Is Your Workplace Toxic?

Jobs suck. Otherwise, they would not have to pay you to be there... you would be there for free!

One of my favorite aspects of my current job is that when something goes wrong, we approach it with a “blameless” analysis process. We ask “how did this happen?” and “why” until we can identify root cause, with the goal of finding concrete things we can do to make it less likely to happen again in the future.

It fits really well with my own personal philosophy, and I think it’s a great framework to address issues that come up in a constructive way. Sometimes a problem might seem on the surface to be “Person X made a mistake and now Y is broken” but the root cause could be “this person was never trained on this component” or “no one else reviewed the work” or “we rely on humans noticing details when we could’ve put a test in place to catch the software error” - all of those are things that can be addressed, while “humans make mistakes sometimes” is just a fact of reality you can’t magically fix. The point is not “stop a mistake from ever happening” but “how do we keep Y from breaking from this type of mistake?”

It’s also a helpful framework for analyzing my own actions. I have ADHD but was only diagnosed after I graduated from college; for years before that diagnosis and starting treatment, I was aware that I had a tendency to make “stupid” mistakes or forget things but not the underlying reasons why. But I could trace things like: “I didn’t do my homework” why? “I didn’t remember I had homework due” why? “I can’t rely on my brain to remember this sort of thing” isn’t actionable - “I need to write down homework as soon as it’s assigned” is something I can work on. “I wrote down the homework but didn’t look at it when I got home” okay, so now I need a way to make sure I’m looking at the thing I wrote down.

If you look for the failures in processes not people, you can make an environment where problems are addressed in effective ways and avoid a lot of common sources of toxicity in collaborative environments. Blame and shame aren’t effective tools for changing behavior or solving problems; understanding what happened and addressing the underlying factors are.

It's interesting that bad leadership has always existed in every work profession. WWII legend Major Dick Winters is one of the most respected military leaders in history (made famous by Band of Brothers), and he mentions in his book that bad leadership was riddled all over the Army, and he wanted to make an example of how to treat people right. He had to lead alot of men into a terrible situation when life and death is on the table, and those guys spoke highly of Winter's calm demeanor and strong, caring leadership all the way to the end of their lives. It's remarkable, even for the "greatest generation" during a time where we honor every veteran today, many of them were possibly dealing in or contributing to toxic environments...I was so inspired by Maj. Dick Winters that I strive to be the best leader I can be when I have to be.

I love the great advice and perspective. One thing I would like to add, is that when looking at the reasons why employees get defensive (workplace may fire you etc), you can also think about if it's equivalent, to ask employees to take undeserved blame the way that managers do. I am not talking about differences in pay, or even differences in being expendable... Managers have authority to command. This is why they are accountable for mistakes their employee did and not themselves; they had the potential ability to have their employees not make a mistake. The employee on the other hand, may not have the power to command another; if the mistake was not an act of chance, but rather a different employee's fault, then it's even more toxic to ask that first employee to lie down on their own sword the way their manager sometimes does. Upper management also views managers taking blame, differently than employees taking blame; they have played the game, and know when someone is just being a bullet sponge. Yes, some employees can make excuses a lot and it can become a problem to not own errors; perhaps reframing the difference in relation to excuses makes your point clearer.

My only consistent boss has been my uncle, the only work I have done is construction side jobs. He has always been hard on me. Never outright embarrassed me in front of anyone but definitely made me feel small if I messed up. For a long time, I didn’t like it. I thought I wasn’t improving, and I imagine most people would consider it a bad work environment.
I saw its true value when I first began working for some other people. They were impressed at how hard I worked, how skillful I was for the short time I had been learning, how I was made uncomfortable by my own mistakes and wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than my best work. My uncle was hard on me, and by extension made me stronger and I believe will make me a better working man than I would have been otherwise.
For some people I’m sure it would have been a terrible work environment, but for me it was what I needed.

Having a job is a full time job even if it is part time !

