This weekend, I binge-watched a series—something I haven't done in months, perhaps even longer than a year, if I'm honest.
I discovered a show I can't believe I missed: 'Industry' is set in London at a bank, focusing on salespeople on a trading floor. It sounds utterly dry, but in truth, it's far from it.
This post isn't a review of the series. Instead, I want to discuss what it dredged up for me: the years I worked in the corporate world, ruthlessly climbing the ladder, playing the political game.
I speak of our thirties as the decade of ego. We're no longer children and are finally seen as adults, whilst also being in careers where we're earning more money than ever before.
Ah, the ego of success. I was enslaved to it, believing my worth was measured by job title and salary. Those things, I thought, made me important in the world. How terribly naïve I was.
I look back and laugh at how I worked myself to the bone to ensure profits for a company that wasn't mine. Had you seen my passion, you would have thought I owned shares in the places I worked, but I didn't. I was merely a cog in the wheel.
I remember running the tech department of a company for six months between IT managers for a quarter of the salary because I was passionate and believed my hard work would be acknowledged. I was in the office until two weeks before I gave birth and had a laptop on my hospital bed the day after delivery—the same day a duodenal ulcer burst and I was rushed into emergency surgery. The company sent flowers. I spent months recovering, and when I returned to the office, my desk had been relegated to a corner and all my projects given to others. I was forgotten.
I remember turning a blind eye when my boss was inappropriate with a female staff member or made sexual innuendos to me in meetings. I cried alone in the toilet cubicle after being screamed at and humiliated in boardroom meetings. I thanked them when they bought me a bottle of perfume after selling the company for millions.
In 'Industry', the manager says to a young woman graduate working on his team:
'You can go and complain about my behaviour, but all it's going to do is make you look like a troublemaker, and it will follow you through the industry so that everyone sees you as the woman who causes trouble.'
I'd heard that more times than I care to count.
As a woman, I brushed so much under the carpet and smiled because that's what good girls do and how compliant employees behave.
This behaviour continued when I opened my own recruitment business. I can't tell you how many times men working for corporations earning millions in monthly revenue would sit opposite me and haggle my commission down. The joy they derived from this still astounds me.
I recall a client dinner where they told misogynistic joke after joke before moving the festivities to a strip club, asking if I would join. That was the dinner where I smiled politely, refused the invitation and vowed to remove myself from this environment. No amount of compensation could make me tolerate this behaviour anymore.
It was then I decided to coach women instead of making money in places which made me feel dirty, afraid and, frankly, gave nothing back to the world.
I don't judge others' decisions on their life paths, but I can tell you that I suffered intense PTSD working in the corporate world, and I know I'm not alone. Most people believe there's no other way, but when I look at Gen Z, I see them finding alternative ways to earn money, and that makes me smile.
Viva independence and screw the corporate bullshit!
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