your business inside our buddies tweah, well that's because you know, it's a team sport. So but I you know, I didn't know. I didn't think it was gonna be any backlash. Actually, my thought more specifically was it's um kind of unfortunate that people and I didn't know anything about you, and I didn't know like where you were your career, but I figured you're sort of early in your career, which

I was. Yeah, I was I'm pretty sure maybe, And so my thought was I just sort of thought it was a little unfortunate early in their career, who like, you know, in this business like makes sense, like yeah, yeah, so yeah I was writing stuff, not like so I, but yeah, I was writing things takes before the word take was even the word before people didn't talk about

yeah it was not. Yeah, but I was doing this just constantly all day, turning things out, and I was just really unhappy in my job and definitely like projecting a little bit through this where I was. There's so there are a couple pretty mean lines in here that I regret more than anything else. So one of them is talking about how the Times article portrayed you as not working a normal schedule at all, and I said, still, we feel bad for Wise and it sounds like his

life sucks. Yeah, I guess that's kind of mean. And honestly, it was because I didn't have a life that was that different. You know. I wasn't waking up at like four am, and I wasn't on Twitter constantly because I didn't want to be. But I felt like I was going in that direction and I didn't. I thought I thought my life kind of sucked, and but like it seems like you were you were the only successful story.

You know. It's funny, you know, in retrospect now I guessider myself an old man and I have kids, or I have one kid, I don't have kids, But not like I think back and I was like, did that kind of suck? Maybe it did? Like maybe you were right. Maybe you were like at the time, I mean saying, oh, it sounds like his life sucks is a little mean.

But now that I have some perspective on life and slightly more semblance of a work life balance, maybe that was Maybe that was actually one of the better lines. Maybe that actually maybe that one will stay the test of time. Yeah, well, I think I saw you as kind of the success story of what I was doing. Physically, Joe was doing what you were doing, but so weren't. In other words, if this is success, then what is

even the point? In other words, like if the in other words, if the person who's really like thriving in this environment has to wake up at four in the morning and is online all the time and it doesn't have a life and the article, I mean, I thought their aspects of it done fair. But there were details in the article that made my life seem worse than

it was, like I said, like the New York Times. Yeah, so it said that there was like there were boxes that were unopened, which portrayed me as completely not in the which is just not. Maybe there was like one box that in the corner of there were details that I thought played up the degree to which I didn't have a life more than perhaps it was a little

bit fair. But no, I mean I think, actually you're the way you say that makes sense that if that success, then what is even the point, like why go down that path? Was that the harshest line. There's one other one line that I regret more than it sounds like his life sex, which is the close to the kicker. So I'm talking about how Robert Caro has a noble cause and that's why we like it. But your cause, I say, uh, why is enthals cause is beating his own ego and the page view beast that is a

business insider. So when I going back to as you say, I think, actually the premise of your peace, as you stayed before that, why does the media treat someone like Robert Caro differently than someone who's blogging or why is workaholism seemed really noble in Kara's case, that's actually interesting. But I remember that because that sounds that like was from your just sort of like yeah, um, yeah, you

know again. I wasn't like offended. I wasn't like this is right me, and I was more like, well, this is just sort of pointless. But you must have felt, I mean, like, how how often did you come in

for criticism like that? Well, or do you well? Especially when I was at Business Insider, we got the criticism that like, we're nothing but hungry for page views all the time, which is fair and unfair, so fair in the fact that we were We were a startup, and startups never have a lot of money and they have very little margin for erin. One of the ways that you get more money is growing traffic, which a allows you to sell more ads and be growing traffic theoretically

allows you to raise more money. So you know, in retrospect, I think while we got a lot of criticism for it, the fact that we were really good at growing traffic and obsessed with it is one reason why we survived. I mean, yeah, well, so to mind you, I was also very much in that world, constantly looking at chart beat analytics to see my on traffic and under a

ton of pressure. So again, it was the part that I was upset about, and I bet that I'm not alone, and because I think that this criticism has been leveled at all everyone still to this day of digital media startups. Is that I was really proud of what we were accomplishing traffic aside. I was proud of the audience we're reaching. I was proud of like when I knew, like more and more people in finance and tech, we're reading it, people who were high up and sophisticated, we're reaching out

and they liked it. Yeah. So okay, so you say that you weren't that stung by it, but so, to be honest with you, I completely forgot about it when I found out what I was working here. I definitely knew you worked here. I knew you were, but I just didn't think, Oh, I wrote this mean thing about this person, like one they might prevent me from getting this job, which should have been a concern, but too that I have to work with this person who I offended,

