Why I Decided to Write a Comedic Web Series about My Corporate America Experience Even Though It Isn’t Funny
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I took my first creative writing class junior year in high school, but I also wanted good health insurance and a steady salary. After a stint in the fashion industry after college, I decided to find a full-time job that paid well, but allowed me to write in my free time. I rationalized I could get a job as an assistant in any industry in any city and that the actual work wouldn’t require too much mental bandwidth so I’d have enough energy to write at night and on the weekends. For a while, that’s what I did. But then I took a position as an Executive Assistant to one of the top leaders in at 5,000-person creative company which took over my mental bandwidth so I couldn’t write. In its industry, the company is considered a global giant and there was pressure to perform well. Because of this, I spent the first three months of my employment observing and listening. In the beginning, I kept my mouth shut, studied how the company worked, proved myself, and earned people’s trust. Basically, I learned the rules and played the game. Until one day I couldn’t anymore.
Since I worked mostly with men at the highest levels of the company, it wasn’t long before I was subject to and a witness to over the top office politics, sexual harassment, blatant sexism, and double standards. I experienced numerous situations that made me uncomfortable, not because I didn’t know how to handle them, but because whatever was happening was either inappropriate or unethical, sometimes even illegal. In the food chain, I was on the bottom, but I was a nobody with common sense who people trusted and valued, especially my boss. So when the people in power put me in awkward positions and made inappropriate comments, eventually I began calling them out. To no one’s surprise, least my own, at a certain point, I was retaliated against for speaking up.
When out at a work event one night, the Regional Managing Director started regaling a group of co-workers about his experience at a whorehouse in Thailand. The younger male employees hung on his every word, but I sarcastically joked to the group that "the conversation seemed like a super appropriate topic to discuss with subordinates." The Regional Managing Director gave me a deer in headlights look and then changed the subject.
The next morning, the Regional Managing Director pulled me into his office and said: “you fucking bitch, you need to learn to keep your mouth shut.” I knew from past experience this man had an unchecked anger management problem (calling me a fucking bitch was by no means the worst thing he’d done) so for my safety, I promptly walked out of his office. I briefly thought about reporting the encounter to HR, but I already knew they’d say something like oh that’s just what he does, you know him. At least that had been their response in the past when other people had reported this man’s questionable behavior. He was a man who claimed he was changing the landscape of downtown Los Angeles and making the company a significant amount of money, so HR protected him. He was more valuable than the lower level employees he harassed, so there was no chance I was going to waste my time reporting him.
Then a couple days later, I was escorted to HR by my boss. The HR Manager informed me I was being written up because in an email to an external contact I said the following: "I'm waiting for information from the Regional Managing Director's assistant to determine who the appropriate person is (for you to meet with)." The Regional Managing Director was copied on the email and claimed it made him look bad because it came off like our team wasn’t united. The external contact was a contractor, not a client, and what I’d said in the email was not bad enough to warrant an official write up. But obviously the RMD used it as an opportunity to retaliate against me for calling him out at the event the week before. Although he was the one who had technically been unprofessional, I was sitting in an HR conference room being reprimanded and walked away with an official warning in my file. No doubt the glaring double standard was only obvious to me. My bosses’ boss was trying to remind me he was the one with the power. Probably so I’d keep my mouth shut. The only thing I learned in that situation was that people abuse their power with little to no repercussions (obviously there are way worse examples of this than what I experienced).
At that point, I’d been unhappy for a while and had initiated my job search a couple months before getting called into HR, but the double standard and the reinforcement of power further solidified my decision to leave. Up until that point, I had been so angry about what I’d seen go down and experienced at the company. People openly talked about how the system was broken from the top down, but were powerless to change it. The men in charge had to change it, but of course they see nothing wrong with their behavior so why would they? Instead of being angry about it, I learned to find the humor in my experience. I figured there wasn’t anything else to do but to laugh at these men. After all, getting laughed at is what they fear most.
I left the company, but the stories have stuck with me. For a while, I wasn’t sure what to do with them, I just knew I had to tell them because people should be aware of what women have to deal with in so-called “professional” corporate environments. Because some version of what I experienced is true for many other women. Because we’re objectified, condescended to, and silenced not only in our personal lives, but also at work. Because I need to mask my frustration in humor since it's easier for people to digest than indignation.
A couple months after I left the company, I came back to visit some of my former co-workers / friends. I was at the bar catching up with people, when someone came from behind and wrapped his hands intimately around my waist, locking them together on my hip. A voice then whispered in my ear, “I can touch you like this because you no longer work for me.” I turned to see the Regional Managing Director leaning over smiling at me. I briskly brushed his hands aside and let him know he in fact could not touch me like that. He gave me a surprised look, then joked I'd gotten sassier since leaving. I glanced at my former co-workers at the bar and noticed they were all looking at me in horror. I couldn't help but wonder why people weren't shocked by what he’d done instead of what I'd said. And therein lies the problem. People were more surprised by a woman telling off a powerful man than they were by his unseemly behavior.
This final interaction inspired me to create a five-episode comedic web series called, Not Normal, about my experience in a toxic workplace. I have a responsibility not only to women, but also men, to tell my story. I’m telling it in hopes it inspires women to speak up and to fight the people in power who behave badly. Because we have a voice now. Because we don’t have to stay silent even though they want us to. The optimist in me would like the men to see a reflection of themselves they don’t like and to start thinking about how their actions impact others. But the realist knows they won’t. Like the system at my old office, our society is broken and needs fixing.
My main character, James Ford, may not be likeable, especially to men, but she’s the female role model I believe we need. So together we can create a world in which people are more aware and actually held accountable for their behavior. A world in which the people in the wrong are punished, instead of the victims. And the victims are believed, not silenced.