Thoughts on Stockholm
Can this person have really abused me if we were also friends? Will people believe my accusation if they know that I also hung out a lot with this person, by choice?
Note: This is an essay on my short story Stockholm — read it first!
A million years ago, or maybe six, I worked at a bank. And I usually go back to that experience when I think about toxic work environments.
One could say it’s because: ugh they’re a bank we hate banks fuck capitalism. But to be fair, here’s a list of experiences I’ve had at workplaces that are not the bank:
I’ve been asked to work for free (this isn’t at one particular place, but rather an experience that just keeps happening over and over);
I’ve been held responsible and made to work overtime (on an intern stipend) because my boss forgot about one of the biggest events at the company and the post office would not bend the rules for her;
I’ve been asked to put together a presentation to explain to the company why they should keep paying my salary, which I delivered to my superiors while dissociating;
I’ve been told by an artistic director, in a meeting in which he called me “sweetie” several times, that the company was interested in my play because they like to do “one thing for the community” during their season (“the community,” I think, is Latinx people?);
I’ve been denied employment opportunities, grants, and fellowships because of my immigrant status, or have had it used against me in negotiations or when defining compensation (especially in the U.S., where employers still think of hiring or working with an immigrant as a favor being done to us).
So. A place doesn’t have to be a bank to be toxic, or at least to have toxic things happen in it.
But perhaps the reason I think back on the bank the most is because, like the hostages in that now infamous 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, I fell in love with the people who were doing me harm.
It was a mistake I vowed not to repeat, with questionable results. I am, after all, a writer, working in theater.
* * *
The seed of this story was a New Yorker article, “How Venture Capitalists Are Deforming Capitalism”. I have no idea why I would click on something with that title; there must have been a blurb that explained the content (the print title, “The Enablers,” is much more enticing). And while it does touch upon the fact that companies like Uber can afford to survive not because they are the fittest, but because their backers have the deepest pockets, it quickly focuses on the story of co-working startup WeWork and its controversial founder, Adam Neumman.
It reminded me a lot of the industry I work in, even though mine is located on the opposite coast and caters to a bunch of old white people who don’t quite know what to do with their evenings (as opposed to: everyone with access to a smartphone). But the dynamics of Silicon Valley and the nonprofit theatre world have a lot in common, when you think about it:
Neither is particularly focused on making money;
Both are full of people who are hoping for their “big break,” a dream that’s usually used against them by those promising they can make it happen;
Both encourage people to work for passion first, money second/third/never;
Both tend to refer to workplaces as “families;”
Both believe what they do can “change the world;”
Both expect, even encourage, outsized, eccentric personalities (“geniuses”) in positions of power, even if/when they turn abusive;
The line that divides the scammers from the truly talented is sometimes too thin for comfort in both;
Both have companies report to a board that can be easily manipulated and controlled, usually because they’re full of people who have very little investment (at least emotionally speaking) in the future of the company and the wellbeing of its employees, even though they’re legally responsible for both.
This last one really gets me.
I should make a disclaimer: I have a problem with authority. I hold parents, bosses, superiors of any kind to perhaps unrealistic standards, and it boils my blood to see them abuse their power. There is seldom anything as upsetting to me as being told to do something “because I said so,” and I have long learned to weaponize the sentiment, telling bosses who fashion themselves good examples of leadership that I will do something “not because I agree, but because you’re my boss,” which seldom fails to make them squirm. (I will readily admit that I am, as you might suspect, not the best.)
But it wasn’t Neumman’s erratic and abusive behavior that most upset me as I read the article; I had heard of it before, so the sting was dulled. Rather, it was the deep dive into who allowed Neumman to behave that way — the board. They allowed him to carry on because he was making them money, in spite of the many reports from those he was harming, but when the company’s public offering was jeopardized, the moral argument came into play. In this era of cancelations, the fact that any institution would have the gall to claim any sort of deniability or moral outrage at the abusive leaders it allowed to thrive is insanely maddening; it robs words that should be used to describe actual pain of their meaning (to the point that now I don’t wanna hear anyone say “gaslight” in a non-ironic way in front of me).
It’s just so clear to me that cancelations are doled out less on a “let the punishment fit the crime” scale than a “risk vs. reward” one: it is usually the ones who have become too much of a liability and have nothing else to offer that get truly canceled, while others who might still be useful, even if accused of serious misdeeds, will carry on with their jobs (like, say, the presidency of the United States).
