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Pinaki Kathiari & Chris Lee challenge traditional best practices in the workplace
Chris Lee (00:00)
what's up, everybody? Welcome back to Between the Seasons. This, of course, is the mini-series ⁓ from our Why Does Feel So Wrong? To Be Human at Work podcast. I'm Chris Lee, and of course, I'm joined by my lovely co-host, Pinaki Kathiari
Pinaki Kathiari (00:16)
Hey everyone, how's it going?
Chris Lee (00:18)
and of course our fearless producer, Bree Bartos
Bree Bartos (00:21)
Hi everyone.
Chris Lee (00:22)
I actually really love these specific types of episodes, Bree. I know for today's episode we need to dive into yet another Reddit story about work.
And as usual, Bree, you don't give us any context at all. So you're just going to hear Pinaki and I, and Bree kind of just reacting in real time to these Reddit stories. I've gotten familiar with the taste of my own foot through doing these, and I'm sure there'll be much more. Right, Bree What do we have today?
Bree Bartos (00:54)
Well, I have another story that I have again just been waiting to share with you both and get your perspective on it because to be completely honest, it's one where I don't know advice. I don't know what advice to give. don't know what to think. ⁓ And so I'm really hoping you both might have some thoughts. So today's story, it comes from career advice.
And the title of this story is, My Best Friend Tried to Steal My Job. So I, 29 female, have been carrying this weight from early in my career. And honestly, I need some advice. And I apologize for the length, but I feel like the background information is important. So for a little context about me, in college, I studied marketing, but I also took some photo, video, and illustration elect...
and I fell in love. But with only one and a half years left of my schooling, I didn't want to change my major. I'd have to be there at least another year and I was paying for things myself, so it wasn't feasible. But I knew that I could build those skills through experience in my time left at school through internships, student orgs, help from my professors, and have real work on my resume. Fast forward to my final semester and I was offered my first real job.
a multimedia specialist role where I was responsible for video and photo. Honestly, I was surprised they hired me, especially because I thought I was more likely to get a design role over video since I was a stronger illustrator and designer. But I was absolutely over the moon and so proud of myself for getting an offer before I even graduated in one of the fields I was really interested in. I started three days after graduation. Then a month later, a temp came on board.
We'll call her Amy. We became best friends. I mean, inseparable. She eventually was hired full time and our desks were literally next to each other. We collaborated on work, hung out after hours, went to sports and all kinds of things. We spent every minute together practically. Now a little bit about Amy. She was a year younger than me, had graduated early and she had a multimedia degree.
She had video, photo, and design experience, and her video and photo experience really helped me out a lot because I was able to have a second shooter, which was super important in our work because we never had the chance to shoot a missed shot. There was only one opportunity. So this was great. But here's where it gets messy. Throughout our friendship, she was constantly comparing herself to me, and I didn't realize how toxic it was at the time.
but she was always jealous that I could do video, photo, and design like her, plus the marketing, PR, and writing side of things. She also compared us a lot on a personal level too that I won't really get into. again, this was while I was 22 to 24, so I didn't see the red flags. Then one day, she went to my manager and told them I didn't deserve my job.
that I wasn't qualified. told them everything I told her in private, all the insecurities I already had about not being perfectly qualified with the right degree and experience. She used those secrets to her advantage because she wanted video and photo added to her job description and removed from mine. I didn't even hear it from her. I heard it from my boss. And she still expected us to be best friends.
Like nothing happened. I had never felt so betrayed, but I wanted to keep it professional and I just started to distance myself from her. I started keeping her out of projects where I didn't need her, whereas before I would have included her anyways. Well, that just pissed her off and she ended up ambushing me in our boss's office once when he wasn't even there that day. She shut the door and started yelling at me for not including her in projects that didn't involve her.
it became really toxic and I was really nervous and anxious. There's definitely more to mine and Amy's story on a personal level outside of work, but eventually I had to completely cut contact with her and due to a very well-timed merger, she and I got moved into separate departments and no longer had to work together. Then COVID happened and I worked from home and I didn't have to see her either. Now, even though my career has moved on,
I've started new roles, time has passed, I still carry this deep imposter syndrome. If someone I trusted that deeply who was my best friend thought I wasn't good enough, how do I fully trust my own abilities again? Recently, I had a great annual review and yet I could still hear that doubt in my head and these memories of Amy came to the surface. So how do you move on from a betrayal like that?
