Leaving Toxic Work Places and Bad Bosses Behind

Today I'm talking with Sarah, a multi-passionate entrepreneur and founder of Sorry For Your Boss, ExploraSTORY Studios, and Resinating Designs about leaving toxic work places and bad bosses behind! In this episode, Sarah will be sharing with us some of the gnarliest experiences she’s had in her career from toxic workplaces, to bad bosses, and everything in between. She’ll be sharing her journey in which she worked at burnout levels trying to fit herself into all the boxes that weren’t meant for her only for the universe to keep shoving her repeatedly towards the path she needed to be on - sometimes these shoves felt like a gut punch and were rather unkind. She’ll be talking about the many things that cracked her over and over before reaching a very dark breaking point, and how she began to heal and come back from this dark place.

What to Listen For:

Multipassionates in the workplace
Starting her adult life in the midst of an economic downturn
A journey that started with the stress-inducing question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Trying to fit herself into the box of societal norms and getting pushed out of that box over and over, sometimes in really nasty ways
Doing jobs that were mentally and physically draining
A few of her experiences with toxic bosses and workplaces

"It should have been a red flag from day one."

A longtime winning strategy of taking on ALL the responsibilities in every job
The shocking reason one boss told her she wouldn’t be receiving a raise

"It's not our fault that your husband likes to play video games. He should be able to support you."

Employers that tried to cover being bad bosses with random acts of kindness
The job that didn’t break her but put the most cracks in place
Having the numbers to back up her work, being told she’s doing a good job, but constantly having to train a middle man to be her boss
Having her job given to a young man fresh out of college with no experience in the industry or the field
Still doing the same work while the new boss was getting paid nearly twice as much to basically go to meetings
Packing up her desk and being ready to leave immediately

"The entire time that I worked there, I was working all the hours at burnout levels, I was there early in the morning and I was there after everyone left at night, and I was exhausted."

Leading a new organization for the same employers

"When the problem is a cultural fit, you can't fix that with a different position."

How the last year and half of working for this employer went
Feeling like the organizational stepchild
The wild thing that happened when it came time for her annual review
The shocking meeting that she thought was her annual review
Her bosses confirmed they’d “lost their passion for it and it had become a point of stress”
The part of the meeting she never expected

"We think the organization has plateaued. So, we think the only way to break that plateau and have it become like a really great organization would be for us to hire you a boss."

Trying to be supportive because she wanted to get back to the work she loved
Paying a consultant to confirm a lot of the things she’d been trying to push through for the last several years
The consultant’s thoughts on hiring a new boss
Hiring and training her own replacement
Overhearing a conversation about how she was about to be let go
Being offered three weeks severance after 6 years

Extra piece for those who read shownotes. Sarah didn’t mention this in the recording but wanted to add an additional instance to the list of bad work days throughout her career. The tale below Sarah lists as probably the worst thing to happen to her in her professional life - but still not her breaking point.

“As I drove away from that office for the last time, I felt a lot of things. I felt sadness that I likely wouldn’t see some of my international friends connected to ...