That idea, that at the heart of the current pageantry of public shamings and firings there’s a group of people who watched it all happen and did nothing, felt very ripe for a story. I became obsessed, seeking all the abusive-bosses content pop culture could provide me with (among others: The Morning Show, Catch and Kill, The Assistant, The Billion Dollar Loser). The matter was discussed in some more than others, but the enablers were always there: the chairman who aided and abetted the CEO’s abusive behavior. The second-in-command who stepped in when the boss was let go and pretended they knew nothing about the toxic environment they inherited. The mentor who advised the protagonist to more or less suck it up in the face of abusive behavior. And the legions of underlings that saw toxic things happen and kept quiet, thinking “I can’t afford to get fired” — who, if not enablers in the full sense, are certainly not disruptors of the behavior.
As I write this, I think about The Devil Wears Prada, which I rewatched for the 453th time before writing Stockholm. There’s a particular moment in which Emily Blunt’s character, while battling a cold and facing a long night of work ahead of her (for a boss who resents her for deciding to “become an incubus of viral plague”), chants to herself “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.”
Of all the things I saw in my research, which included illegal and traumatizing behavior, that might be the one that scares me the most.
* * *
I’ve never fallen for the sort of endomarketing bullshit that plagues the modern workplace: the corporate speak that encourages us to think of the company as a team we play for, that frames the lack of boundaries between personal and professional life as “passion,” and that talks about an office culture that is, without fail, several times more aspirational than actual. “This is not who we are,” say PR statements after the firing of executives who committed horrible abuse for years, proving very clearly that yes, this is who you are.
Maybe it’s because I migrated early in life, which conditioned me to be a perennial outsider, but I’ve always found group dynamics slightly creepy and false. You wouldn’t catch me dead wearing a company jersey (unless I looked hot in it). So if I had to pinpoint why, exactly, I fell in love with my captors during my time at the marketing department of one of the continent’s largest private banks, I think I’d point that finger at myself.
I’m one of those people whose aspirations in life never really changed. Sure, as a kid I wanted to be a priest, a Lego designer, a paleontologist, an archeologist, an “explorer” (whatever that means), a war correspondent, and a diplomat — but throughout all those dreams, one held fast: I wanted to write, regardless of whatever else occupied my time. And yet, when I went into college and was shown clearly the sort of life I could expect as a writer, I flinched and chose the corporate world, afraid of the double threat of rejection and financial instability. And I thrived in marketing, which engendered the self-feeding denial that I could be completely realized behind a desk if I convinced myself I had the job of my dreams (kids, don’t try this at home).
Regardless of how many times it didn’t work out, I arrived at every new workplace hoping to find myself as creatively fulfilled as I imagined I would be in a life in the arts — minus the whole starving thing. And the bank, with its ridiculous salaries and insane benefits… I really wanted it to stick. God knows I got as close as one could get there, securing the most creative job available: editor in chief of all social media channels. I know you’re probably thinking “eh, is that it?” but at the time, the bank was a force to be reckoned with on social media, in many cases leading the industry; we were the Netflix or Wendy’s of Brazil, making Demi Lovato jokes that got us thousands of retweets. Being in charge of that was a big deal. We got the royal treatment from ad agencies and from Google, Facebook, and Twitter (the fact that we had millions to spend might’ve also helped).
And still. I had no one to look up to; any promotion would require me to let go of the copywriting and take on more of the business side. When I did look up, I usually saw people who had been trapped by the job; with their children and mortgages and leases, they literally couldn’t afford to think of different lives for themselves. So I didn’t look up, and instead tried to convince myself that I was happy, regardless of the reality that surrounded me.
That line in the story about IDs not working at the turnstiles if we got fired but weren’t told about it was an actual joke at the bank. I now cannot understand how we ever thought that was funny, considering that if in fact that did happen, it would be a horrible moment in someone’s life. I guess we took for granted that the company did not give a shit about us; more than that, we accepted that complaining was a pointless and dangerous endeavor, and quickly learned to lie in the annual online survey that asked how we were doing, since being honest usually resulted in a promotions and salary rises freeze for departments with low scores. Results from that survey, it’s worth pointing out, landed the bank in the Best Companies to Work For list several times. It’s depressing to think about how many other companies are probably on that list for the same reason.