And how do you stop letting it cloud your confidence even years later?
Chris Lee (06:01)
I gotta say, before we jump into this, Bree, if there was like an Academy Award for reading Reddit stories, you would be hands down the winner. When you read it, it's like I'm hearing the OP themselves. Like it is, you really get into it and I love it. So definitely kudos to you. Yeah, no kidding, no kidding. ⁓ Yup.
Pinaki Kathiari (06:07)
haha
Yeah, very true.
Bree Bartos (06:20)
Thank you. I have a theater background, can you tell?
Pinaki Kathiari (06:24)
Yay! Nice! Best Reddit Reader award goes to
Bree Bartos (06:28)
Thank you, that means a
lot to me.
Pinaki Kathiari (06:30)
Bree.
Chris Lee (06:31)
Pinaki
and I, gonna award you the award right now. You win the award, hands down. Pinaki, what do you think about this? I think this is very interesting and I feel like there's, you and I have talked in past a lot about.
Pinaki Kathiari (06:36)
Yes.
Bree Bartos (06:37)
Thank you.
Pinaki Kathiari (06:42)
This, yeah.
Chris Lee (06:48)
relationship dynamics and you know, Bree as you're reading this story, so much of it just kind of brought me back to some of these conversations about understanding relationship dynamics and it gets more complicated in a professional setting because those lines between personal relationship and professional relationship can get blurred a lot but I'd love to hear sort of your initial take on this, Pinaki
Pinaki Kathiari (07:13)
⁓
There's so much to unpack on this one. ⁓ The one thing, I don't know where to exact start, but I'll start here. You're both in a creative role. And I've always found creative roles very interesting because you are bringing your own kind of internal creative passion and energy into the work that you do. So the work turns very
Chris Lee (07:18)
⁓ yeah.
Pinaki Kathiari (07:39)
personal very quick because it's partly an art that you're putting out there. It technically isn't, but it feels like that. And so I always found that in like creative roles and positions, there's a little bit more, there's a lot of bit more, there's a lot more emotion tied into the work, which means like insecurities can flare very easily. You could get, you could really.
fall in love with your work and get really defensive because of that. And it's kind one of the reasons why I kind of repeat often in our organization that we love our work, we don't fall in love with our work. So that means we're open to the criticism and feedback. Not to say that that's the scenario here, but just to kind of put a point in that creative work has a bit more emotion.
Bree Bartos (08:19)
Mm-hmm.
Pinaki Kathiari (08:30)
than other work like say finance or other things like that. I mean, there's emotion there too. I think what I default to whenever there's a feeling of, ⁓ man, I heard so-and-so said this or I heard this is happening, I have learned to run towards that.
rather than distance myself from that. Actually, in Local Wisdom way back when we called it a thing, if we called it water technique, it actually came from like a Bruce Lee thing, you know, when someone throws a punch, your best thing is to not be there. But it worked against us because the way we were using it was to like disassociate or not confront the issue. And so water technique had turned into like a bad thing for us because it would just fester.
And then it festers to the point where the other person might have to confront you. And when you are then confronted, you are then like now on defense and now you're trying to catch up. So whenever I think someone's feeling this way or hears something like, Hey, Amy, I actually heard that you went into our manager's office and said this, and let's try to solve this together, right?
What is it like? there something I could help you is first of all, did it happen? What's your, what's your take on it and whatnot? And, you know, cause I'm kind of like, thought we were friends and I thought we were like helping each other out and partnering here where now it doesn't seem that way. So I want to clear that up and that would have potentially given you some insight into Amy's insecurities and what she's looking for and potentially given you an opportunity to see what is the win-win scenario.
Bree Bartos (09:50)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (10:08)
Yeah, and I'd love to hear your thought on this, Bree, because you're a creative, you're naturally creative yourself.
Pinaki Kathiari (10:08)
And I'll shut up for a second to let you know reactor and get your thoughts on that.
