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Pinaki Kathiari & Chris Lee challenge traditional best practices in the workplace
Pinaki Kathiari (00:01)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Between the Seasons, the mini series from Why Does It Feel So Wrong to be Human at Work. I'm Pinaki Kathiari and today I am joined by my host, Chris Lee, everybody.
Chris Lee (00:12)
Welcome, welcome.
Pinaki Kathiari (00:14)
And of course we have our producer, Bree
Bree Bartos (00:16)
Hi everyone.
Pinaki Kathiari (00:18)
And back with us today, have Jen Samuel joining us, Senior Account Manager from Local Wisdom. Jen, welcome again.
Jen Samuel (00:25)
Thank you.
Pinaki Kathiari (00:28)
Excellent. And so today's episode is, you know, how we do this Reddit thing. ⁓ we're going to read a, well, actually, Bree is going to read a post from Reddit. We don't know what it is. Giggle, giggle. And then, and then we react. So let's unpack it. Go ahead, Bree. What's going on?
Bree Bartos (00:48)
All right, so there were so many posts that I could pull for Jen because obviously we work together, we've had many conversations and I really feel as though I could do a whole hour of Reddit posts with you. But today's post that we're going to be reading comes from our career advice. It is seven months old and it is titled, My Job is Depending on Me Too Much and I Hate It. I remember when I started this job four years ago.
It was a dream come true for me to be able to work on something closer to my field, technical support. Like many, I had lot of aspirations for growing within the company and I started absorbing everything like a sponge. Within six months, I felt like I was comfortable in what I was doing enough to have my days become easier. At the time, my job had multiple tiers of support and I was currently at the bottom. My goal was to get to the top and hopefully get some better pay.
At the time, I had a meeting with my supervisor and we talked about it and he gave me a vague answer as to how to get to the next level, but he did point me in the right direction. This honestly should have raised some alarms looking back. They did not seem to have a clear path of what was needed to become a level two or level three tech. After a couple of years of grinding and taking some new projects, I was still asking my supervisor about the next level and was always given a vague answer.
The people who were level two and level three either left or got different positions and currently our entire team has become one without levels or tiers. Lately, I've been feeling burned out because my job has me training new hires, flying out to meet clients weekly, taking calls and doing escalations. At one point, they even asked me to get a certification in my field, which ended up taking three months of studying after work and did not increase my pay or change my title in any way.
Not all at once, but all of these changes make me feel like I've become the guy with many hats without any other compensation other than our merit increases. Still have the same title and things have actually gotten worse where I work. I've been looking for a different job for a few months now and I haven't found anything, but I'm not crazy, right?
These responsibilities should warrant some sort of increase. I feel like I've asked so much now for a way to grow or at least some compensation for these new responsibilities that it's making me feel like maybe this is normal. I mean, it doesn't feel like it because some of my other coworkers only take calls. It's making me wish my job was just calls at the moment so I can have a normal week at work. I hold the same title as the guys who only take calls and even new hires, but I get asked to do so much more.
What would you do in this situation? With the job market the way it is, I have just been polishing off my resume and applying. It would help to have some of this workload taken off by someone else, but I don't see that happening.
Pinaki Kathiari (03:42)
Wow, that's fun. Time to pull out that job description. You can whatnot, you know, and even ask your manager, what's my job description again? Can I talk to HR for a second? There's a lot to unpack here. ⁓ See if Jen or Chris, if you want to jump in,
Chris Lee (03:43)
Ha
Jen Samuel (03:44)
⁓ my gosh.
Bree Bartos (03:48)
Yeah.
Chris Lee (04:02)
one of the first things that I think about, ⁓ I believe that this kind of scenario is ⁓ altogether way too common in many, many organizations. And I think about two things when I hear about this kind of situation. And I think it's a real shame because this OP's organization
Pinaki Kathiari (04:23)
Damn.