I used to work for a particular motorcycle manufacturer here in the states. It was the most toxic work environment I’ve ever experienced. I was working too fast, jobs got in the way of their sitting and socializing time, and so on. I’d gotten into arguments with people because I would tell them that they didn’t have to work there. Seriously, if they complained about their spouse as much as their job, they would’ve gotten divorced years ago. I eventually just had to do my best to ignore all of it.

I basically took the blame most of the time when things would go wrong at work. My boss knew it wasn’t my fault but it saved so much time and then he would call the one in the office that he figured was the problem and discipline them. Whenever things happened I’d say “oh crap I know what happened” and the first couple times you could see the one that screwed up breathe a sigh of relief cause they weren’t getting yelled at. After about five times it was a wait for the boss to call your name. I’ve always hated the blame game. I want to fix the issue and keep things moving. I was also so valuable to the company that I never got disciplined. I ended up leaving on disability due to high stress cause they cut positions and kept adding to my load. Expecting me to answer phones along with all the management work I had to do while others whose main job was to answer phones do billing for commissions. My boss after I left (about 2 months later) called me and offered me a new position where I only did management reports plus mileage. Said no one else would bug me.

Wow, this sounds like USPS problems I encounter.

"You are working too fast, man" Oh, how many times I've heard those words. When I was hired at my workplace, there was no fixed amount of work to be done. You just did your job for 8 hours and this was it. I can't get into details, but I did my job quite efficiently, I produced 400 units of product (again, it doesn't matter what product it is) in 8 hours. Then our bosses realized than there are people who slack and we are behind schedule, clients are not happy, etc. So they made a change that you need to produce 300 units per day or you lose bonus payment. So every time I produce more than 300 units other employees are mad at me for working too fast. I am not working too fast. It's my comfortable pace of work. I feel boredom when I'm forced to work slower.

To summarize what Adam said, "Working for other people SUCKS!" (I'm glad we cleared that up. 👍✊✌)🤍

I cant believe Adam is an anti-work zombie.

Not making excuses for capitalism, but I do remember the old adage for Communism “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”. There are a lot of very disappointing setups out there.

Thank you Adam Gold Gold Gold

I really love these videos Adam! They gives me input on how to become a better worker and as a person. While I don't work the same job as you we all can learn and reflect on what others have to give back. Thanks for these videos they really do let me reflect more!

My first official boss became an unlikely and unknowing mentor of mine. From years of watching his management style and his total lack of customer service , I vowed to never be that person. I don't believe he ever understood what affects his demeanor had on others once he left the building but he certainly lost at least, many, many tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales, productivity and merchandise over the years.

I’m a big fan of your work Adam Savage I really like the myth busters. I’m such a fan. I’m a big fan of your work

Adam Savage
I am a big fan of your work, and I love the myth busters

As a softare dev of 20 years being in the corporate world, everything is so accurate.

I work in a Hospital and what you said about blame taking hits really hard with me. A lot of people around me feel constantly on edge that anything they do will land them a lawsuit.
Every week I overhear someone, be it a nurse, technician or doctor innocently ask "Why was this done?" or "How did this happen?" only to be answered immediately with "Look, it wasn't my fault.". And most times the person who is asking is isn't even complaining nor being aggressive. They're just trying to analyze and understand the situation.

Adam, thank you for that "toxic" work place review. Hmm, might be time for another review of my behavior.