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (10:19)
And it's kind of interesting because in a commercial setting where you have a paying client, I'm sure you've come across scenarios where you try to defend a creative direction with a client, but they want to go in a different direction that you can see is not going to be as effective or as impactful. I used to work with a creative who used to ask the question,
question,
and he was a corporate videographer, but he asked the question of clients, who's the audience? And then, you know, the client would always have a brief and would have a pretty good, a decent breakdown of who the audience is and the insights. But then he would follow up by asking, OK, but who's the real audience? And by that, he's asking, is there some VP that has already a baked in vision of what they want out of out of this work? And
to some degree, do you have to consider that leader or that person that managers original thinking as part of how you approach a project, right? So, and again, to the point that you're making about it being personal, because obviously we feel excited and we really believe in what we put out for our clients. And we have good reason to, you know, we bring a lot of expertise and experience to the table, but
Often you have to talk to clients that don't always get it and it's hard not to take it personally as well. But Bree, how do you handle that when you're faced with those scenarios where how someone, especially if there's a client involved, is at odds with what
really believe is the more impactful creative approach?
Bree Bartos (12:09)
You know, it's a good question.
Chris Lee (12:10)
It's a tough one. You started by saying
you didn't you you you were this is an interesting scenario. ⁓
Pinaki Kathiari (12:17)
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (12:18)
Yeah, it's,
Pinaki Kathiari (12:21)
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (12:21)
it's a very, it's a very interesting question. Um, that honestly, I don't know if I, I, I haven't worked with a lot of clients myself, like a lot of my roles have been for the company that hired me. But usually, if there is any time of like misalignment between like what I think would be best and what they would think best is
Usually I start over and go with an alignment meeting to figure out what their goals are, what's desired outcome. And if we need to start our plan over, then we start our plan over because we wanna make sure we're giving a good end product. This story though, I just, they were best friends. And OP, like their job was only
Chris Lee (13:06)
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (13:13)
photo and video as a multimedia specialist and Amy wanted it photo and video removed from OP's job description and added to hers. What would OP be doing after that? Like you just want your friend to lose their job?
Pinaki Kathiari (13:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
That's the thing about human at work at the end of the day. Work-life kind of pushes us to this competitive mode where it's like either I would... They even call it the rat race, right? From back in the days, it's a race. And that's where it starts to wrong or it forces us to do things like that, like go behind our best friends back to talk to a manager.
about like how, you know, and like, we don't know what's going on through Amy's mind. I don't justify that action because for both Amy and OP, well, first for Amy, like if you're ever feeling that about someone you work with, let's talk to your best friend. I think, I think there might be a problem we have in confronting things. In fact, I probably know it because I know how difficult it is even for me to say, you know what, I have to confront this, but I know what compels me to confront it is because
I know what will happen if I don't, it'll be way worse. And I try to think about like, how do we get to the win-win scenario? There was a time when I was in corporate America, there was a manager who was actually gunning for my job. And it was a separate department, but he essentially wanted the services that I provided into his department. I was...
Bree Bartos (14:20)
Mm-hmm.
Pinaki Kathiari (14:42)
It happened more than once. was actually in another job. There was a developer that was kind of like that as well with me. And I'm like, man, what do I do in this situation? And I came up with the idea that the wise person gives the average person room for error. And so like I decided that I'll just do my best at what I do and see what happens here. I realized that too, I had to open the door if I noticed it. Like, hey,
I noticed that you're trying to do this or I noticed that you want some of this work as well. I should have confronted it and said, how do we do this together? How do we figure out a way that's win-win? Because if not, we could continue as is as well. That doesn't work well putting ourselves against each other versus teaming up against a greater force.
Bree Bartos (15:24)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (15:35)
Yeah, you know, as I think about this post, actually, I think as I reflect on what they were asking about, I'm actually thinking more and more. It's less about
you know, an attachment to creative outputs, because I think that's a part of it where Amy, I'm sure, felt like, you know, there was more value in her contributions to a lot of these things than OPs and probably vice versa. I I think we just have those natural attachments, but I think there's more, I always thought about it more as like this relationship dynamic where OP kind of really misread the relationship
and probably took it a lot more on a personal level than...
professional and was of the mindset that Amy would be willing to sacrifice opportunities in the company for OP's benefit that you're helping me and I'm so grateful. I think there's a naivete about just the nature of work is we're all hustling, we're all trying our best and we all want to get ahead. We all want to advance. And I think some people are a little bit more Machiavellian or just willing to
be
a little bit more ruthless in their approach to it and using and leveraging relationships to get to where they think to. I also think the manager has to play a role here in understanding the problematic dynamic in terms of its impact to culture because levels of trust, breakdowns in communication, and just you saw in that post, there was breakdowns even in collaboration and trust in each other. And so this has a
Pinaki Kathiari (16:58)
Hmm.