Chris Lee (04:27)
facing down and, you know, the risk of losing a great talent, like someone who is passionate, who is extremely valuable to the team. And so the two areas that I was thinking about, Pinaki and Jen and Bree were number one, I think there's not enough managers or people that are in manager roles that are properly equipped to understand how to manage people, how to manage
conversations like this, how to understand what their role is in providing clarity around what are your opportunities for growth? What does expansion of your role look like? And what are your opportunities for additional pay and rewards as a result? I think so often, and Pinaki you and I, we've talked about this a lot. I think the people that get promoted into people manager roles are promoted
and probably deservingly so because they have the most experience and the most knowledge of the role, but that doesn't necessarily equate to this instantly makes you a great people manager. And I don't know if enough organizations really invest in skilling you up on ⁓ management roles. So that's one thing is just the manager, the opportunity to better equip managers to have these types of conversations.
And then the second thing I was thinking about was really in terms of just the nature of work itself, right? So I think, again, this is another conversation that frequently comes up as a theme where we talk about the idea that how organizations really think about jobs is you have a title, it's generally pretty vague list of KPIs.
But now what we know is that we're getting, we're buying your time. We're buying 40 hours a week of your time. And now our job is to cram as much as we can in those 40 hours. And this is what leads to like the burnout that the OP was talking about. And no one in full-time jobs, no one ever talks about scope creep. They just keep on piling it on and you feel like you're being taken for granted. And again, there's no real mechanism for people like this OP to, how do I have this conversation?
to explain that this is untenable. And again, it's generally taboo to talk about, it's not working for me and I have to look for other jobs. so organizations are always caught by surprise. And I think it's very costly for organizations over time. So that was my little soapbox for a second, but I feel like there's a couple of things. And Pinaki, you're bang on, there is a lot to unpack here.
Jen Samuel (06:52)
Thank
Pinaki Kathiari (06:57)
Yeah,
Jen Samuel (06:58)
you
Pinaki Kathiari (06:59)
there was. There was totally a lot there. It's a very tricky scenario that you're in because you're kind of wondering like, this company even care about me? Does my manager even care about me? this nobody's even listening to me? Anything like that. Jen any thoughts from you?
Jen Samuel (07:07)
Mm-hmm.
almost too many. One, I mean, it definitely is a trigger because it really reminds me of a time when I was in a specific role and I can give examples down the line. But at a high level, it makes me think of a couple of themes that we see, like even on LinkedIn, when we look at a lot of internal communicators that are talking about this, I know this role sounds, this Reddit role sounds like it's more IT, but I think something I've kind of.
Pinaki Kathiari (07:14)
Hahaha
Mm-hmm.
Jen Samuel (07:40)
continue to be on my soapbox about internal comms being a team of one from my experience, where the position reports to. think that happens a lot for internal communicators that could relate to this Reddit post. And then also there's, you have your overall organizational culture, which is very important, but the organizational culture could be great, but what about the culture within the immediate team? And that's kind of the themes of, again, I don't want to make it too personal, but some of the things I've experienced where I could relate to the points being made.
Pinaki Kathiari (08:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Samuel (08:11)
where I was, of course, a team of one. It was earlier in my career, so I think to be fair, it wasn't understood as a role in itself like that. And then there wasn't as much technology at that time to support internal communicators. ⁓ And then where I reported. So it was interesting because I reported into HR to the immediate head of HR. So when it came to the point of like, I need a raise, I'm doing multiple roles because I had a dotted line to PR. ⁓
I had no in-between advocate, like where you would go to a people leader who would then go advocate for you to get a role to HR or to benefits. I was going to the head and I was told, yeah, right, rewrite your job description. Yep. Yep. Yep. And then when the merit letter came and I'm like, this doesn't look like a raise This is like 2%. It's not a raise I was told it got, yeah, yeah. It was, I was told, ⁓ it got lost in the mix, which really just meant.
Bree Bartos (08:47)
Mm-hmm.
cost of living.
Jen Samuel (09:09)
the leader forgot to push it forward for discussion. So the leader that I had the dotted line went and advocated for me within the team and got it taken care of. But yeah, there's so much that I can relate to in that post.
Pinaki Kathiari (09:23)
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (09:24)
Yeah,
that's kind of why I like it. Although it is a tech field that this person is in, it is a situation a lot of people find themselves in. I have very similar situation from my first job where I kept getting more and more added to my role and I was struggling to make my, pay my bills because I was entry level, just got out of college being paid really low. And so I went to my boss and I told him, was like, hey,
Chris Lee (09:40)
you
Bree Bartos (09:53)
You know, we've added so many things to my role. I really feel as though I, you know, deserve this ⁓ increase in my salary. And he agreed and he was like, yeah, let's do this. I'll talk to HR. Months went by, nothing ever mentioned again. I would bring it up and he would be like, yeah, working on that. Months still went by, never mentioned again. I eventually got a different job and accepted it, walked into his office, handed him my resignation, and then he panicked.
because he knew how much I did for the company and he immediately went to HR and by the end of the day had terms for a raise increase for me. And so it wasn't until they were like, no, we're gonna lose her that they actually took the initiative to move forward. So there's a lot of different people I'm sure who have found themselves in similar situations. And...
Chris Lee (10:21)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (10:45)
I don't, I, my advice has always been, well, if you're not gonna appreciate me and like actually value my work, then I will find somewhere else that will.
Chris Lee (10:45)
you
Yeah, you know, you made me think of something, Bree. And I love everyone's perspectives on this. Number one is do most employees know enough about how to self advocate for themselves? Because these are typically really awkward conversations. And I feel like, you know, one of the things that managers can really do is play a role in creating a safe environment where it does feel
Bree Bartos (11:11)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Chris Lee (11:24)
there's a meaningful dialogue about your career. And I think because of a lot of ways that organizations are structured, time is always at a premium. Jen, you said, know, team of one, and that's not atypical. That happens more often than not. And there's always this pressure to get things done. And so to have time for meaningful conversations, no different than conversations we might have with our kids at the dinner table.
where you ask them, how was school? What did you learn? And we already know what the answers are gonna be. They're just dead ends and you're not having real conversations with the kids. So that's one thing I wanted to ask was, do employees have enough understand what their own role is in self advocacy? And then the second one is ⁓ something else. we can talk about this later, but I feel like some employees actually...
do exactly what this OP is talking about, having too heavily of reliance on them, but they do it intentionally ⁓ as a measure of creating a fence around their own role and protecting their own role a little bit. I've seen this happen in different organizations where there's a bit of a deliberate approach to do this, to create and engender a bit of job security, like no one else knows how to do what I'm doing. So that's just another piece I was talking about. maybe like, what are all your thoughts on
the first point about do enough employees understand how they can play a more meaningful role in self-advocacy?
Pinaki Kathiari (12:51)
I think it's interesting because I don't think so, the way it sounds. First of all, when think in the OP asked the question in the post, is this normal? And I was thinking, no, this is not normal. And then Chris went on and said, this happens, this is very typical in organizations. And every one of you said that, and I was like, damn, it is normal. And I wanted to it, not safe for work word, when that revelation hit me.
Bree Bartos (13:02)
Yeah.
haha
Chris Lee (13:12)
Yeah.
Jen Samuel (13:20)
you
Pinaki Kathiari (13:21)
Because what it did sound like in this scenario was that, and actually multiple scenarios besides OP, but your own scenarios, was that the managers were almost actually, either they knew that, either they seriously was like, all right, I'm just going to delay this as much as I can because I don't want to face this to my upper management or whatnot.
Or they couldn't face it to you saying that, there is no raise. It was just kind of this leading you on type of thing. And it just kind of sounded more and more like the stories, the drama that I'm making up in my head is that you're leading me on with no intention of doing this because I have to follow up. You're not approaching me about it. You already know my intent. And if you value me so much, then why aren't you pulling me along?
Bree Bartos (13:53)
You
Pinaki Kathiari (14:18)
with you here. And first of all, OP, yeah, you need a raise in over two years and a half, right? This was like four years in total and like two years without getting anything and you've been asking. That's definitely not normal. ⁓ So that by in itself, you need something year after year. I need to talk about that along with bonuses and whatnot.
Bree Bartos (14:28)
Four years. They've been there four years.
Pinaki Kathiari (14:48)
⁓ And I do think though, like to your point, Chris, people do have a little bit of the issue, confrontation issue of asking the question. It is hard to ask the question, especially when it's not a safe place to ask the question. And so for like managers, like first of all, you know, don't pull people's strings along, you know, just kind of, if anything, be real, like I could give you the raise or I can't give you the raise or there is...
Chris Lee (15:03)
Mm-hmm.
Pinaki Kathiari (15:16)
upward mobility or there is not upward mobility. Let's just be real with it because if you're not being real with it, you're just at the end of the day, kind of being dishonest. And no one can trust dishonesty and you can't build culture over dishonesty. So just be transparent about it. tell my folks too is that I am not afraid to talk about money, salary, whatever you feel like you need it. Talk to me about it. If feel like you want to like, I'm not happy here, I want to go, let's just talk about it. Well, work.
We work together to get here, and we can work together to get out of this and stuff like that.
Bree Bartos (15:51)
I mean,
now that you mention it, I could use a couple extra dollars each paycheck. I've been here less than a year.
Jen Samuel (15:53)
I I was like, ⁓ I just got here, so it's too soon.
Pinaki Kathiari (15:55)
Yeah.
Well done, well done, Pinaki.
Bree Bartos (16:02)
You
know, are really expensive right now, Pinaki.
Pinaki Kathiari (16:06)
Well done. Well, we can always talk about it. ⁓
Jen Samuel (16:07)
you
Bree Bartos (16:08)
And I appreciate that
because I do feel like we do have an environment where we can and I've worked in environments where I felt like I couldn't before. I have another horror story I could share. Chris, I want to go back to do people know how to have these conversations and it's not something they prepare you for in college.
Pinaki Kathiari (16:21)
Umm
Chris Lee (16:32)
So true. It is so true.
Bree Bartos (16:34)
The situation I'm talking about is my first job right out of college and I didn't know how to have these conversations with managers or approach it or if it was okay. Like there's always a taboo around money and salary and everything. And so it just feels awkward and like you can't bring it up sometimes.
Pinaki Kathiari (16:51)
Here's
a bit of advice I would say, especially for folks who are younger who are going through this. I want you to try to ask for something and try to get them to say no. Ask for something, looking for the no. I've had to go through rejection therapy. In fact, one of my first jobs out of college, got an offer rescinded because I was negotiating too much.
And so I got to the no and it was like heartbreaking, but it builds resilience and it also kind of teaches you that, you know what, it's not that bad, you know, at the end of it all. it's, ⁓ so ask for a no, look for the no. I, we, we talk about this in sales. knows about this as part of our, our sales trick is we, we try to get to a no, because we know when we get to the no that we can't push any further, but there's still time for negotiation.
Chris Lee (17:36)
I love that one Pinaki
Love that.
Pinaki Kathiari (17:47)
So
Bree Bartos (17:47)
I
Pinaki Kathiari (17:47)
try
Bree Bartos (17:47)
love that.
Pinaki Kathiari (17:47)
that, and try it on dumb things at first, but then
Bree Bartos (18:00)
I love that. And that's actually a trend I've been seeing. I don't know if you guys have been seeing it on LinkedIn and TikTok is that people are setting out to receive rejection. ⁓ I saw an article, I can't remember exactly what publication or who the influencer was right the second, but her goal this year is to get a thousand rejections. ⁓ And then like there's another influencer who's trying to get a hundred rejections because I mean, rejection is part of life, unfortunately, but it is really hard to deal with if you're not used to it.
Pinaki Kathiari (18:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Bree Bartos (18:28)
I don't like to open myself up to being rejected, personally.
Pinaki Kathiari (18:32)
Mm Yeah,
no, nobody does. there's kind of growth in rejection. There are things that are positives that come from it, but we have to kind of get over that little like hump, that feeling of being rejected. So it's starting to make you numb to it a little bit.
Chris Lee (18:46)
Well, alright then.
Yeah, and Jen, I'm also curious about your thoughts on this, Jen. But one of the things I was thinking about was, especially at the employee level and the employee perspective is exactly what we're talking about here. think it is an awkward conversation to have in the first place, especially when it comes to money. And you have to basically champion your own value. You're basically saying, here's why I'm really valuable to the company. And I feel like this culture has been built
Jen Samuel (18:50)
That's true.
Chris Lee (19:19)
for a long, long time in corporate cultures where it's, you know, a constant tension of what can you do for us? And I think, you when I think about what the outcome is of managers not actually being proactive in starting this conversation, I think we all understand why they don't start it, because it's going to end up costing them more money. I have to give somebody a raise. But the other outcome, which we're seeing here with the OP is
they're an extremely valuable cog in this organization and they're gonna leave and that's gonna be very disruptive. And then when they try to find somebody that can match the scope of work that this person was accomplishing, they're gonna find it's gonna be more expensive anyways, plus all the productivity loss and disruption along the way. And then again, the culture is not gonna be strong. So I think the biggest thing here and Bree, you sort of touched on this is people don't like to be rejected.
