#staff-concerns

#staff-concerns

"When you talk to people about breaking them down, they feel like they're going to get flattened. This negative perception of breaking down siloes can impact the organization's ability to solve the siloes in the first place."

For decades, work was designed around a fiction, that of the 'neutral' worker, an abstract individual assumed to be fully available, consistent, rational, and unaffected by bodily constraints. But this neutrality was never real.

If you've spent enough time in workplaces, on boards, or in other community organizations, you've probably had that moment where your stomach tightens in a meeting and you're not entirely sure why. A comment lands sideways. A tone shifts. Someone interrupts you for the third time. You walk away replaying the exchange, wondering whether you imagined it or whether something subtle but unmistakable just happened. That confusion is often the first sign you're dealing with a workplace bully.

My co-worker, "Alyssa," joined the office a few months ago. As far as I can tell, she is significantly hard of hearing but doesn't use any hearing aid. I've tried to train myself to speak loudly and clearly with her (I have family who are going deaf, I get it), but she still often misses part of what I say.

Around the office, people clutch coffee like a life raft, waiting for their brains to come online and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they got in early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out-this time. Now: which person are you? The early riser, or the one watching them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour no matter how hard you try?