Red Flags in the Workplace

ADHD at Work

May 25

In this week's episode we're talking all about red flags and warning signs in a work environment. We dig just a bit into our own stories of past jobs we've had that didn't work out so well and look for any red flags in the job postings and interviews. Missing deadlines? Making mistakes? Task overwhelm? We've been there.

We then asked our community members to share any red flags they have experienced in previous work environments and were handsomely rewarded. We heard about red flags before getting the job and interview clues, such as long job postings, competitive salaries that are not actually competitive, and interviews that become defensive or too long. We also heard about red flags to look out for once you have the job, such as unclear work expectations, special treatment for high-profile employees, and management not fostering a work-life balance. We discussed the difficulty of cultural change in conservative industries and how harassment is often brushed off to avoid conflict.

Thanks to all who wrote in, sharing your stories, and being a part of this series!

Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and right over there is Nikki Kinzer.

Nikki Kinzer:
After I take a drink of my coffee-

Pete Wright:
Yes. This is-

Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone, welcome.

Pete Wright:
We've learned nothing about podcasting. Don't drink on your line.

Nikki Kinzer:
The timing is off here from me already this morning. Oh, well. Okay. I'm back on Target.

Pete Wright:
We are continuing our job series and this week, we're sort of inserting an episode because we were so deeply inspired by our members only happy hour that happened at the beginning of this very month. The month of, what month are we in? It was actually May. The May happy hour just last week, as we record this. So by the time you hear this, some weeks will have passed.
But we started talking about red flags about halfway through this conversation, our happy hour conversation. And people had red flags at work, red flags at work. And I kept thinking red flags at morning, employees are something, red flags at night, workers' delight? No, there's a sea shanty or something. It's about red skies and things. I was trying to come up with some sort of a pirate metaphor all morning. I've been trying to. It never worked.
Anyway, people had thoughts about red flags. Yes. Things they experienced and maybe should have seen in the rearview had they only known better, etc. We have lots of great examples. So we're going to talk a little bit about our own red flags and red flags, a way to see some red flags, and maybe some signals that you should keep in your back pocket, so you know when you should be even looking for red flags. So that's what we're going to talk about today.
We have a couple of big announcements. First of all, you know where to find us. Takecontroladhd.com and jump into the Discord server. Takecontroladhd.com/discord. It's a fantastic place with a growing, enthusiastic community of members all living with ADHD supporting one another. It is the greatest, greatest place on the internet. And of course, if you really love it and you want to see all the super double, triple secret channels that you don't get access to in the public, then you should visit Patreon patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. That's our member support program. If you want to support what we do here, if you want to see it continue to grow and thrive, toss us a few bucks a month over at Patreon and that will help a lot and get you access to early episodes of the podcast with extra stuff, and the access to all the super triple secret channels in Discord. It's really, really great. So we appreciate you doing that. Thank you so, so much. And now we do have a couple of announcements for all.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, we have some summer events that are happening. So I want to make sure everyone knows that we still have a few days left to sign up for the next installment of the ADHD book Club. I am so excited to be exploring James Ochoa's book. As you all know, James has been a guest here eight times-

Pete Wright:
Eight times, yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
Eight times. Wow. Good friend of the show. And his book, Focused Forward: Navigating the Storms of Adult ADHD is the book that we are going to be exploring and he has graciously committed to joining us in two of our sessions. It's an eight-week book club.
So I would love to have you join me. I have this book, I've read this book. I love this book. I give it to clients, and I am really excited about sharing this book with a group of people that we can really sit and talk about it, and really understand James' work is all about. So important for sure. So the deadline is to enroll is May 31st. We also have another deadline on May 31st.

Pete Wright:
The deadlines are stacking up right now.

Nikki Kinzer:
They are. Declutter challenge is happening this summer, June 2023. And I am really excited to get this challenge started. If you've been a longtime listener of the show, you know that my garage has been a toleration for me far too long, and that is my main focus in June of 2023. My goal is to get this garage in some kind of order. Not perfection, but some kind of order.
So I want you to come with me along on this journey. We have a game we're going to play. I have a couple of webinars that I'm going to share with you on how to organize, how to get started, and then how to maintain. And we also have work sessions that we're going to be doing on Saturdays in June too. So lots of great things. You can find both of these events on our website. Takecontroladhd.com/bookclub for the book club. Takecontroladhd.com/declutter if you'd like to declutter,

Pete Wright:
You should totally declutter. Everyone should declutter, but also book club. It's going to be a fun June in Take Control. So let's talk about our red flags.
We do have an answer from the ADHD community. I neglected to mention if you become a member at pateon.com/theadhdpodcast, you get to join us for the live chat of the live show and watch us record live. And Casey does report red flags in the morning. That's your warning. Red flags at night. Quit now. Don't even show up the next morning, which is probably closer to the truth than any of us want to admit. We are talking about red flags. Where would you like to start with this conversation on red flags?

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it looks like Melissa, our lovely brain trust partner wants us to start with our own past job stories.

Pete Wright:
Well, that was me. I actually wanted to do that. I added this first little section on top of Melissa's stuff because I want to hear your red flags. Because you have worked for a long time. And even though you and I have been doing this kind of working for ourselves thing for a while, we have company experience. Do you have any experience with red flags yourself? Because I do.

Nikki Kinzer:
I've been pretty lucky. I've worked for some pretty good people. I think the red flags, it hasn't so much been the companies that I've worked for, the people that I've worked for. It's been the type of jobs. I've really kind of figured out what I was good at, what I wanted to do, and what I didn't want to do. And I think that was the biggest thing is the sales. I'm not a good salesperson. I didn't like being a salesperson. And I did that for a temporary service, and I did it for a very short period of time. And I got lucky, and I got a really big client. But you only get those clients for a short period of time where you still get commission on them and then you have to go find new business. That's the thing about sales is you can't just ride your current business. You're supposed to go find new business.
I did not like the cold calling, because this was back in the '90s. So I mean that's really aging me. Yeah, it was back in the mid to late '90s. And everything was different. I mean, it was actually picking up a phone, a real phone in your office with a cord, a calling a bunch of companies. And then having the map, not a GPS, an actual map in your car to try to figure out where you were going.

Pete Wright:
That's the Thomas guide. Do you remember the Thomas Guide? Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. That job was not for me. Yeah. So that would be the thing that I would say is that I really just figured out more about what I didn't like and what I liked. And actually, the last job I had with a company was human resources and I really enjoyed that job. I really did love it, and I loved the people I worked with, and the company was great, and it was hard to leave. But I did.

Pete Wright:
It's funny, as I was thinking about this morning, I was going through what are the things that I've really struggled with in my pre-ADHD career, the stuff that I didn't know I should know about. The unknown unknowns.
And I realize there are a few. My first job that wasn't working in the tourist industry as a high schooler, I was working in a television station and it was cataloging old tapes. So I had to go through this vast library, this endless dark hallway that had three-quarter inch tapes, news tapes aligning all the walls. And I had to go one by one, put them in the drive, and log in this brand new computer system what the stories were at what time code on each of the tapes. So that when you're filing new stories, you can go back to file footage very, very easily. So I was essentially a glorified video librarian doing a ton of data entries.
And I realized that was probably one of my best jobs for personality, because I could go over to the 7-Eleven next door and get a Big Gulp that was like a whoa gulp the size of my head and bigger, and I could could hyperfocus with my stimulant and do that for hours and hours and hours. And nobody ever bugged me. And they just knew that as long as they could go into the computer and find the stories that they wanted, and that library was growing, they never questioned what I was doing.
It was as soon as I had responsibilities and deadlines that I started struggling. Those were the things that got in the way. And I didn't know that there should be red flags that I should know about. And I was really, really good at lying to myself, at convincing myself that doing one thing was of value even when I was asked to do a different thing.
So things like missing deadlines, I was constantly missing deadlines. And the news business is run on very tight schedules, very deadline oriented. And so I had to get a handle of that. I would start making mistakes that I would be caught on multiple times, like misspellings, names, those kinds of things that I just wasn't paying attention to the detail. When I got thrown, was I resilient enough? Was I able to recover and come back?
What were the things my manager was calling me on in terms of, "We know you're overloaded but you're not catching up." What do we got to do to catch up? And then the complete other side of that is dealing with and learning to live with a complete lack of feedback, when I don't know if what I am doing is good or not.
And those make for a catalog of the things that I was struggling with before I realized I had ADHD. And I realize only in hindsight now that I was being given a gift by having a manager that would talk to me about them. Right? That would talk to me about them before repercussions occurred. And that was a big deal.
I think now, had I had the systems that I have now that I count on now, a big visual tool to tell me, "Here are the deadlines." If I had gone to the trouble of creating and using whiteboards and doing the kinds of things I do now, it would've been a different experience. If I'd thought to ask, "Hey producer, I need you to look at the work that I've done today and check me on my spellings, and make sure." If I had called to account an accountability buddy, I would've done a different kind of job, a different level of quality. Those are the things that I think I was counting as red flags that with the gift of hindsight know now, could have handled better and just didn't. So is that a fine way to set the table for our own red flags?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, I think so. Absolutely

Pete Wright:
Because I think from our conversation the other night, I feel like some of these things kind of bubble up to what other people were talking about, and I realized just how much I was able to relate to them.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. And what was so great about the happy hour conversation is it gave us this topic and it gave us our next topic too that we're going to talk about eventually. But I love that we're talking about this because when you're doing a job series, we will typically talk about what kinds of jobs are good for ADHD. It's about the interview process, it's about all of this stuff. But it's not really about finding the right job for you in as much detail as we're going to be talking about and really looking for those red flags, or at least being aware of them when they pop up. So I love the angle that we're doing.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, moo. And it does start with the red flags that pop up before you get the job. And this is probably a good one to start with just because one, I know there are people in our community who are looking for work right now. And because of the economic conditions in which we live, there is an increased sense of weight and stress on finding the job and just saying yes to what comes. And so it's important to be aware of the red flags maybe before you jump to a yes, so that you can poke around and ask some more questions.
The first one was an interesting one that came about talking about just when you're hunting for the job, and was you find a position and the position has been posted for a long time. They are clearly struggling to fill this position. And we've got Melissa posted in our notes, a quote from monster.com. "This may be a sign that the company has put the position on hold or has high turnover for reasons that might raise concern. And sometimes companies will collect resumes just for the sake of gathering information about current salary conditions."
So I think both of those things are true. I think having been on the inside trying to fill positions like this, it could also mean that the company is dysfunctional at a very core level, that they can't find someone who sticks. And it could just mean that it's high turnover because it's a bad job. And I think that's something to be aware of.

Nikki Kinzer:
It's something to be aware of, and it's something to ask about. I'm going to talk a little bit more about this when we talk about the interview, but that's a great question to ask when you're in the interview is, "How long has the position been opened? Why is it opened? Is it a new position or is it a current position that you're trying to fill?" And really asking those questions around this job and hearing what they have to say, because it is a key. Doesn't mean that it's a no-go for the job, but it's something like you said, be aware of and ask questions about.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Which leads to, what are the keywords that the job is actually selling? And one of the keywords that we're looking for is competitive salary, right? "This job offers a competitive salary." Competitive with what? They want you to think it's competitive with the market, like it's competitive with other positions that might be recruiting you on your very best day.
But it could really be competitive with the bottom of the market. It could be competitive with entry level. Competitive salary ends up being kind of nonsense words. There's no number associated with it. And competitive salary doesn't take into account your specific offer as somebody who's willing to come and deliver their blood and sweat to the organization.

Nikki Kinzer:
So this is interesting because I see both sides.

Pete Wright:
Sure.

Nikki Kinzer:
Because I'm in HR, I see both sides. I see why as a company, you don't necessarily want to put the number out there, because you don't want to sway people one way or the other. And you want people to apply who are interested in the job.
But this is interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine who does hiring, now in Oregon in the current climate. And we were talking about this because I was asking her how much she was offering for a particular job that she was looking for to hire. And it's a high level job. And I said, "So how does that work?" And she said, "Well, in Oregon, you can't ask what their current salary is anymore."

Pete Wright:
Right. That's true. That's true in a lot of states.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I didn't know that because when I was in HR. You could say, "What is your current salary?" And now you can't. And she said, "Well, they do that because they don't want to discriminate." So if a man comes in and he says, "Well, I was making a $100,000, I want $100,000." A woman comes in and says, "Well, I was making 70,000. I want 70,000," but they're doing the exact same job. The company, it's unconscious bias, right? Or whatever.
So I never knew that. That was new to me. And so it is interesting. We should get an employment lawyer or somebody on the show because it would be really interesting to hear how companies do that. How do they decide on their salaries? Because you could do a Google search, but it doesn't necessarily tell you much because it's so broad.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. It might surprise you to learn, I also have an HR podcast called Human Solutions, a HR podcast for people who love HR. And I do it with a regular-

Nikki Kinzer:
Since when? I didn't notice.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, I know. It's for AIM HR Solutions in Boston, Massachusetts. And Massachusetts is fascinatingly progressive in terms of the way it protects employees. And I am going to ask my employment lawyer buddy Tom Jones, to join us for this conversation because it would be okay-

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, but my mind is blown. How did I not know that you had an HR podcast? How long have you been doing it?

Pete Wright:
We're in season three. Short seasons. We've only done probably 30 episodes over the last couple of years.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:19:24]-

Pete Wright:
You don't know about that stuff. I do 30 shows. You have no business keeping up with all the nonsense that I do. There's no expectation that you would know.

Nikki Kinzer:
But that one I would be really interested in.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's really fascinating when you think, because so many of these conversations, your jurisdiction may be different depending on what state you're in. But generally, there are a lot of protections, more protections for employees than when you and I were actively studying HR.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. And that's what my friend was saying is she said back in the day, you kind of went off of whatever they wanted or what they offered if it was in the range, but now it's like this is what the job pays.

Pete Wright:
Yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
It doesn't matter if you're a man, woman, or whatever gender you relate to, it doesn't matter. This is just what the job pays, this is what we're offering.

Pete Wright:
Yes. And what's really interesting about it, one of the things that... I don't know specifically if these two things are tied together. But one of the things that I note is that the salary ranges as a result have gotten much, much wider. We were just looking at a position where the salary range started at 30,000 and went to 100,000.

Nikki Kinzer:
Holy cow, that's a big-

Pete Wright:
For the same job title. And part of the reason is they want to make sure that they have a lot of room to promote people to the top of a salary range that makes it exciting and enticing to stay in the role longer. And so I totally get that, and you want to come in and you want to be making the highest. But competitive salary could mean we're competitive with the 30,000, or we're competitive with 90.

Nikki Kinzer:
Like you said, it really doesn't mean anything until you get information about the job. Yeah. That's interesting. All right. Good job.

Pete Wright:
Very interesting. Okay, so you wanted to talk about the interview.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, yes. So I know that there's a couple different slides here. So there's red flags from our listeners that I want to share with you when they've been in situations where I asked an interviewer, "How do you like your job? And what do you think your biggest challenge is?" And I was immediately met with defensiveness and asked something like, "Who's interviewing who here?" Big, huge red flag.

Pete Wright:
It's huge. And I just want to add something to all of this, which is when you hear something like that, the red flag, it might not be saying anything about the company. But it is saying the person interviewing you is bad at their job.

Nikki Kinzer:
For sure.

Pete Wright:
That person doesn't know what an interview is for. And that's fine. Those people exist in the world. It's not your job to confront them or fight them, but it is a red flag to know that this person has a successful position at this company. And what does that say about the relationship that you want to have with this company? Just another question to ask.

Nikki Kinzer:
Let's see. "I've had to go through long-drawn-out interviews and screenings sometimes just to be passed over for the job. How long does it take to know if I'm the right person for the job?" So from Harvard Business Review, excessive interviews or a drawn out interview process can be a sign that the team or organization is overly conscious driven.

Pete Wright:
Consensus driven.

Nikki Kinzer:
Consensus. Okay. You know what? Let's redo that whole thing and have you read it. Okay.

Pete Wright:
Harvard Business Review says excessive interviews ora drawn out interview process can be assigned that the team or organization is overly consensus driven, indecisive, or has issues driving things to completion. Totally true. That could be one of the things.
The other thing, particularly if you're in tech, is that you might have to take tests, right? You might have to pass coding tests, or QA test, or demonstrate skills on the job. And we've heard tale of 10 rounds of interviews because you have to actually demonstrate skills to multiple groups that you're actually doing work with.
And that can be incredibly painful. It can also be a weird sign about the state of the organization that they pride themselves on moving quickly but aren't able to move quickly. And they've given too many people authority into the hiring process, which may be a sign that there are too many people involved in all the processes. It's an inefficient organization. So that can be really frustrating.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. So I see it from both point of views.

Pete Wright:
Of course.

Nikki Kinzer:
Because I think it depends on the job. If you're being interviewed for a high level executive position or high management, your process is going to be longer because they're going to be interviewing more people. The process is just going to be a longer, more drawn out process because they want to make sure they get the right person for the job. Because from the company's point of view, it costs a lot of money to get the wrong person in the job. And so they want to make sure that they're doing the right thing.
I also see this a lot with if you're working through a recruiter. I don't know what it is about recruiting, if you're working with a recruiting firm. But it seems like those kinds of jobs, if you are the middle person, it always seems like it takes a long time. And I don't know if that's because there's a lot of back and forth and you're not directly corresponding with the HR department or whatever. And that could be for a million reasons.
So what I'll tell people is that, "Keep in touch with your recruiter. Make sure that you still let them know you're interested in the job. Make sure they tell you if the job has been closed." Because I can imagine that sometimes, the job closes and the recruiter doesn't go back and tell everybody. So that's the other thing too, is to be proactive and get your hands in there as much as you can. But I guess what I would say is, what is it? What's that saying? Don't put all your eggs in one basket?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, that is definitely a saying. Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
So you've interviewed, you're going through the process, but keep looking because you don't want to just wait out for that position, because who knows what's going on.

Pete Wright:
And all of these things, it's a really fine balance depending. Because when you're talking about, yes, your senior level executive position, there are going to be many rounds of influence interviews. Essentially, do have chemistry with the organization? Do your experiences line up? That's pretty easy to suss out, but are you a right cultural fit? Well, you got to talk to a lot of people to make that work.
I think it's important to recognize that in some organizations, they don't put enough authority, invest enough authority in the recruiting process. And as a result, recruitment offloads responsibility for potentially bad hires to many departments. And that just reduces or absolves each individual department of a hundred percent of the responsibility of hiring somebody that isn't a good fit. And that's problematic, right? It's inefficient. It's problematic, and it drags you on as somebody who just wants to go to work and contribute.
So being able to see that when that is going on might be a red flag, that it's not a good fit. The balancing is you've got to really ask yourself, "Is this the company I want to work for if this is the kind of stuff they're making me jump through? If I'm having the same interview over and over with multiple different groups, just because one group doesn't want responsibility for hiring somebody," because they got burned. All of these processes come around because someone got burned sometime. We know that. That's how we build policy. But it's also important to acknowledge that it might not serve you as somebody who's looking for a job. So something to be aware of.

Nikki Kinzer:
The other thing I want to say though, just on the other side of that too. If you do get passed over, that's hard. And that's going to take a little bit of time to get over the RSD that comes with that, right? That is definitely something to have to deal with.
And I know I say this, and it's really easy to say to not take it personally when you really feel like you're taking it personally, because it is about you. But there's so many factors that go into hiring someone. And I will tell people, if you didn't get the job, I'm a big believer that it wasn't the right job for you.
They saw something that wasn't going to be a good fit. We don't know what that is. We're never going to know what that is. But I just have to believe that wasn't the right one, and you keep moving on and stay as positive as you can.
And you probably learned a lot along the way because you got some really good experience with interviewing. You probably got really good at talking about you and your experience. Take the good out of that and bring it into the next interview.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I've been in interviews where bosses talk poorly or inappropriately about their employees.

Nikki Kinzer:
Terrible. Red flag, get out of there right away.

Pete Wright:
That's huge.

Nikki Kinzer:
That's not okay.

Pete Wright:
It's really lame. I've been in situations where I feel like it's easy to talk poorly about both employees and managers. It's so easy, when you're in the interview process, you find somebody that you kind of like and you say, "Here's some things that are kind of frustrating about where we are right now. We're in a lull. Our teams aren't producing. We're hiring because we need somebody to re-energize." That level of honesty is a red flag. A hundred international reports, if they're talking negatively or giving personal information away about current employees, it's a red flag. Talking poorly about their coworkers can show that the interviewer does not handle private situations correctly, may not respect confidentiality, and that the organization may not have a good culture. Yeah. I can think of no situation in an interview process where it's appropriate to say anything like that.

Nikki Kinzer:
I agree. And that's the same advice I would say to somebody who is being interviewed. Don't talk about your past employers in a negative way or coworkers in a negative way. Even if you left on the worst of terms, I would still sugarcoat that in a different light.
Because that is a red flag as an interviewer that if you're talking poorly about your other company... And I know that there's reasons why you're leaving a job. So of course, there's going to be things that maybe you didn't like and you can be honest. But just don't talk badly. Don't talk in a way that... You know what I mean? I don't know what the difference is about talking about your experience, but then not saying that, "It's a terrible place to work for. They're terrible there." I don't know. I don't know. There's a line there, and I'm not explaining it very well.

Pete Wright:
You can speak about the facts of your experience without coloring it with your emotional experience, right?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, exactly.

Pete Wright:
You can totally do that. It's okay.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And I just want to emphasize how important it is for you to interview them. And again, we talked about this at the beginning. But I just think it's so important, especially when you're feeling stressed and you really need a job, it's really easy to just want to be whatever they want you to be or what you think they want you to be, because you need this job.
But it is so important for an ADHD to really get the facts and as much information as they can around the job, the environment, who they're working with, what a typical day is, what is the culture? "Can I observe? Can I go in? Can you give me a tour of where I would be working?" Ask these questions, because you want to get a really good sense if this is the right job for you.
And I was just talking to my daughter. She's leaving her position as a barista that she's been working for the last couple of years, and I was telling her the same advice. And she wants to be a waitress, so she's trying to get a job to be a waitress. And I'm like, "Just go in and ask them questions." And we've been going to dinner at the different places that we think she might want to work at.

Pete Wright:
How fun.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And one of the places, we definitely decided that was a no go. So that was really helpful. So anyway, that's something else. Check out companies. That was the way I was going to say, I just forgot about that. When you're looking for a job, look at the industry that you like, not just the position. Because there might be industries that you're really interested in, and you can find openings that way too, rather than just looking for a customer service job or whatever.

Pete Wright:
Well, that's a really good point, because I think we often underestimate the complexity and the breadth of the overall job market. There are companies out there that are doing something related or that service the company that you're talking to, that you may have never even heard existed. Some B2B backend company that also has great benefits, and struggles to hire good people, and keeping your options way open. Going to apply for jobs with companies with brands you've never heard of, right? There are a lot of companies out there that exist.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Because if you believe in the mission of the company, whether it's selling a product, or a service, or whatever it might be, that's just you enjoying your job more so than going to a company that you really don't care about either way. Yeah.

Pete Wright:
It's little thing. I worked for a client in Edmonton once, and it was one of those experiences. It was a connection from a connection, and I doing some work for this company. And they make stainless steel pipe fittings for railings, and kitchen supports, and things like that.
I don't know who does that work when I'm standing in a kitchen. But now I know, again, I've just done work from them. There's a small company that out of Edmonton, Alberta, that ships internationally and has all kinds of clients that I have heard of, and they're really great. They're really nice people, and they do good work. I never in a million years would've heard of them, that they even exist, had it not been for a connection, of a connection, of a connection. So keep your options open.
We do have red flags on the job starting with onboarding and starting a new job, from our listeners. After a week on the job and just starting to get the hang of things, another new hire started, and I was the one management chose to train them.

Nikki Kinzer:
Not a good situation.

Pete Wright:
Also, I wish this was the first time I've heard that, right? That happens so common, and it's just one of those things. You just admit, "Here's where we are, new person. I'm exactly five days your senior. Let's see if we can do this together."

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And what I've also seen, a different version of this, but very similar, is they get on the job, they're told they're going to be trained, and then they're never trained. They're just kind of thrown into it, and they're never properly trained. And they didn't get the onboarding training that they were promised to get. So that's also a huge red flag.

Pete Wright:
Totally. All of this is bad. I'm not saying-

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
But I'm just saying... And it's from a management perspective, it's sort of indefensible. There should be a program for figuring these things out. And sometimes, you deal with what you're handed. From the Washington Post, you'll encounter this type of behavior in any workplace... I skipped one. It's never a good sign when you're immediately approached by one or more existing coworkers who are overly eager to share office gossip with the new hire.
Really, what are we saying here? There is a little bit of Mean Girls in every office. If you haven't seen Mean Girls, it's cliquey. It's about cliques, right? We're trying to figure out whose team you're on, new hire.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right, exactly.

Pete Wright:
It's the social dynamic of work. Washington Post says, "You'll encounter this type of behavior in any workplace, but when you are the newbie, you should enjoy some sort of honeymoon period, free from office politics. If you notice an environment where backstabbing is common, it could be a sign of toxic work culture." Yep, yep, yep.
Okay. "I was hired for a job that technically didn't exist yet. It was for a new building that had yet to open. For the first month, I had to drive to another office building an hour away from where I was hired to work. I was sat in a cubicle and that was it. I was never given a single task or any instruction passed. You can sit here." I feel like there's an end to this story at some point. Eventually, you did something right? Or did you-

Nikki Kinzer:
I hope so. That's so weird.

Pete Wright:
Did you just leave like that? That feels like the setup to a joke that we don't get the punchline for it. That doesn't sound very good, but it also doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility.

Nikki Kinzer:
No. And it sounds like a lot of disorganization in new hires.

Pete Wright:
Yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
For the company's building that doesn't exist yet.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, absolutely. And we run into this all the time. My wife does placement for SLPs, and we would run into this all the time. She'd be complaining about the fact that HR for a school district just sees there's going to be a maternity leave, and so they end up hiring to fill that maternity leave way prematurely. So you end up double staffing because you hired somebody to take on this job that ended up taking on a maternity leave, when the person who was leaving was only three months pregnant. It was just a massive disconnect between recruiting and the actual work. That's what it sounds like you're dealing with here, and it's not good. It's definitely a red flag, but I am curious what the end of that story is.

Nikki Kinzer:
I am too, and if they stayed there, and what was the job? It's just so interesting to me.

Pete Wright:
We've got a greatest hits of red flags on the job. Shall we just burn through these?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
These are good.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.

Pete Wright:
Many of our listeners spoke about not being given clear work expectations or their superiors being unable or unwilling to clarify job tasks or responsibilities. Yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
I had one person tell me that their supervisor said, "I have my eyes on you."

Pete Wright:
Yeah. For what?

Nikki Kinzer:
And I'm like, "What does that even mean?"

Pete Wright:
Yeah. That doesn't mean anything. For what?

Nikki Kinzer:
It's negative, but what does it mean? Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Unless it's followed by a wink, in which case there are more problems.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Whole nother set of issues, red flags there.

Pete Wright:
Neither one of those red flags is any sort of good.

Nikki Kinzer:
That's right. Actually, that reminds me of something that I do want to bring up. So when I was talking to my daughter about different restaurants in the area, I said, "Well, what about the restaurant that I went to for my birthday." And it's a nicer kind of Italian restaurant? And she said, "No, because when I was there and I went to the bathroom," the owner kind of grabbed her arm, but did it in a groping kind of way, this kind of sleazy type of way to say, "You should turn in your resume." And red flag. Yeah. I'm like, "Yeah, don't go there."

Pete Wright:
Don't go there.

Nikki Kinzer:
So that was a red flag. It just dawned on me, and I wanted to throw it out there.

Pete Wright:
Groping is generally a red flag.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and it wasn't groping in bad areas. But still, she was uncomfortable with the arm touch.

Pete Wright:
It's groping enough. Yeah. No, that's not-

Nikki Kinzer:
It was enough that was like, this isn't quite right. I don't know.

Pete Wright:
"Everything is urgent or an emergency. I tried to explain to management that if everything is labeled urgent, then nothing is urgent. No one seemed to understand that concept. Everyone was always running to put out the next fire." That's a cultural issue, right? That's a cultural thing. And it's inherited. Somebody at the top was a real sucker for urgency, and that became a bit of identity, and lost meaning of it. And that trickles down because it can't help but trickle down until you stare it in the face and say what we're really saying is... Go watch The Incredibles. If everybody's special, no one is. We've learned this lesson before. It's not good for you. It's not good for the company. I think there is a myth at a company where they treat everything urgent. The myth is that they're going to be more responsive to client needs, to customer needs. That's not true. That is just patently not true. It makes the company indecisive and it makes the company chaotic. And a chaotic company does not respond to anything. It reacts, and that's just feral. It's not-

Nikki Kinzer:
Not a good environment.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, not good. "I worked at a retail setting with a large hospital network. I was consistently told to look the other way or give special or preferential treatment to VPs or other high profile employees." Okay, a retail setting within large hospital network. I feel like there is context there that is missing. It is a red flag. It's not generally healthy.
But I also have worked in those kinds of situations and I was selling... One of my first high school jobs, I was in a tourist situation. And the president of the company would come in, they'd get a coke and a hotdog. What kind of challenge are we are saying? What is the preferential treatment that VPs and presidents are getting that is not appropriate? There is a line. I'm not saying there isn't a line.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, no, I totally agree with you because I was thinking when I worked in retail whenever our regional manager would come into the store. Boy, we were on our best behavior, and catered. "Whatever you need, we're here for you." Yeah. I do think some of that is just going to naturally happen.
Looking the other way, depending on the context too, I think that if you're saying a VP is getting away with something that they shouldn't be getting away with because it's not okay for other employees or whatever, I don't know what it could be. Then yeah, that is a red flag. Because you have to ask yourself ethically, "I this an ethical boundary that I'm crossing?" So yeah, I think we would need more information on that like you said to-

Pete Wright:
I just want to underscore, I recognize the complexity of organizations. And sometimes, the fact that an employee gives a hotdog and a Coke to the president of the company when they come in is recognizing that we're all sharing a few pennies of that hotdog and a Coke in order to show off a little bit to the executive. And that's a thing that is... your moral fabric has to be able to adapt to in one way or another, whether it's okay or not. You get to answer that question. I'm just saying culturally, a lot of organizations, that is okay.
When I hear this, I think about Sam Bankman-Fried, look the other way when he's actively an antagonist in his own story. These are executives who are taking massive advantage of customers and employees, and that's a very different thing than a hotdog and a Coke.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. I can see just the example that I gave about the owner groping. If she worked there and went and said something like, "This bothers me." And they're like, "It's the owner. You have to look the other way." That's a red flag. Get out of there. Yeah, not okay. So yeah, it all depends on the context and what you're talking about for sure.

Pete Wright:
"As I was feeling the strain of the job, I would try to take time off to improve my self-care and overall health and wellbeing, but I was shamed for trying to take days off of work and told I was being selfish." This is such a button for me, such-

Nikki Kinzer:
I know, me too.

Pete Wright:
Such a button for me. Was I talking to you about this? This was a environment where somebody said... We have a policy where you take a sick day, it doesn't matter how long you've been on the job. If you're sick, you're sick. You go home. And I approached my boss and I said, "I need a mental health day. I'm feeling the effects of my depression and bipolar, and I need to take a day off. I am sick, but it's a mental health issue." And they had to litigate that because mental health was not included in any policy around health. So this person ended up having to take vacation time for mental health time to heal her brain.
That makes me insane. That makes me insane. Right now, we are 20 years too late in solving this problem for our people when these complaints first started coming up. We are way too late in having these conversations about mental health. And it just shows. I mean, that is a massive, massive red flag. And I want to punch something hard. I get so mad at that.

Nikki Kinzer:
Not a company that cares about you.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, they don't care about you if they're still dealing with this. They're done. That's their signal. And for me, it's pretty black and white. If that becomes an issue, it's like, "Let's go. We're going to go find someplace else." And maybe they make stainless steel pipe fittings. "There was a lot of mention of work-life balance, but management never tried to foster that type of working environment." This is a huge red flag.

Nikki Kinzer:
I agree. Because, management needs to be role modeling this so that their employees feel comfortable in doing it. Because if they're not doing it, there's that underlying expectation that you feel that you have to stay there too. And it's not fair. I think this kind of goes with the mental health I feel like. If you're really not getting that work-life balance and you're feeling that pressure, it may not be the right job for you, because it's not the environment you thought you were getting into.

Pete Wright:
And let me tell you a secret. This is a little secret. One of the trends right now in benefits packages that we're seeing a lot of is unlimited time off. It's all PTO personal time. And it's unlimited. Take whatever you want. "That's a red flag as it turns out," because it's a company that knows you're never going to take it. You're never going to take it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Because people don't take it when they have it.

Pete Wright:
Yep. And they know that the peer pressure is too great. They know that any submission for time off is going to be met with some sort of judgment. And that once they do start taking unlimited time off, then they are under increased scrutiny for actually meeting the deliverables of their job. Not decreased, not the same. It's a natural artifact of historical management practices. So I would be super leery because I would say it's a massive trend to see this. It's unlimited time off, and yet very few organizations are really doing the work to understand how to manage employees in an environment of unlimited time off. So that is a little secret.

Nikki Kinzer:
That's really interesting. And I have something else that just came to mind when you were talking about that. I had a client who had a lot of vacation time and wanted to use it. And so in the summertime when it's not as busy, they agreed that she could take Fridays off.
But the problem was... This actually is a good lesson. She felt like she had to put five days of work into four days because she was taking that Friday off. And so she was really stressed and putting a lot of pressure on herself. But when she talked to her supervisor and some coaching with me, that wasn't the supervisor's expectation.
So that's also a really good lesson is that even though we may feel like we have to do five days and four days, that is not what her supervisor expected at all. She was like, "No, this is your vacation day. You do four days of work, then you leave for three days, and then you come back on Monday and you do four days of work. And you're going to do this throughout the whole summer." So it is important to have that communication and clear expectations, because sometimes it's in your favor.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I would say this is one of those things where as the employee, talking to manager or coworkers, one of my favorite things is, "Your stress is not my stress." I recognize I'm gone on Friday and that there is some pressure being put on me to be responsive, even though I'm not here on Friday, because other people value their own needs as highly as I value my needs. And they will say, "Why aren't you there? Why didn't you answer your phone? Why weren't you available?" Well, your stress is not my stress, and I have worked out a schedule as such I'm not working on Friday.
Same thing with remote work. This whole idea that managers, were not good at managing remote employees yet. It takes time to figure out how to do this. It takes practice and the expectations. It is amazing how fast we slip into old habits of management, old stereotypes of management when we are challenged with experiences we don't understand, managing teams that are not where we can see them. It takes generations of leadership, not just weeks of leadership to figure out how that works, or even years. It takes time.
So just be aware that everyone is learning. That might be another not a red flag, but a white flag. Everybody is learning. We all have to understand that our managers, leaders, they're all learning how to do this at the same time. So we have a couple more. Here we go.
"There have been many jobs where there have been a lot of employee relationships that created an uncomfortable working environment." Yeah, that happens a lot. My first job in education, I was working for a team where it was just three of us. It was our manager and then the two of us. And it was me, my peer was a lovely woman who was very good at her job. And she and our boss were dating and ended up getting married. That was very uncomfortable because their relationship with the work was very different than mine was, and mine was with her. And the expectations I felt were different. I totally resemble that remark. Yeah, it's hard. Big red flag-

Nikki Kinzer:
That's loaded, because there's a lot of stuff that probably happens with that. And I can imagine it would be uncomfortable, especially if you know somebody's having an affair or you just know more than you want to know.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. "I recently left a job where I was being harassed by a colleague. When I reported the behavior, I was just told to stay away from them. I couldn't stay in a job where my legitimate feelings and concerns were brushed off to avoid conflict with another employee."

Nikki Kinzer:
This makes me mad.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yep. You did the right thing.

Nikki Kinzer:
It's not okay.

Pete Wright:
It's not okay.

Nikki Kinzer:
And I can tell you, I have a client too who was being harassed and went to the supervisor. They did an investigation, and the person who was harassing was fired within three days. So there are people that will do the right thing, but then there's a lot of people that don't. And that is unfortunate. It's not okay.

Pete Wright:
A lot of conservative industries, while they may say they want people to be themselves and authentic at work, the reality is they do not want to change the system and have anyone rock the boat. Because also, people in power benefit from staying in control, which is why cultural change is hard. Yes. All of that, yes.

Nikki Kinzer:
And I think the bigger the company is, the harder that is from getting away from.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
So that's one of the things you have to decide. Do you want to work for a big company or do you want to work for a mid-size company? Do you want to work for a small business? Or do you want to go into business yourself? You got to think of those environments. Because again, another client who just got recently laid off from a large company, they are a number. They are a percentage that got laid off, and that's how it is looked at. And it's not fair. It's not right. But that is the culture.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. It really is. And that is the line, right? Do you want to go for stability of benefits, regularity of pay, fixed locations, the kind of big company feel? Or do you want to take more risks and maybe not have as great a benefits package and maybe have lower pay, but work for a company where your contribution is felt immediately and often? And that's the smaller organization. So it's not easy.

Nikki Kinzer:
It's not. And I was talking to my older son because we were talking about his major and what he wanted to possibly do with it. And having that conversation too around... My biggest hope for both of my children, and I'm sure everybody feels the same way about their own kids too, is you want them to be happy. You want them to be in a job where they're happy, and fulfilled, and they're making a difference.
And that was what I was telling my son, is that whatever you choose to do, it's important that you really want to do it, and you enjoy it. Because we spend way too much time at work to not like what you're doing.
And my mother gave me the best advice when I graduated from college, and she said, "You know what? A job is just a job. If you don't like it, you get a new one." And I've always really held that close to me when I wasn't happy with my jobs.

Pete Wright:
And I would just add to that, your collection of skills is your collection of skills. How you choose to package them is not defined by a job title. Right?

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. That is so true. Because I can tell you as an HR professional in the past, those job titles are so broad, so generic, so hard to come up with what everybody does. It's just not a fair assessment of who you are or your skillset. I'm glad you bring that up because it's so true.

Pete Wright:
I hope useful to some folks. Thank you everybody who've contributed to this giant list of red flags. They are all red flags. It's really wonderful, if for any other reason, than to just remind ourselves that we're not alone in seeing the complexities of the work environment tested. And that's what these red flags are. You get to draw the line on which ones you are going to walk away from versus which ones you want to adapt to.
So that's it. Thank you everybody, everybody, everybody. Thank you for doing this. We appreciate you downloading and listening to this show. Thank you for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the show talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we will see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.