Most people have a fear of failure. This is why people don't, know, when you're out, if you're single, it's hard to ask somebody out on a date because it is, it feels crushing when someone says no, because you feel like it's a reflection of your own personal worth or your own personal value. And it reminds me of this book. There was a guy named Chris Voss who wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. And Chris Voss is a former
FBI hostage negotiator. And he wrote this bestselling book about how to negotiate for basically anything, whether it's salary, whether you're pitching to somebody in a sales pitch. it's gotten a lot of great accolades because there's an approach to it where you really don't compromise or back down and you lead with a lot of open ended questions.
that whoever you're negotiating with, so not having the close-ended questions, but making sure that you're putting the person you're negotiating with on the spot to articulate and not be able to shut it down by saying, we don't have a budget for this, or this is part of your role and the scope of your responsibilities, right? And that just makes it an already awkward conversation, tough for most employees to be able to push and to your point, Pinaki, get to that note.
Pinaki Kathiari (21:34)
Yeah, and I think what we to be careful of is there's a directness to it that's uncomfortable, but it's better than a non-directness which could come across as either passive or complainy. So we don't want to complain that I don't have enough money, I don't want to complain that I have too much work, but it's more like the fact of the matter is this is the work that I'm doing and this is the pay that I'm getting, which is not comparable for other people who are doing this work, nor is it
comparable for like other people in this department, right? So, because if you're, if what it sounds like is you're in the same level as everyone in the department, but just doing more, like, you know, there's something wrong with that. The other thing you could do too is beyond not getting the no, but trying to go for the yes, which is like, Hey, I have an idea. What I see missing in this organization is this kind of structure.
I could see us being able to increase our productivity if I was just to train this layer of people to do X, Y, Z thing, putting me in a little bit of a supervisor role. And if I would be more than happy to do that for you, it's going to cost you this increase in my pay. It's going to increase this. So it's essentially creating the role for you and taking it for yourself.
Spoken to people who have done that in the past and that's also worked as well. When you see a gap, fill it, make a role out of it, and here you are job crafting for yourself.
Jen Samuel (23:07)
That's interesting, because I think for me, I guess it also depends on your personality and ⁓ your drive, right? So it sounds like, Pinaki, earlier you mentioned about over-negotiating, so you kind of had that drive to do it. I always say, I'm honest, I'm a comms person at heart, so I'm the touchy-feely. And it was difficult for me when I was in that position. So the confidence...
Pinaki Kathiari (23:14)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Samuel (23:35)
to be able to do that came over time when I realized, if I don't speak up for myself. So my situation was more like what you just explained, Pinaki, where, well, not that one, but I didn't necessarily build a business case, because that just wasn't natural for me. I just wrote talking points as if I was writing them for someone else, because it's so much easier for, as a comms person at least, to write for other people than advocate for yourself. So I created my own talking points and then practiced them with a friend to say,
Pinaki Kathiari (23:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Samuel (24:04)
And mine was similar to the Reddit posts. I had been there four years. The role has increased. I'm doing the job of departments. And I have not received a raise in four years. And this is what salary.com says the rate should be. And, ⁓ but yeah, but after that, as I left and I saw that not every company has that type of culture in the sense of like, they're going to be overly demanding. Then I could start to feel.
Bree Bartos (24:07)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Samuel (24:30)
yeah, this isn't normal, this craziness, which I think that was one of the questions, right? Being so relied on, is this normal? ⁓ I was telling Bree right before we actually started ⁓ with this same organization. And I think, Chris, you had touched on this too. Like is the person or any person in a similar situation doing this to make themselves indispensable, right? Are they taking on too much to prove? For me, it wasn't that.
It was more so I'm just the nature is I roll up my sleeves and I'll, there's jokes. I think I have a LinkedIn post about it where I vacuum the boardroom before a meeting because it needed to be done. So I will do that and I'll do your strategy planning. But with this rule, being a team of one, I was just always relied on. And then I was also given the work where they didn't know where else to put it. It was given to me. So if they wanted posters for a happy hour, Jen had to post them all over the walls.
because we were in the corporate headquarters, but there was a time where I would travel for work or personal, and I just always had my laptop with me. It was just a normal thing. ⁓ And I can laugh about this. I know this is going to sound morbid, but I was traveling for a family funeral. And I get to the hotel and I'm like, before I go to the funeral home, I have to send out the employee survey and I have to do this. And it just had to be done because there's no one to train. There's no one to cover for me.
And I just had to do it. And I'm like, here I am with my laptop at a funeral. ⁓ Until I left that organization and my very first trip, told my boss, I told my leader, I'll have my laptop with me. And he said, why? And I was like, stunned. What do you mean why? Like we're remote. can figure it. He was like, leave your laptop home. There's four of us on a team.
Chris Lee (25:54)
Hmm.
Jen Samuel (26:16)
Granted, I wasn't a team of one. He was like, why would you bring your laptop? And I was like, ⁓ okay. So it almost felt weird to travel. Like when you have that invisible limb, like where is my laptop? Like I need, I'm supposed to have it. The Phantom laptop, yeah.
Bree Bartos (26:20)
you
Pinaki Kathiari (26:26)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a phantom laptop.
Bree Bartos (26:27)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (26:31)
you
Bree Bartos (26:33)
I think I remember it.
Pinaki Kathiari (26:33)
You know what? You said something that's really interesting and I think that deserves to be uplifted a little bit. ⁓ The part about community and writing. ⁓ You said, yeah, I didn't know what to do. Many people's situations are different. So what's really good idea is give yourself advice. Like if you're like someone else, OP, whatnot, like, and if your friend told that to you, what would you?
advise your friend to do and what are the talking points that you would write up for your friend. And I think community and networking is always something as professionals we should be doing because we need to have a network of people within our organization, more importantly, also outside of our organization, because we need a way to validate is this normal? And man, I hope that it's not normal.
Chris Lee (27:23)
You
Bree Bartos (27:24)
love reading these stories to you, Pinaki, because obviously you are the CEO of Local Wisdom. And so, like, I can bring these stories to you that would never happen at Local Wisdom. So they seem so far-fetched to you, but it's like we lived it. know, Jen and I, we were out there dealing with these bad managers.
Pinaki Kathiari (27:35)
Yeah, I feel... ⁓
Yeah,
it's rather unfortunate for all your managers and HR professionals out there how many people come to local wisdom and I have to unlearn, ⁓ have them unlearn certain traits and phobias that have come from prior local wisdom. Please stop that.
Chris Lee (27:53)
Hahaha
Jen Samuel (27:56)
The triggers.
Bree Bartos (28:01)
Yeah, and I love telling
you all about it.
Jen Samuel (28:04)
Yeah, this exists. I'm sorry to jump back in, but Pinaki, you just said something about the mentor and that reminded me, I completely forgot. And I just got this flash of like, of good memories of when I was with that same organization and I asked for the raise, had been four years and I didn't get it or I got a portion of it. I still stayed two years later because I was so invested in the organization and the people I work with, not the leader. But I still took times where I would apply for jobs while I was still employed.
Bree Bartos (28:07)
Go ahead.
Jen Samuel (28:33)
And going back to the rejection point, I completely forgot about this. This was so long ago. I applied for a local big financial organization in my area. made it to in-person rounds, final rounds, and I got rejected. But the VP of comms at the time sent me such a beautiful email and ex and I don't think I've ever seen this before. I haven't experienced this. She sent me a very thorough email, just explaining why the role wasn't a good fit.
giving me career advice, ⁓ so much to the point that I, yeah, we connected on LinkedIn. And again, this was probably more than 10 years ago. And then when I was going through that frustration at the current role, cause I stayed there longer, I had dinner with her one day and I was just explaining everything. And I needed that validation from someone to say, no, this isn't normal. You really need to leave. And I'm like,
Chris Lee (29:05)
I love that.
Why is
that so incredibly rare, that experience, Jen? Because I find 98 % of the time, what I hear about is people just get ghosted once they are not the one that gets the offer. And I think it's a terrible way, it's terrible for your brand as an organization. And it's, you never know when you might need to call up Jen Samuel again for...
