09/07/2026
Comment BOUNDARIES and I will send you my boundaries mini guide for the coworker you cannot avoid.
She rearranged her whole calendar so she would never be alone in a room with one woman. She called it being professional.
It started with a thread she stopped getting copied on. Then that coworker began answering questions addressed to her. Then “we already covered that,” said in front of the room.
Here is the part people underestimate. O’Reilly and colleagues published a study in Organization Science comparing ostracism and harassment at work. Being excluded predicted who actually quit three years later. Harassment did not.
Being left out is not the mild version of a toxic environment. It is the version that gets you to the door.
And she still loved the job. That is what made it unbearable. Grief and loyalty living in the same body at the same time, both of them true.
One toxic coworker with the room’s permission is not one person. It is the room.
Which one is it for you right now, the silence or the sabotage? Tell me in the comments.
09/06/2026
Comment HEALING and I will send you the first step toward speaking up at work again without paying for it afterward.
She sat in her car in the parking garage for eleven minutes. Her manager had just called her work embarrassing in a 1:1, then said “I’m just being direct,” and she had apologized. For being sensitive. About work she was proud of.
Here is what nobody tells you about leaving a job you loved. If you loved it, leaving is grief. Not relief. Not a fresh start. Grief.
Kenneth Doka named this in 1989. Disenfranchised grief is real loss that the people around you do not treat as real loss. You get “at least you’re out” instead of condolences.
Robert Tepper named the other half in 2000. Abusive supervision is the sustained display of hostile words and behavior by someone with power over you. Sustained is the word that matters. One bad day is a bad day. A toxic boss over eleven months is a working condition, and you have been living inside it.
The work was never the problem. The toxic manager standing between you and the work was. You are allowed to grieve the work anyway.
09/03/2026
It’s 2am and you’re doing the math again. Can you afford to leave. The number changes every time because you’re solving it with fear, not evidence, and fear does not have a plan, it just has a worst case scenario and a blank spreadsheet.
Here’s the version of the question you can actually finish. Is this one person or the whole building. What is staying costing you, in real numbers. Could it change here. What does the evidence add up to. What do you do first, in writing, so 2am you has somewhere to land instead of starting the whole calculation over from scratch.
The Stay or Go Workbook walks you through all five, so the spiral has an actual answer waiting for it next time it shows up.
Comment SPIRAL and I’ll send you the link.
09/03/2026