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content/blog/the-trauma-of-employment.md

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+---
+title: The Trauma of Employment
+description: Power imbalances at work negatively impact human relationships and leave long-lasting scars. We can do better.
+synopsis: Power imbalances at work negatively impact human relationships and leave long-lasting scars. We can do better.
+date: 2026-06-30
+tags:
+  - Life
+  - Work
+imageURL: /img/trauma-of-employment/Venetian-Glass-Workers.webp
+imageAlt: "Venetian Glass Workers by John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas. This backlit view of a shop in Venice is dark and atmospheric except for the brilliant strokes of light green and silvery white paint that describe the canes of glass as tradespeople prepare to cut them into bead-sized pieces, which will then be polished and strung into jewelry."
+mastodon_id: "116842107464446750"
+---
+::: info
+Content warning: sexual assault.
+:::
+
+Every year, I receive a glowing review from my employer, effusive, even. But each year, I dread the review. 'This time, it's going to be bad,' I think. 'I'm sure my boss was annoyed with me by the tone of their last teams message'. 'I can sense that she wants to replace me'. 'It's been a good run, but I'd better refresh my resume'. My thoughts run away from me and before I know it I'm experiencing a full-blown stress response in my body as I imagine myself with a bindle slung over my shoulder because I can't afford to pay rent. I'm aware that this is utterly irrational. My current boss is almost certainly the best I've ever had, and there are no real signs of trouble. This anxiety stems from something deeper.
+
+My first 'professional' role was as a print broker and artworker. I was paid peanuts, but I loved it. It turns out that I was a total print nerd, and specifying, designing, planning, managing, and procuring print work was a bit of a dream job for me. It was a small office, and my boss kind of just let me do my thing and, beside the pay, treated me well. Over the years, I've come to learn that 'professional' jobs (or as I like to call them, 'short-pile-carpet jobs') where a person with ADHD can truly thrive are scarce as hen's teeth. The problem is rarely the work itself, but those charged with overseeing it.
+
+Back in the nineteenth century, a Russian prince by the name of Pëtr Kropotkin was hard at work annoying capitalists and authoritarian communists alike with a deluge of pointed critiques. Kropotkin's thought was largely concerned with *power*, and how best to distribute and use it in order to prevent oppressive systems from repeating themselves, whether or not this occurs under a banner emblazoned with a hammer and sickle. Kropotkin also espoused the traditional human gift economy. Despite gift economies being humanity's default state, chugging along nicely for thousands of years, the idea is often subjected to the critique that human nature simply won't allow good behavior under this sort of arrangement. So prevalent was this idea that in 1888, Kropotkin replied with the essay "Are We Good Enough?" in which he wrote:
+
+>  Men are not good enough for Communism, but are they good enough for Capitalism? If all men were good-hearted, kind, and just, they would never exploit one another, although possessing the means of doing so. With such men the private ownership of capital would be no danger. The capitalist would hasten to share his profits with the workers, and the best-remunerated workers with those suffering from occasional causes. If men were provident they would not produce velvet and articles of luxury while food is wanted in cottages: they would not build palaces as long as there are slums.
+>
+> If men had a deeply developed feeling of equity they would not oppress other men. Politicians would not cheat their electors; Parliament would not be a chattering and cheating box, and Charles Warren’s policemen would refuse to bludgeon the Trafalgar Square talkers and listeners. And if men were gallant, self-respecting, and less egotistic, even a bad capitalist would not be a danger; the workers would have soon reduced him to the role of a simple comrade-manager. Even a King would not be dangerous, because the people would merely consider him as a fellow unable to do better work, and therefore entrusted with signing some stupid papers sent out to other cranks calling themselves Kings.
+
+In this indictment of human nature, Kropotkin exposes the problem inherent to bosses: their human fallibility. In a sensible world, power would be better distributed; it would be impossible for one flawed human to accumulate sufficient power to ruin scores of lives. But today, despite our lip-service to democracy, millions of petty tyrants rule, unelected, over billions of others. They control minute aspects of the lives of the workers they employ with a sort of horrifying totalitarian control that books have been written about where it concerns similar behavior from nation states. I like my boss. She's pleasant, kind, intelligent, and has never done me wrong. But if she were a tyrant, or were to become one, there would be no recourse for me or my colleagues[^1], and the consequences could easily be life changing.