I remember this one day, a few minutes away from 6pm, someone came over asking about a YouTube video they had asked us to post — they wanted to replace it with another, without changing the link. Me and the writers whom I supervised explained that it was not possible, but the person insisted we had told them it was when we posted it. The problem was that the link was embedded in an app for the bank, and the app had just gotten approved by the Google and Apple stores; it was now live and leading consumers to a dummy video instead of the real tutorial. Any updates would take days. They were freaking out, and they were freaking us out, trying to pin it on us. Around 7pm, I told the writers to go home, and decided to brave the storm alone — my boss (or my boss’ boss) nowhere to be found. I don’t know how late I stayed, watching these neurotic worker bees getting yelled at by some VP and in turn yelling at me, and pleading with YouTube representatives to do what literally could not be done. I remember one of them saying delusionally “we’ll speak to Sergey Brin if we have to.” I knew from the beginning that it would not work, and as much as I hated them for making me stay so late for a pointless endeavor (and treating me so poorly along the way), I also pitied their denial, fueled by not wanting to get yelled at by their boss, an old white man who thought we were too big a company for YouTube not to change the rules for us.
The next day, my boss came up to me and thanked me for dealing with the crisis, saying the others had reported how “helpful” I had been, a “trooper.” No one apologized to me for yelling, for trying to pin their mistake on me, for keeping me up till way past what our union said we could stay. The only person who apologized was me, to the YouTube rep, because I didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship.
And yet I did like people there. Some of my best friends, friends I have to this day, came from the bank. A couple of those were my superiors. And some of them… the character of Di is not based on one boss in particular, but rather a collection of the most seductive and terrifying traits I can recall from bosses (mine and others’, there and other places). Getting publicly blamed for not passing on the materials of someone my boss told me to dismiss actually happened. I also got scolded for sending a personal file from my work email to my personal one (attachments usually triggered the firewall) — a scolding from the same boss who had spent the entire weekend calling my personal cell phone for me to help with their out-of-town trip.
Worst of all, a colleague who once was poised to become our next boss did begin suffering panic attacks and had her throat close up while eating; a few months later, I was told I should start acting as if I was “gonna take over” instead, because my bosses saw that potential in me. I felt guilty. I felt proud.
Usually, when I got in trouble, it was for speaking up: I was told that I was too ironic, too dismissive, not enough of a team player. And, mind you, I was not (I’m still not) perfect, far from it — I can be very arrogant, or blunt, or mean. But I sometimes felt like what I thought was the truth was simply too different from what the bank thought it was. As one boss put it: “Your style would be rewarded in other companies. But here, you need to shave off some of those edges, adopt our culture.” (The same culture that we had to lie about in the annual survey to protect our promotions and raises). Stockholm is about the shaving of those edges: a collection of all the times that I craved my bosses’ approval and did not speak up, did not stand up for myself or others, and worst of all, defended and replicated their behavior in a terrible effort to convince myself that “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.”
Or, when the delusion wasn’t that powerful, I’d invoke a rule that to this day I still fall back on: the mercenary rule. Dance the dance (even if you don’t agree with it) to get what you want. Go into toxic places while trying not to breathe in the fumes, in order to get the treasure hidden deep inside the vault — the credit on your resume, the salary that can help you follow your dreams, the connection that can help you pivot to another industry. It feels worth it, to put up with the abuse, if you do it knowingly and can profit from it. But I wonder how much that inconspicuous performance doesn’t leave lasting consequences. How much shaving off the edges, in order not to arouse suspicions, means that eventually you fit right into the system that you promised wouldn’t change you.
* * *
The last boss I had before I quit the bank used to quote me something that his own boss had told him: “one day you’ll be the boss.” What he meant by this, I believe, was that it’s easy to be critical of your superiors when you yourself have never been one. It reminded me of my mother, who would often say “one day you’ll realize I was right” when I disagreed with her orders.
The thing is, my mother was only half right. As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to understand the difficult predicaments she was in, trying to do the best by me at a moment where my own ability to know what was good for me was limited. But I’ve also come to see her as human. My mom, for so long someone who had infinite wisdom and held absolute power over me, has by now revealed herself to be a person who, much like me, mostly meant well, but was also scared, angry, unprepared, unsupported, and made some bad calls along the way. This revelation doesn’t erase all the good things she did for me, and I remain forever grateful, but it means that me growing up didn’t magically transform her mistakes into good decisions.