Chris Lee (17:14)
a more cancerous effects on the team dynamic as a whole. And I think it's important that a good manager would recognize what's happening when Amy is sharing this feedback and understanding that they need to get below the surface and really address what's going on. So kind of the way I was thinking about, that's just the roles of the three different individuals.
Pinaki Kathiari (17:28)
100%.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (17:41)
I am doing a head.
Pinaki Kathiari (17:41)
I think I have to end it here.
Now, after you, go ahead.
Bree Bartos (17:45)
I just wanted to share that we do have more context that I can't... Yes, go ahead.
Pinaki Kathiari (17:48)
Well, maybe I'll say something before that then. Very quick,
and then we can get to context.
What I was going to say is one of the things that I noticed about these Reddit reads is that they all involve this kind of like me, someone else, and our manager. And everyone has a part to play in it. I think they'll say is like, is never any, like whenever I say,
OP, you should do this, or I thought so-and-so should have done this. It's never kind of a complaint because I think everyone has a part to play in this role. And I see it always happen as a cyclical effect. And so everyone has to kind of like take a step together in order to get out of a cycle in a very general sense. The second thing that I thought of when Chris was chatting was a lot of times or most times we take the actions of other people personal.
as an attack on me, which this downright sounded like and I get it. But a lot of times you understand that people are not doing things to you, but they're doing things for themselves, right? And that's a way to kind of like step away from the personal attacks slightly. it's like, unfortunately in this scenario, they were doing something for themselves by doing something to you, which is not great.
Chris Lee (18:47)
Right.
Pinaki Kathiari (19:01)
is not good at all. And that's something that could sever a relationship in that way.
Chris Lee (19:03)
100%.
I like
how you describe that. It is kind of like a bizarre love triangle because you've got the three...
Pinaki Kathiari (19:12)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (19:12)
individuals and this is a common dynamic, Where,
Pinaki Kathiari (19:13)
It's a love triangle. Yeah.
Chris Lee (19:16)
well, you have two people, so OP and Amy, that perform similar roles and functions and so they're actually in a bit of a competition in the manager's eyes and so there's always going to be a tension, whether people are aware of it or not, there's always a tension in terms of the roles that each one plays and of course there's always that carrot about who gets from
Pinaki Kathiari (19:30)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (19:42)
And I think where it's so important for managers to be aware of this dynamic and then also, you know, intercede whenever they notice that there's breakdowns in communications, that, you know, ⁓ the culture is being impacted by this tension in this competition amongst team members, even if it's not overt. But just that one conversation that Amy had with the manager is an absolute red flag.
for the manager to have to take some action and just say I want to have more conversations about this but also I agree with you I just I think it's it's just dirty for someone to go behind someone else's back yeah 100 % 100 % yeah
Pinaki Kathiari (20:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, also, why you ran out your coworker? Thanks, man. Are you both all right? Well, Bree happened?
Bree Bartos (20:24)
Yeah.
Pinaki Kathiari (20:29)
What are some of the things that happened after the post?
Bree Bartos (20:34)
Yeah, so I lied. This wasn't a Reddit story. This happened to me.
Pinaki Kathiari (20:39)
What?
Chris Lee (20:41)
Go on, come on. Bree! I love that. Because it was you. You are the OP, no kidding.
Pinaki Kathiari (20:42)
⁓ man! Damn!
Bree Bartos (20:45)
Yeah, when you ⁓ rewarded me for reading it so well, it's because it happened to me.
Pinaki Kathiari (20:51)
You
You are the OP?
Bree Bartos (20:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Pinaki Kathiari (20:55)
my God. ⁓ What a surprise. So what do you... So holy crap. So wait a minute. We have a very
Chris Lee (20:57)
Wow, what a twist. That is a great follow-up.
Bree Bartos (21:04)
Well, I bet you didn't see that one coming. Yeah, I'm OP. This is my story. And if you want to find out what happens next, be sure to tune in next week. And we'll be continuing this episode right where we cut off. And we'll find out more about what Pinaki and Chris think and how that might change some of the advice that they give.
If you'd like to watch the video episode and see Pinaki and Chris's reaction, which I highly recommend, please go over to our YouTube channel and check that out and give us a subscribe while you're there.
Thank you all so much for listening and we'll see you next week.