+
+In my twenties, through a convoluted and tragic series of circumstances, I wound up working in hospitality. Mostly bartending at first, but I went into coffee later. People often don't realize how awful this industry is, especially in the U.S.A. The reality is that, no matter what you do, if your job involves short-pile-carpet and a laptop, your worst day at work almost certainly pales in comparison to the average day for a waiter, bartender, bar-back, busser, line-cook, or barista. The work itself is grueling, the pay is usually minimal, health insurance is a rarity, customers treat you like a servant with shit on your face, and employers treat you like a cheap machine—with shit on its face. To this day, I tip profusely. In hospitality, people are fired at a moment's notice. Bosses are routinely insane. Screaming at workers in front of colleagues and customers, wage theft, threatening to fire workers, and sexual harassment and assault are—and I need you to take this literally—completely normal. There's a [Mario Batali](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/dining/mario-batali-sexual-misconduct-lawsuits-settles.html) or a [René Redzepi](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/dining/rene-redzepi-noma-abuse-allegations.html) in most kitchens.[^2] I've worked for an operations manager known for grabbing the asses of the cocktail waitresses they employed. I worked for a man who—I kid you not—lived in the basement-office of the coffee shop he owned and would watch you on camera from his bed. He would scream at you over the phone if you didn't count the cash in full view of the camera at all times, and would also scream at you in front of customers if you didn't make espresso the way he did (which was wrong). I've personally been sexually assaulted by customers at work, multiple times. I've been fired. I've had customers threaten to have me fired because I refused to give them free product.
+
+In this line of work, people see you as something less than human. Your livelihood is worth less than their convenience. That stays with you. Mistreatment by your peers is unpleasant, but mistreatment by people who have the power to put an immediate stop to your ability to feed, clothe, and house yourself is an existential threat. When I feel such intense anxiety related to my employment today, years later, and despite working almost entirely from home, glowing performance reviews, meaningful pay increases every year, and a kind, reasonable boss, I realize that my time in hospitality hurt me in ways that are hard to heal.
+
+When you've experienced employment without that short-pile-carpet pretense and veneer of respectability, any sense of discomfort, dissatisfaction, or irritation from your employer feels dangerous. Because it is. No matter how good and reasonable they are, they are also fallible, and their bad mood could destroy your life. I've also been a boss, in charge of a couple dozen or so baristas, cooks, and store managers. I once walked into a café, and noticing that something was off, asked one of the workers to fix it in what I thought was a neutral 'by the way' sort of tone. I was later told that she burst into tears when I left. At the time I was hyper-aware that anything I said could be interpreted (or felt) as a threat, so I intentionally tried to ensure that I was as friendly and calm as possible. Still, the nature of the arrangement, the unjust power imbalance, made it impossible to take my words at face value. I was a threat to her livelihood, and nothing I could say or do could ever change that. They say that it's lonely being in leadership roles. It is. Workers are becoming friends and building genuine rapport, while you're always the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and you're kidding yourself if you think that you're an exception.
+
+Some six years into my current role, I still haven't decorated my office downtown. There's not a single item in a drawer anywhere that I'll need to collect when I eventually move on. I think escaping hospitality—even though I was head of the chain's Chicago operations at the time—felt too good to be true. It seems that I'm still afraid. This trauma is, I think, something that often goes neglected at the ballot box. It's so normalized that it seems a natural part of life. So while politicians are busy riling us all up over immigration and culture-war nonsense, we collectively forget that our employers exercise *infinitely* more power over us than any politician. We need to start demanding strong worker protections, right of first refusal, and other means of righting the power imbalance not because all bosses are bad, but because all bosses are human. And with this, we can slowly begin to build a world where work is carried out equitably, for the betterment of society, with respect and due care toward those who carry it out. Work doesn't have to be traumatic, and by turning our attention to these issues which affect our lives so intimately, we can see to it that it isn't.
+
+[^1]: And yes, you smarmy what-name, I recognize that technically you might consider it recourse to upend your life and find a new job, if you can, but that's a bit like saying "Yes, he fired an arrow at you, but could you not simply have moved out of the way?" "Yes, they kicked the fire-ladder away from the window, but could you not have simply knotted some bed-sheets?" What is possible and what is reasonable are often two very things, especially when your life, health, and well-being are at stake.
+[^2]: Remember that the next time you roll your eyes at the POS tip screen.