The same goes for my boss who quoted me that motto. It’s true that as I’ve become a boss myself, I’ve realized how tricky it can be to strike a balance between doing right by your employees and making sure that they’re doing what you need them to do. I see him now as someone caught between a rock and a hard place, wanting to innovate and create something amazing inside a rigid, very old structure that was slowly robbing him of what made him unique. And I feel bad for him. Moreso because I really liked him, and at times we had a bond that I would call friendship, where we saw each other clearly — as artistic souls, as dreamers. But there are things he did, that so many of my bosses did, that I still think were wrong. Things that hurt me. Things that, regardless of the circumstances they were in, they shouldn’t have done. And my understanding of those things didn’t change just because I became a manager.
I wonder what sort of things he was asked to accept with that quote, “one day you’ll be the boss.” Because the person he was quoting, his former boss, who I never got to meet, was usually described as a “snake” by most people who ever knew her; my boss told me she had to be fired in order for her employees to have a modicum of mental wellness.
It doesn’t escape me that gender was probably at play when people judged her; I’ve met more than my fair share of male “snakes” who didn’t get called that. It’s the reason why the director and the assistant in the story are both women, and that the protagonist’s gender isn’t revealed; I wanted people to not be able to categorize things too quickly, to question their own assumptions and biases before reaching a conclusion. (That and the fact that, besides the guy I mentioned, every other boss I’ve ever had has been a woman — yay feminism! — so it’s the experience I’m most familiar with.) Andrea, the protagonist in The Devil Wears Prada, both correctly and scarily assesses at one point: “If [Miranda, her boss] was a man, they'd never stop talking about how great she was.” She’s not wrong but… Miranda was still very abusive?
And that’s not me saying that my boss’ boss didn’t in fact probably receive her fair share of misogyny, or that, because of her toxicity, there was nothing to learn from her, or that she never did anything right. The public ousting of so many abusive people has shown us that, sadly, both mainstream and social media still have a really hard time framing people as anything other than heroes or villains. The bosses in those stories never did anything right; every employee shat themselves just being in the same room as them, and never felt a connection or closeness or learned anything good from them. The victims, on the other hand, were saints, who never got a bad grade in school, never told a lie, and never said or did shitty things in the workplace too.
This totalitarian narrative robs us of the complexity that is being human, and leaves us really ill-prepared to face abuse in our own lives, because can this person have really abused me if we were also friends? Will people believe my accusation if they know that I also hung out a lot with this person, by choice? That we texted nice things to each other? That I said good things about them publicly? Like the protagonist in Stockholm, it’s easy to question whether we have anything to be angry about; after all, we (or rather, most of us) don’t have it that bad — Harvey Weinstein-bad, Devil Wears Prada-bad.
I’ve never had a tougher time than when working under someone who thinks of themselves as a Good Person on the Right Side of History. They’re the hardest ones to approach with anything other than glowing feedback, because the totalitarian narrative has taught them there’s an “us,” the good ones, and there’s a “them,” the bad ones — and no one on this side could possibly hurt anyone.
The same goes for workplaces; the hardest ones to be in are usually the ones that most produly tout their values, or brand themselves one of the Best Companies to Work For. Like a friend of mine once said, also quoting someone else, “a space isn’t safe just because you say it is.” Usually, the louder you say it, the less safe it is, because it means you have a narrative of it, and nothing bad happens in that narrative.
* * *
Stockholm isn’t, like the New Yorker article that started it all, really about the boss. It’s about the people above, around, and especially below the boss, who breathe in the toxic fumes (and sometimes blow them in other people’s faces).
Originally, the story ended when the protagonist meets Belle at the coffee shop, and both conclude that Di “never shouted” — it’s not Harvey Weinstein-bad, at least to someone looking in from the outside. But my revisor, recalling her own history with an abusive person, made a good point: “I found myself wondering if this ending has sealed the coffin on the protagonist and Di’s friendship. Like how at some point I stopped texting my abusive friend, but not soon enough?”
I loved that note. It spoke against the totalitarian narrative that perhaps I had engaged with in the story: that all it takes is naming the abuse for it to stop. In real life, it’s not that simple. So I wrote that extra scene at the end. Because maybe you get to a place where you have the language to name what happened to you, when you see the situation clearly, and maybe then you stop texting. But maybe you don’t.
Or at least, not soon enough.
Illustration by Deepti Sunder, revision by Lilly Camp.
Liked this essay? Consider donating whatever amount to help me cover the costs of the illustration and revision (over $100/month), as well as my time for writing it! You can find me as @notrealmendoza on Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp.
Wanna get these stories directly in your inbox? Subscribe below: