I'm a youth advocate/mentor and one of my areas of specialty is at-risk youth. This is an umbrella that includes homelessness & housing instability, vulnerabilities to being taken advantage of, addiction, poverty, etc. The nature of my work requires us to bob and weave between different subcultures, and on the streets there is a kind of “anti-culture” of disenfranchised people. They pick up little things from many places and it gets harder and harder to speak well, “code switch” etc. There is a constant conflict/clash between polite-professional culture and street culture. This is a huge problem between the management/HR departments of youth orgs and the actual work.
I was offered a job where everyone who talked to me loved me. I had an incredible conversation with my first interviewer, who praised me and led to me getting a job offer at another site. I can tell the original interviewer is doing the actual work in-person because we hit it off so well and understood each other on a subtle level.
I had to call the HR woman today, “Jasmine”. I'm moving across the country and dealing with a logistic mess. They sent a drug test that expired 2 days after the email and bombarded my references trying to get a fast reply. I was getting ready and racing to the bus while on the phone, so I was annoyed and focused. But I didn't complain to Jasmine. I just explained it was a lot to figure out and it's not a big deal. I made a point to be reassuring; I'm annoyed with my situation but I offered 3 different options to fix it.
An hour later I called back Jasmine for a different problem, we worked it out. Then she passed the phone to “Lindsey”, who I'd never met before, who proceeded to tell me “we need to be respectful in how we communicate with each other, especially since we're working with kids and youth”. Jasmine NEVER said anything to me about something being wrong, never gave a clue that the conversation was anything but mundane. I took a moment, then told her in my normal voice if they already have a problem with my normal speaking voice, I don't want to take a job where I have to walk on eggshells. And that I was GLAD she told me this up front because now we're on the same page, I really meant it.
This might be a minor red flag for a lot of people, but it's one of the WORST and BIGGEST red flags for my work. I was a whistleblower on abuse & corruption in 2 different organizations in 2020. The more dogmatically polite a workplace is for addressing REAL crises that our clients deal with, the more our clients have their problems and experiences denied, covered up, neglected and rejected. If I'm a voice for THEM, I have to be 10 times more confrontational and blunt about those problems. Because sometimes saying a painful or ugly truth calmly makes ignorant people think the messenger is attacking them. I know how horrific the damage is when dogmatic politeness is the dominant culture for 30 years. I've already almost entirely left my industry to go into research/writing so I can expose these problems from a safe distance. I have the good fortune of being able to say NO. I will work at the gas station and do DoorDash until my writing takes off. If I never make a penny and die broke, at least I did the shit that really mattered, and it will be given to future generations. I'm playing the long game.