Ask yourself these 5 questions if you’re working in a toxic environment
A few days ago, my project leader told us he broke down and had to call up the managing partner to ask for a few days off. He was burned out. The day after, I went down with a bad fever, tried to work with literally a hot head, could barely do anything and decided to clock out. Now, the last person on our project has gone “offline” for the last day. In summary, it was a shit show.
Our team always joked about how it was going to come crashing down, but none of us truly meant it. The timeline was tight, unrealistic even, but we had each other. A lot of the times when things got difficult, I relied on my project manager for guidance, emotionally and professionally. There were some signs along the way: he told me he could not sleep at night, I told him I started not being able to sleep despite being so tired and sleep-deprived. However, we didn’t see it coming that fast — just 1 month in.
Seeing him admitting to us he might need to step down, and packing up his bag to go home for a few days of rest, the first thought that came to my mind was: “I cannot give up right now, there’s only me and the other guy left standing”. When called into the Partner’s room, the only thing I heard from them was that the timeline was not going to change, and the only real question was which one of us was going to pick up the scope he left behind.
The next day, I woke up with a fever and continued working. The thing I could do in 1 hour before, I did in 2 hours. It was not optimal. At one point, I felt like I was going to die and decided to ask for “the rest of the day” off, at 3 PM! That evening, I talked to one of my coaches, who helped me take a step back to really see the situation for what it was.
Here are the questions that helped me regain my reality:
- What are you scared of?
I was scared of being fired — I was new, and people were fired left and right on the spot for the last month in my company. The only difference is that I have a job offer at an even more prestigious company, locked in and ready to go. Why was I still so scared? I did not want to leave being perceived as someone who couldn’t deal with the pressure, the workload, the deadlines. I wanted to leave out of my own will — that they are not good enough for me, not the other way around. And when I was still talking about that fear, she asked me the second question…
2. What will happen if you end up being hospitalized?
That was a really good question. A possibility that was so possible but somehow ignored by all of us in the game. The reasons I say it’s possible are: when you work 12+ hours per day, 6 days a week, traveled out on Thursday and back on Sunday, went straight to work on Monday, had barely any breathing room and time to process the emotional drainage from a colleague who constantly gaslight you, and you already had a fever that gets hotter and hotter as minutes go by, I would not be surprised to find you on the bathroom floor, then in the ER, then in the hospital for the next couple of days.
I went through a burnout before, in October last year, so this question hit me even harder. I was on sleeping pills the 1 month leading up to that breaking point, and it took 6 to 8 months for me to get back to the physical and mental shape that I am in right now. For the 6 months, I got tired and fatigue every 2 minutes after doing something that was marginally physically demanding. I didn’t go to the gym if I knew I had to do something that day — my energy was depleted. I had to go to see a therapist, journaled, continuously tried and failed and tried to draw boundaries.
Hence, in response to that question, I do not ever want to go that state of being. Weighing against that, the possibility of being seen as someone who is not capable of dealing with the stress seems so minimal, especially when I’m not the only one who broke down.
3. If you were your best friend talking to yourself right now, what would he/she say?
“Just ask for a break, it’s not worth it. Nothing is worth losing yourself for.” — my friend would tell me this.
“How would you respond to that?” — my coach asked me.
“There’s only me and the guy left in the game, we cannot make the timeline if I took a break” — but then, it comes the next question…
4. What is it you are sacrificing your mental and physical health for?
I was thinking from the client’s perspective, the project’s perspective. But to be very frank, from the beginning, it has never been about client and project, it’s been about the Partner’s interests. It’s that time of the year Partners try to push the selling to meet their KPIs, especially early in their “Partnership” career. With the pressure to deliver as a new Partner, ours did so at the expense of the team members’ well-being.
We were doing a project that encompassed all possible complex survey methodologies one could do in our company — one of which usually take 1 month or more to design and validate. We were asked to do that within 2 weeks. On top of that, the Partner said yes to adding another work stream that was supposed to be “20%” of our overall workload. That shit got snowballed and tripled in the original scope and size.
While the timeline was unrealistic, the staffing was suboptimal: one PM who had never worked in the industry, two newbies who literally just got out of training the day before, and a psychotic Partner whose only way of encouraging people were telling them “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about” and “I don’t care”. What was awakening was that in one of our meetings, the Partner heard about some troubles we had with the agency, and asked “so my timeline is at risk now?”.
It has never been about us, not even the client and the project — nothing of good quality can be delivered with that time crunch. It’s always been about their own interests. And in that case, is it worth it to sacrifice yourself? Not for your own good, not for the greater good, but for someone else’s?
5. What is your breaking point? Are you sure you want to get there first before drawing your boundaries?
One thing I told my coach was that I intend to set a breaking point for myself, and when I reach that, I would bounce. My breaking point was “not being able to sleep even when I want to”. Apparently, that was not normal. Maybe the fact that I’ve always been able to push myself so hard for the last few years working abroad on my own normalized these for me. Not being able to sleep turns out to be way past the usual breaking point for the normal human-being — it’s when you are so stressed your nervous system cannot stop working even when you need to.
I think it’s worth re-evaluating the breaking point we have in our mind. A history of trauma and gaslighting can make you think something so destructive to be normal. And because of that, drawing boundaries “early” might just be the thing you do right on time to prevent the catastrophe from happening. I realized the breaking point doesn’t need to be about how I feel, but also about how the Partner and the company react.
My ask for a break might as well be a test to see how they would handle this: are they going to respect my boundaries and capacity? Or are they going to turn this against me to make it about me being weak and causing the delays? This can help me decide if this company deserves my time, ideas and skills.
With all of these questions, the story of how my project went down the rabbit hole, I hope we learn how to prioritize ourselves at time of mental and physical health crisis. Truly, nothing is worth the sacrifice. Asking for what you need can be the right test to see if you are in the right place at this moment in life.
Good luck :)