This kind of topic always makes me think of Matt Craven as Grumman engineer Tom Kelly, the lead engineer on the LEM program, in From the Earth to the Moon. There's a great scene where one of the junior engineers comes to his office late one night and says he's just re-run some calculations and figured out that a major setback they just had is his fault, fully expecting to be fired on the spot. Kelly tells him to go home and get some rest, then come back tomorrow and fix the problem. "You did a good thing. Not this! This is bad. But you owned up to it."

god my current workplace is awful

So.. I feel if the ability to perform your job is encumbered by a set of others choices… and you bring that to their attention ( powers that be ) and they say it’s not about what they do…
How can you be expected to change anything? When they won’t allow it?
Ex. Your boss puts something in your way that you have to move so it takes you more time, but they expect the situation to not reflect the obstacle.
It’s not really excuses when it’s reality and common sense..
you can’t move the object and not move it at the same time.
Sometimes… bosses are just looking for someone to treat like crap 👍

This should be a required training video for any Manager, Supervisor, or one in training.

I'll give you an example of obvious toxicity and subtle toxicity. Both involve the company I work in and was in a different "program" from what I'm in now. During training for that program, there were several of us who was in a personal group chat for the purpose of lending a helping hand and lifting spirits. There was a single person who was constantly railing about things and that spread through most of the group like a rabid contagion. Obvious toxicity. I quit that group chat fairly quickly. The less obvious toxicity was, while in that same program, I found out the hard way that my partner in crime for nearly a year and a half was only "friends" with me as long as I was able to be their support. What I mean is that I was constantly helping them come up with solutions to problems and answering their questions despite my own workload. The moment I got asked to change programs (that program was collapsing), I was no longer a thought to that person. That was a heartbreaking moment for me.

Another toxic work environment trait, is when everyone is trying to prove themselves by working long hours.

Like, if you cannot get your job done within 40 hours a week, either you suck at it, you lack the support you need, or they just dumped too many responsibilities and tasks on your shoulders.

I especially hate management that pushes people to the precipice of burnout, thinking that that's how to maximize productivity....

Had a boss whose way of preserving his own power was to set people against each other. Particularly if there were two or three people who'd established they worked well as a team -- that was a threat to him, because they didn't depend on him. But he didn't just split up a team (or do something constructive by putting the team members in charge of building their own teams). No, he'd start fights. Joe, Frank said he didn't think you could handle this. Frank, Joe said you didn't know your ass from your elbow. That sort of thing. Frank was thinking about retiring and he was grooming Joe to take over his bit of the operation. Frank and Joe were not only colleagues, but friends. But the boss wanted Frank gone sooner rather than later (partly because Frank knew his sh!t better than boss ever would, and so was a threat) so boss started the fight as described.
Frank finally retired and, because he knew his sh!t and was well known among our clients, got a great retirement party. But Frank went to boss's boss and told him that he didn't want boss (or boss's weaselly little hatchet man) anywhere NEAR that retirement party. Boss's boss was just smart enough to agree.
But it was a couple of years before Frank and Joe were friends again.

AVP 👽
I try not to get back in to the past /. I don't need it today / i need it tomorrow morning/take your time / my deadline is 8 at morning /

i left my last job because of the general lack of togetherness and accountability overall. guys that had been there for 20+ years making nearly double what i was making thinking they actually deserved it on seniority alone. not because they did better work, so there was nearly no incentive to work harder ("paid by the hour not by the job" mentality). and nobody actually being accountable for one another and always shifting blame elsewhere (to the lowest level assemblers usually) the seperation between corporate and union was also baffling to say the least and caused a lot of problems like never actually getting anything done. i now make significantly less and am way happier because there is real incentive to be a hard worker and ive already seen more in a month than i saw in almost 2 years

I used to work for a large corporation where I supervised. The culture they created caused me to turn into someone I didn't like so I resigned.

Late stage capitalism does two things: It enforces a hierarchy meant to counteract workers autonomous behaviors and decisions and it encourages narcissists to fill those roles by financially incentivizing climbing the managerial ladder with more money and as sort of a game of pride and shame.