But you remembered it. Yeah, Well, it was one of these things I remember the name, so Rebecca Greenfield, and but I did not like immediately click why I remember the name? So wait, So let's so we've skipped ahead in time, and now you have discovered that Becca has been hired or is about to be hired. Yeah, it's about to be three years later. So this was Yeah, it's probably about three years later. It was. It was

December April, okay, so it was early on. I had only been at Bloomberg for a few months and it was this big effort and still ongoing. But at the time there was a lot more hiring on the digital side, and someone I forget who it was, but one of my colleagues, like I were hiring Rebecca Greenfield, and the name definitely like jumped out. I was like, that name is really familiar. And then suddenly the light bulb went off. I was like, oh, I know where I know that

name from. She wrote a really mean thing about me one time, so then you probably googled there. And then I googled, I said, googled like Rebecca Greenfield. Wire wasn't along it came up. But you know, as soon as I I you know, I could probably search our IB records and find like I was probably like very amusing, like I love this should make for an amusing awkward What was the first thing that you did remember or

the first person you oh, I don't know. Well, I was Dash, who was here earlier on the show, right, he was already working here and I had worked with him. Yeah, and you had worked with him, so I was like, oh, this is he was probably who I talked about it at first two and then I pointed it out to a few people, but it was never in like a malicious way or like, oh, we can't hire anything like that. I was like, Oh, this is gonna be pretty funny.

And you weren't embarrassed. You weren't like concerned about other people reading the article. No, no, not at all. You're happy to have everybody laugh about it. Yeah. I was like, oh, this is funny. So yeah, Dash told me you couldn't stop talking about it. And how I found out was just so far removed from you and the people I was directly working with. I was under the impression that everybody knew about it, and I think that's true, probably because I was I really did get a kick out

of it. But so one thing we Fantasca and I have been talking about was that if you had found out before I had been hired, would you have used it against me? There's no chance I would have. I mean, that's just lucky, right, someone else might have, right. Yeah, So then so then I am freaking out it's working like I am just this is my second or third day in the office. I am just like everyone's impression

of me is this article. And I didn't know. I feel kind of bad because I didn't mean to, Like, I didn't you know now that like her, you from your perspective. I went around and told everyone about this article just because I was so amused. And I can sure I didn't put myself at your shoes. That would make a pretty awkward like. I can say that that was not the prevailing like everybody. That wasn't the thing

everybody was running around talking about. I think there was like an undercurrent of people knowing about it, but that there was some distance between it getting around that you had been hired and that this article had been written and you actually starting, So it didn't feel like the most current about you. I'd also heard a lot of good things about you. Yeah, so so, but I consulted some people and decided that the best thing to do was just immediately address it and just just confront you

in person. I thought that that was would maybe like put you a little bit off guard. So I think I came up to you and hid behind a lot of cliches and was like, we need to address the elephant in the room and bury the hatchet. And I think, really, what do you remember about it, Joe? I remember, like Rebecca obviously uncomfortable or embarrassed, so um, but I did. Actually I thought that was I can remember thinking that

that was well handled. Cool. So so where we kind of wanted to talk about burning bridges, and we all do things in our careers that can eventually come back to us. But the scenario worked out for me. It's just inevitable that we'll all burn bridges at some point. Basically, well, there's an argument that it it put your name in Joe head. Maybe that even helped you a little. Yeah, I mean that was the right the point of my

job at that time. It was, and you know, I was I've written things, you know, I wrote a lot about economics and stuff like that for a long time, and I like a taxed economists who are a hundred times smarter than I was and insinuated they were stupid, you know, when I was like just beginning because I thought that to what you had to do to make an aim for yourself and things that seemed self evident to me, Why isn't it self evident to this Nobel prize winn or whatever? And of course I was obviously

wrong like times, but I think it's good. I think it's good to make mistakes, and it's good to have really bad ones that hopefully don't destroy your career, but that help you slow down and help you. It's like, you know, that was really stupid, and like get chased into bit and have your ego um kept in check a little bit like from time to time, and it's probably a good thing to have happened. That's probably a good place to to Finnish up. Do either of you

feel like there's anything left unsaid? Do you need to hug it out? N it out? Thanks so much for both of you, Thank you very much for having me out. And now it's time to bring you one of my favorite segments, if not my favorite segment ever. Half Big Takes, Half Fake Takes, Half Big Takes is where we present opinions that demand a platform, but are not thoughtful or well researched enough to justify a news story. What is

your take this week? Half take? Okay, this is one that I've floated by a few people, and I'm beginning to understand it's very controversial. This is a behavior that I that I do, and if I if I had to give it a headline, it would be really like, revolving doors are the worst. But let me back up a little. I have a fear of revolving doors. I wouldn't call it a phobia because I can go through them, so it's not like a paralyzing fear going to get stuck.

The experience, it feels most akin to a medieval torture device like the iron maiden, which is where you step inside this thing and it just closes in on you and then you're basically in like a standing coffin and spikes sort of moving on you closer and closer. Like I feel like there's so much potential to get wedged into a revolving door, and the reason is because everybody's

moving at their own preferred speed. In the little you know, the little pie slices of the revolving door, right, So I do my best to avoid revolving doors if I can, but in many buildings like ours, the alternative is a very heavy that on purpose. Yeah, they want you to use revolving door because they think that it's Yeah. I mean, I would like to probably take environment you're a monster. I'd like to see the real science on that, because I'm not sure that they're that great for them. But

you'll find you some fully baked takes on that. So, people in my mind are being very rude when they go through the revolving door at full force and keep pushing the bar that moves the door ahead long after they have made the door move enough that they can

get into the building. So if I'm behind somebody like that and i can feel them moving too fast, and I know that I'm going to be in a situation where I will be scared that I will get tripped by the door or stuck in the door, I will place my hands on the bar behind them and pull. That is so mean. It's not mean. I they're being mean. I'm protecting myself. Has anybody ever reacted well, I can only see the back of their head. I mean, because

you're scared of getting stuck. Imagine what you're doing to them. All I'm doing is slowing them down and giving them ample time to exit the revolving door. But you're you're helping them. I'm helping there are no danger the safety of me and the people around me. Wow, that I don't even know if that's a half take or just a behavior. I mean, it's basically like it's basically the

most passive aggressive thing. It's aggressive. I mean it's it's it's sort of passive aggressive because people don't really know what's happening when it's happening to them. Probably like no one's ever done it to me, so I don't know exactly what it feels like to do it to you. Yeah, if you see me going the revolving door and you're you get right behind me. If you get a chance, do it, and then I'll tell you if it's really jarring.

But I think it's for the greater good and I would hope that people would be trained out of their aggressive revolving door behavior by it. But also, you know, it's it's really not helping anybody, and I should probably stop. What's your half big take? So mineus also workplace transportation related. If I had to give it a headline, I would say, chivalry is dead in the elevator, and I'm into it. It should be chevalry needs to die in the elevator.

So we work in a building with a lot of people, um, a lot of men of the male persuasion, and often you've get in a packed elevator and these men will stand when you are getting off the elevator, stand at the elevator doors and like hold it open for you. I hate this and there's so much congestion that happens because of it. It's not like they're actually even physically holding a door like a sensor makes the door stay

open or closed. Well, it's not even about holding the door, right, it's about like they will stop and allow a woman to get on or off first, which creates an incredible amount of congestion, especially if the woman's in the back of the elevator. Exactly, I'm not I'm not sure where this practice came from. I'm also weirded out by the

idea of chivalry from my coworkers. Well, and I mean it's it's a generalization and an assumption, but I'm fairly sure that there are plenty of other areas of these people's lives where they're not going this far out of their way to be chivalrous, and so it seems like

kind of a performance. Oh my god, you're so right, like they're getting The next thing they're doing after getting off the elevator is getting onto the subway, and you know that they're not standing around an I've been holding out their jacket to cover puddles for women in the subway. I mean, it's no it's a no holds barred, every man for themselves situations in the subway. So it seems like you're doing this thing in the elevator to show your politeness or whatever, but really it's just like it

makes getting off the elevator. And then as the woman, it's really awkward because everyone's standing to the side and you're rude about it. I've audibly said you can go like I just I just have no patience. So what now we sound like we're being ungrateful for people. So I'm you know, somebody male or female wants to hold a door open for me, that is a nice thing to do. That does is actually kind of it saves me whatever some effort. It's not disruptive to the people

around me. It's there's the elevator. Schevelry just makes there's a dope. There's no place for it in the workplace. Traffic flow over gender, base politeness. That's right, and this has been half baked takes, half faked takes. Thank you everybody for listening. For more from us, I am on Twitter as at Francesca today. Our guest today Joe Wisenthal is at the Stalwart, and I'm at Rs Greenfield. See

you next week. My job at the time was to respond to the news of the day, the news of I Know, I Know I I also noted my emphasis. I was like, oh,