Jen Samuel (29:40)
my god.
Chris Lee (29:55)
actually this other role came up and we think you're perfect for it. really like, you know, I just think it's just, ⁓ there's a level of respect, you know, someone took their time to research your company, look at this role, put themselves out there to try to, know, land a role with the organization. And I think it should just be a bare minimum. And I know ⁓ in Canada, ⁓
Pinaki Kathiari (29:58)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (30:21)
There's a new pay transparency legislation that's been ushered in, but there's also now a legislative requirement to give back to ⁓ candidates that you've opened a dialogue with to at least get some closure on where do I stand and what happened? I'd love some feedback and Jen, I love your story and I don't think it happens nearly.
Bree Bartos (30:24)
Mmm.
Pinaki Kathiari (30:41)
Hmm.
Jen Samuel (30:45)
It doesn't, I've been through so many ⁓ assessments where I've had to do like, what is it, IQ assessments, things, and then you never hear back. So then you're like, am I not smart enough for this role? Or you present like a whole business plan for a scenario. There's probably, there was a hospital that I think they, but I'm still waiting to hear back. It's been about eight years, but I'm still waiting to hear back, but I gave them a whole comms plan, so they may be using it.
Pinaki Kathiari (30:56)
man.
Bree Bartos (31:07)
Hahaha
Pinaki Kathiari (31:13)
Anyway,
Bree Bartos (31:15)
in the time between being laid off and getting this job, I think I applied to 200 to 300 jobs. Local wisdom was the only one I heard from. It's the only one that like a human actually reached out to me. The rest of it was like all automated. Unfortunately, you have not been selected and I still get some.
It's been like over 10 months, it's been almost a year and I still get automatic rejections. And I'm like, I didn't need this on my Tuesday morning. I didn't ask it to be rejected randomly today.
Pinaki Kathiari (31:40)
backlog.
Jen Samuel (31:46)
You're like, well, I don't want you anyway.
Pinaki Kathiari (31:53)
Wait, think, think,
wait a minute. I think we're in an app idea right here with this kind of rejection therapy. We're just like randomly reject people for nothing. Like you'll just wake up, you'll get a notification. I'm sorry, Bree, but you didn't make it in, make it today. Yeah. Just like that. Just every now and it's like the opposite of like a dopamine hit or something or
Bree Bartos (31:58)
Just random rejections.
Chris Lee (32:02)
Ha ha ha! ⁓
Jen Samuel (32:08)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Lee (32:09)
Hahaha
Bree Bartos (32:09)
I'm just like, ow.
opposite
of a motivational quote in the morning.
Pinaki Kathiari (32:15)
Yeah,
exactly. It's the unmotivational quote. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen Samuel (32:16)
Yeah.
Chris Lee (32:17)
Just to try to desensitize you to rejection and
make it feel like that's part of, that's just how we become stronger. ⁓
Bree Bartos (32:23)
Hahaha
Pinaki Kathiari (32:24)
Yeah, you might as well just hit snooze again. Just hit
snooze. Well, you know what? This has been an awesome conversation. ⁓ Thank you all for just bringing your wisdom into this conversation, this Reddit post. I hope for OP's sake, ⁓ you get somewhere better where they respect you and they respect the hard work that you're bringing in to that work you do. ⁓
Bree Bartos (32:29)
going back to bed.
Pinaki Kathiari (32:53)
So, and thank you everyone else for listening in, ⁓ tuning into this week's ⁓ Between the Seasons from Why Does It Feel So Wrong? To be human at work. And we constantly find ourselves asking that question day in and day out. ⁓ Let us know if this resonated with you. ⁓ Thank you, everybody.
Chris Lee (33:11)
Yeah, and also just make sure if you come across our Reddit story or even if you have an anecdote, just reach out to us or to Bree and share your story. We can keep it anonymous if ⁓ that makes sense. I'm guessing it's probably gonna make sense most of the time, but we'd love to discuss different things, experiences that people are having. And wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast right now, ⁓ if you can.
Subscribe and follow it helps us out a lot, but we really appreciate your time
Pinaki Kathiari (33:42)
Thank you everybody, see you next time.