Trautism

If you’ve worked in professional services (accounting, consulting, law, etc.), then you may have heard the joke that staff people are like tubes of toothpaste. Do you get it? I didn’t at first; an executive I met early in my career had to demonstrate it for me. 

Grinning at me with a charming boyish twinkle in his eye, he pretended to tightly roll up and squash an imaginary tube of toothpaste, rotating one shoulder at a time and bunching them up under his ears for dramatic effect. “See? You just keep squeezing and squeezing even when you think there’s nothing left!” It was a move not unlike a stereotypical villain rubbing his hands together with delight over his most recent nefarious plan. And what the joke means, of course, is that fresh young people coming out of college full of excitement and big dreams would get exploited to the point of depletion as a standard part of business. 

The humor had always seemed in poor taste, but I accepted the repercussions it mocked as natural and necessary to develop strong professionals in such high stakes industries. But what did I know back then? Supposedly long, intense hours were required to properly serve the clients – and perhaps equally importantly, to separate the winners from the losers. 

Many people flame out in their first years of public accounting, so the idea is that only those with the grit to be consistently dedicated, diligent, and skilled under such extreme conditions will remain. As professionals progress in their careers, they earn the opportunity to compete for coveted leadership positions where they are highly compensated and far more comfortable than in their earlier stages, in part because they can now squeeze the staff that they used to be. 

This practice of treating people like toothpaste may be similar to hazing rituals in frats and sororities. Besides any legitimate business reasons for doing it, the trend probably continues in part because it’s human nature to treat others as we have been treated (unless we’re continuously reflecting upon our values and assessing them against our reality to find and repair any disparity between the two). So depending on one’s mindset, it can seem unfair if not straight up wrong for those who follow you to not endure what you did, especially if you think you handled it well enough and ultimately grew stronger as a result. 

With this nuanced understanding in mind, I stayed in professional services for well over 15 years. Then I became utterly gutted when one day in my late 30s, I took a hard look at myself and saw that I too had become nothing more than a crusty, crumpled, hollow tube. But I wasn’t some newb at the Big 4; I was the operations leader at a small consulting firm. The relationship between my bosses and me was different… wasn’t it? Besides, I had known them for almost two decades; they even knew my mom before she passed away. They were good, principled, Catholic men. So why did I feel so gross and used? 

This awful realization stemmed primarily from a project I had undertaken to enhance data analytics skills for a certificate I had been pursuing. Since the firm had a longstanding challenge of meeting utilization targets and properly managing downtime – because the ebb and flow of consulting as a small business had created the opposite problem of staff getting overworked – that became one of my focus areas. I thought I could apply my burgeoning skills to better understand the situation and come up with some innovative solutions.

As I sliced and diced the numbers from the past several years, a cold pit began to grow in my stomach. Except for the fortunate consultants who were staffed on full-time projects, very few at any level seemed to be actually working our standard 40-hour workweek. The appropriate amount of time would get logged, but it often didn’t seem realistic – too many hours went to non-client charge codes like admin and development, without sufficient output. For the significant number of people who were unassigned or partially billable for weeks or months at a time, it would be impressive if they were making productive use of even 50% of their downtime. And while we monitored time weekly and had created programs to better facilitate development during these periods with known challenges, the extent of the issue as shown by the data over multiple years was profound. Admittedly, though, my interpretation from this recent effort may have been amplified because I had never before compared practitioner time to mine.

In pre-pandemic days, we typically required office attendance for eight hours a day, five days a week, unless taking personal time or working at a client site. However we didn’t have any official means of monitoring or enforcement, and we quietly afforded regular flexibility to those bold enough to take it, a phenomenon that correlated positively with one’s title. The more someone progressed in the hierarchy, the more likely they were to come in late, leave early, take long breaks, or work remotely. However, unless the office closed for inclement weather, only two people besides the owners had official permission for this ongoing flexibility – a director and me.

