Being the Villain and Other Good Things

On being the exact right age for this moment and some Sunday Suggestions

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

“Hey, do you have a minute?”

I’m at work and I cheerfully respond with a “sure!” to the Teams message from another member of the leadership team, adding in a smily face emoji, like the professional I am. I’m unaware that we're about to have a conversation that will confirm for me that there is another name I can add to my mental list of people who really, truly do not like me.

(I would share more about the conversation but it’s not fully my story to tell and it involves words like “deposition”, so probably best to keep it vague here)

For the first two decades of my life I was driven by a singular goal: make sure that everyone, everywhere likes me, all of the time.

Very reasonable, totally doable.

After all, there is nothing people find more appealing and enjoyable than hanging out with someone who has the self-confidence of Charlie Brown and the chill level of a chihuahua who just drank a Red Bull during a thunderstorm.

It’s weird how that didn’t actually work out amazingly for me in terms of dating and popularity.

One of the lingering sadnesses of my life is how much time I wasted trying to hate myself into becoming a different person and how convinced I was that I was fundamentally unloveable while simultaneously wanting nothing more than constant external validation that I had successfully tricked some people into thinking they liked me.

(Shout-out to everyone who I’ve been friends with since high school, college, and/or my early 20s — you fell for it, suckers!)

The good news, and the short version of this story, is that I spent a good chunk of my 20’s starting to get my emotional shit together, all of my 30’s realizing that I’m actually pretty good at the things I care a lot about (work stuff, yes, but also being a friend and a mom), and rolled into my 40’s as confident and content with myself in a way that I really couldn’t have imagined when I was younger.

This is both a cause and an effect of becoming a boss, I think.

I’ve been in roles where I’m managing people for over 15 years now, with staff sizes ranging from three to well over 75. I’ve probably directly managed close to 50 people and been responsible for the management of maybe 200 or so, spread across several jobs and two states.

I’m 1000% sure I am better at being a manager now than I was when I first started, because figuring out how to manage people and budgets takes work and practice. Even in those earliest days, though, I always wanted to be a good boss. I was somewhat scarred by having a terrible boss in my first professional role; I never wanted anyone else to have that sinking feeling of dread when they saw me coming down the hallway the way that I used to when I heard her stomping around the office. I’ve tried to be kind, transparent, and supportive of the people I work with because that’s how people deserve to be treated. And, yes, when I first started being in leadership roles I still kind of hoped that it would be possible that I could be in charge and still have everyone like you, all the time.

And then I got a job where I had 26 direct reports (which: NEVER AGAIN. That is a bonkers number of direct reports), many of whom had long-standing beefs with each other. There was a lot of internal conflict that predated me and an HR department that was weirdly reluctant to do anything about it. There were some people who really needed to find new roles, because life is way too short to be as miserable at work as some of them were. It was the first job I had where I had to put people on performance improvement plans, where I got to make the call about whether someone kept their job or not.

I realized very, very quickly that with a staff that large and with the level of existing drama that I inherited, there was no way I could make decisions that would make everyone happy. I could still aim making the best possible choice and to communicate about it as transparently as I could, but there was no universe where everyone would agree with me on any choice I made.

Letting go of the dream that I’d be able to be everyone’s favorite boss of all time, forever didn’t take as long as I might have expected. Having to have a conversation with someone about why they had pooped in their office and why they had to stop doing that¹ will move that process right along, I suppose.

In the years since then, I’ve hired lots of people and fired a few. I’ve been told that I’m the best boss that someone has ever had and that I’m “stupid, ineffective, and play favorites”. I’ve shared laughs and kid stories and hugs and sometimes tears with people on my team but I’ve also been yelled at, cussed out, and lied about. I’ve sometimes gotten credit I didn’t fully deserve and sometimes been underestimated because I was too nice or too young or too agreeable.

And along the way I’ve come to understand that, if everyone is the hero of their own story, I’m sometimes going to be the villain.

There is a version of me that lives in some people’s minds and stories that I probably wouldn’t recognize. There are things that people have put in writing that don’t represent the truth as I understand it (and/or are straight up factual errors and sometimes lies). There are almost certainly people who’ve never even met me who probably dislike, or even hate, me … all based on a story that someone else tells about their life.

I spent some time this week after that meeting thinking about the stories people tell. I thought about unreliable narrators and bad actors, about people who start with bad intent and assume that everyone else does too. I felt some simmering anger about how it sometimes doesn’t actually matter if you have all the receipts in the world to prove that someone is lying … shouting about it all is just yelling into the wind.

Despite all that, I ended the week feeling weirdly grateful, again, for being middle aged.

I was able to call a friend who is smart and accomplished and professionally experienced in a way that you can’t be until you are at least 40 and get some good and reassuring advice².

I was able to look back on 25 years of professional life and ask the right questions to the right people about what to do next.

I was able to take in the information that someone whom I tried really, really hard to have a positive professional relationship with very much does not respect me and not have a crisis of confidence about it.

I’m *almost* at the point where I can have some empathy for this person because they seem deeply unhappy and that has to be painful for them.

(I reserve the right to also think that they are kind of an asshole. Multiple things can be true)

25 year old me would have been spiraling all week, crushed with self-doubt and internal criticism and fear that everyone else secretly hated me too.

But I’m not 25 anymore and I’m grateful for that in so many ways because I’m better and smarter person now.

I’ve heard other women talk about how their 40s was the decade when they realized that they were all out of f*cks to give, but I don’t think that’s quite true for me. I still have some f*cks on hand and in the back stock, but I’ve realized I get to chose how, when, and on whom to spend my fucks emotional energy.

Happily, it turns out that I just might be the exact right age to find out that someone has made me a villain and to realize that isn’t my problem to solve. And that, honestly, just might be good enough reason alone to not mourn the loss of my 23 year old knees and to look forward to the prospect of taking another step deeper into my 40s when my birthday rolls around next month.

I’m the exact right age, right now.

***

Now, on to some stuff that I was into this week!

• Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers? I’d never heard this theory before and it’s kind of fascinating.

• This is such a bad idea and I want to do it immediately

• The State Fair is a very big deal here in Minnesota, so much so that I got a breaking news alert on my phone earlier this week when the list of new Minnesota State Fair foods dropped. As expected, it ranges from the tasty looking (I want a Cherry Bigfoot Limeade RIGHT NOW) to the deranged (a cheeseburger stuffed between two deep fried Uncrustables? My tummy hurts just thinking about it)

• This house is such a perfect time capsule

• A first hand account of the horrifying flooding in Texas that is vividly, beautifully written but also made me cry because it is so damn sad.

• Looking forward to season 2 of Wednesday dropping next month… but it has been at least two years since I watched season 1, so might need to revisit before August 6

Finally, just some memes that amused me this week:

Very true once you are 35 or older

Replace “semicolons” with “parentheses”) and yes

Not to brag, but by this criteria I might be the most famous person in my office

Unlikey, especially if the item was on sale and/or has pockets

1. True story, unfortunately

2. Middle aged ladies FTW, once again