As the only non-local employee, this practitioner director required such flexibility. I got it too because I was hired to provide part-time operations support for about 24 hours/week as my personal schedule allowed. We aimed for me to work 9am-3pm most weekdays and leave the office in time to meet my daughter at home after school, with the option to work remotely as needed for teacher workdays, doctor appointments, and similar domestic conflicts. We came to this seemingly perfect arrangement because the company didn’t have the budget to bring me on full-time, and I had a troubled and needy family at home anyway. 

My responsibilities in the business expanded rapidly, though, and I began to struggle to get everything done in the time that I had. Not only did my standard departure get later and later, but I’d often take calls or otherwise keep working once I got home or after dinner. Additionally part of my job involved regularly hosting happy hours and other company events outside of my typical working hours. Far from providing simple ad hoc support, I had quickly become a central leader, tasked with developing and implementing all of our business operations except internal accounting. 

My boss and I ended up discussing my time management, and we established some different parameters. While I’d now aim for 30 hours each week, I could work more than that as long as I didn’t go over 40 hours and trigger overtime pay. The budget allotted me only 30 hours/week, but it was calculated at the full 52 weeks a year, and I wasn’t working every single week, nor did I receive any paid time off. This meant that as long as I behaved reasonably, any personal time I took would balance out any weekly overage in hours billed because the time away was unpaid.

I knew back then that our agreement was a little clunky, but gratitude overrode any whispers of concern from the back of my mind. I greatly appreciated the flexibility to continue my career after a break of several years while also remaining available to my family. And it brought me genuine joy that I could competently support my colleagues with so many various challenges – helping others has been a fundamental life goal of mine for as long as I can remember. It also felt rewarding to contribute to the success of a small business I respected so much… one that we said was “like a family.” 

Unfortunately my impromptu data analysis project destroyed my sense of peace on this subject. Based on my interpretations, for several years I’d been working just as much and just as hard as our average full-time employees, if not significantly more and harder. Yet I was just an hourly part-time employee with no benefits, including no paid time off – while the rest of our leaders got almost two months of paid time off every year. I made sure all my time really counted too, and I could not say the same for others. 

I’d regularly see my closest contemporaries on the practitioner side of the business goofing off, and their staff would report similar concerns to me. Activities ranged from watching sports and other videos with office doors open to regularly meandering, meddling, and gossiping. And I wasn’t the only one with complicating personal circumstances, as one colleague would be absent from the office for days if not weeks at a time, typically only when client work was sparse.

However, while these shenanigans had generated a lot of extra work for me over the years, I’d just dig in harder, faster, and smarter. I didn’t really think about how unfair it was that they had full, generous compensation packages while they were repeatedly failing to behave professionally or take proper care of their teams. Meanwhile even though I had only one direct report, I indirectly managed up, down, and sideways. Responsible for staying in touch with everyone and harmonizing the organization, I kept track of moods, goals, preferences, loved ones, and personal plans. These details filled large swaths of my mind and my heart, as if they were a fleet of boats swirling in a sea of our objectives and plans, a grand multidimensional puzzle with ever-changing parts. 

I’d been getting tired of it all though. Despite my love for these people and my work, and prior to my eureka moment about being so deeply unappreciated, I had already planned to quit. I’d been struggling with an ongoing sense of unfulfillment without knowing why, but this exhausting job and subtly toxic environment seemed like good candidates. And my restlessness is partly why I pursued the certificate in data analytics – to pave a path into more sophisticated and more impactful work. 

But the pandemic hit a few months prior to my planned exit. Not only did this snarl the job prospects I’d been eyeing, but my integrity wouldn’t allow me to leave my team during such a crisis. I ended up staying for more than a year longer to guide the firm through the multitudes of changing COVID requirements and transition our operations to virtual and then hybrid ways of working together. 

In response to stay-at-home orders and related uncertainty, the company had enacted various cash-preserving measures, including reducing my hours by a third. We pushed any work I couldn’t do to other leaders and our operations assistant. Fortunately the free time allowed me to make more progress with the data analytics certificate, but it also allowed me to reflect on my role, contributions, and compensation. And working remotely gave me the energetic space away from my bosses and my love for them to more objectively see their treatment of me for what it was. 

I didn’t like my conclusions at all. I tried talking to my primary boss about why I hadn’t been full-time all those years… maybe hoping for an explanation if not an apology? But either I pitched it wrong or he misunderstood me, and we spent most of the conversation discussing why making me full-time still didn’t make sense. Now more than ever, they “couldn’t afford” me. And while he didn’t say this part, we both knew that they didn’t need me anymore anyway. True to the end, I had ensured they would be okay after I left: documenting all our operations in an extensive manual as well as training and mentoring a protege for several years. My time there had ended; I just didn’t expect to leave with such a wickedly bitter taste in my mouth. 

I’ve worked extremely hard at all of my jobs, and this one set a new personal record. Apparently this overachieving proclivity is common for autistic people who function decently, as well as for anyone who has been abused by narcissists and has not yet fully healed. We seem to never be enough so we keep trying. We’re slow to learn how to protect ourselves. We can be naive. We can struggle to communicate, especially anything about our internal state or ourselves, making self-advocacy difficult. All of that applies to me.

I foolishly trusted my bosses to look out for me because I looked out for them, and that’s how teamwork is supposed to work. They also earned more of my trust by being Christians and knowing me for so long, ever since I was a young woman reeling from my mom’s early death. Plus they were aware I didn’t have parents in my life to guide me. I’d also told them that my remaining tiny family struggled, and that my new husband had been treating me in perplexing, deeply hurtful ways. And since they’re super sharp and very successful numbers guys who like to squeeze the toothpaste, I struggled to see how my arrangement could have been a completely innocent oversight in any way. I saw it clearly when I looked at the data and finally thought about how I factored into it all. Ugh.

Earlier I had said they were good Catholic men. I’d seen that characteristic as an indication of safety… but now I wondered if their faith had negatively contributed to our workplace dynamic. Maybe they thought less of me because I wasn’t a real Catholic anymore, because I had gotten divorced from my first husband? They didn’t know about the abuse and probably just heard the affair rumor, so they could’ve secretly thought of me as trash for all those years we worked together. 

Or maybe they were following the Catholic concept of ordo amoris in the same flavor that JD Vance allegedly enjoys, and prioritizing themselves and their families over me and mine? But if so, to what extent does the church condone such selfishness? We’re not talking about starving one family to feed another. My bosses and their families live in mansions padded by trust funds, with their many children attending respected private schools. Their lives vastly differ from mine. I’d previously just been respectful and impressed by this divide; it didn’t occur to me that each of them could have easily shaved off a little of their profits to make me whole, transforming my life while having a minimal impact on their overall financial status. 

Alternatively, it’s possible their subconscious minds simply saw me as too risky of a person to know and were afraid to get too close, so they avoided thinking about me in any way besides my utilitarian purpose to their business. They could have just seen a great deal in me, and taken it. And I let them. 

As hapless victims tend to do, I’d wonder where I had erred and what was wrong with me. I’d turn these thoughts over in my mind as I’d scroll through the firm’s social media pages in those early days after my resignation, undoing my previous reactions and probably even deleting some of my old comments – at that point, they were the only things I could take back. If any of my former colleagues noticed, I’m sure I looked like I’d become unhinged, but the results were effective. The approach brought closure far faster and cheaper than therapy. Every click felt like pulling one of their thorns out of my skin. 

Years have passed by now, and I feel much more healed and at peace. Clearly I gave too much, worked too hard, expressed too much of my love. But even though being so passionate hurt me in this situation, I recognize it as a strength, and I won’t allow this negativity to rob me of that attribute in addition to everything else it took. I just want to tweak my approach, reacquaint myself with my own needs, and find more worthy recipients for what I have to offer.