The buck passer in your instance was probably raised or went through his job previous to that getting in trouble for a bunch of things that were 100% not his fault, and developed a defence mechanism that your healthy workplace disarmed

I'll save you 14 min; the answer is, "Yes"

Decisions made by management that greatly affect technical people, engineers, and staff are often done without any input from those affected. You might hear something like this: "We've decided to re-implement the entire project using the Java language, instead of C++." Everyone in the room, looking at each other, scratching their heads, wondering why they spent 2 years developing and testing 200,000 lines of C++ code - and how, magically, this will all be translated in working Java code on a 2 month schedule. What management is really saying, without knowing it at the time, is: "We're going to cancel this project in 2 months - but before we do that, we'd thought we'd give you all an impossible project first." The smarter ones in the room immediately update their resumes. The moral of the story. If you're doing a highly technical project, the technical people need to be included when big changes are being discussed - otherwise it's a trip to Toxic Town, that is almost always preceded by a death march.

When being a middle manager how did you deal with keeping a crew moving when you didn't have the needed information to accomplish the job?

I’m in such a good spot right now, and feel very blessed.

Adam’s comment about an agitator is so relatable. I naturally work fast and there is no throttle to my speed 😂.

I’ve experienced these issues at several places of employment. It’s counterproductive to the job and absolutely lowers the morale of the company. Very unprofessional and unnecessary. I would wonder to myself, did they skip the ethics chapter at business school? Great topic

I had a moment at work today that I thought I'd share. So it looks like my workplace has been trying to get rid of me for the past few months after an accident at work, which wasn't my fault. I won the case against them with the help of a legal team as I ended up in hospital. Fast forward to now and my boss has practically tried to pin everything on me. If I moved or breathed in the wrong direction he would chew me out or give me a disciplinary (Many were written off by his boss, because of how ridiculous they were). Anyway, today my boss got me on my medical conditions. I work in a cold environment and must wear three pairs of gloves to keep my hands warm. If I don't, I lose circulation in my fingers. So every so often I warm my hands up. I've told my boss that I have a medical condition multiple times, but I seem to fall on deaf ears. I was told that I was lying. Today he chewed me out in the office, which upset me. Leading on from this I ended up having a panic attack. So I left work stating that I wasn't well, I'm sure they'll get me on this too. I felt like going back at my manager, although this was wrong. I was crying badly and many of my coworkers asked me what had happened. I didn't mean to burst into tears but I think the stress had just gotten to me. So my partner suggested calling the NHS, who hooked me up with a Dr to check my hands. I was diagnosed with Raynaud's disease, which is where you lose circulation in parts of your hands due to constricting blood vessels and was advised to keep warm. Knowing now that I wasn't making this up, it has theoretically opened a can of Legal issues. I haven't gone back to work yet, but we'll see what happens. Side note: I'm currently looking for a new job.

The first thing i think of when i hear of a toxic work environment, is a haze in the air full of endocrine disruptors, dioxins, the list goes on , and how you're allowed to sit and breathe at all day when it's horrendous but if you set a pallet on its side a light wooden pallet don't do that that's an OSHA violation what a joke. Seems to me oshas just a cute idea that's been bought and paid for

The word "toxic" is kind of stupid and useless. It just means "bad". If I get fired cause I did a bad job, is my workplace toxic? If my boss isn't always nice to me, is he being toxic? It's strikingly similar to snake oil salesmen selling you crystals to "cleans your body of "toxins". Hey there's that word again!

Does anyone know what it's like being in an environment where everyone is connected to and controlled by evil 😈 imagine that and you have got to coexist to the wicked woman who thinks she is my culinary handler soon I will never be out here again and there is nothing you can do about it so eat that EAT IT!! NO MORE CONTROLING OR RUINING MY CAREER

My wife and I have both dealt with toxic work environments in radically different careers. I was a clerk in a specialty care clinic that went from having an absentee manager to a clueless manager who we all wished would be more absent. She started off her first meeting with us all by talking about our supposed reputation for gossiping and not getting anything done. By this point we had basically been running the clinic without a supervisor for over a year because the previous manager had a foot out the door and didn’t give a crap about us. So you can imagine how happy we were to have a new manager start her tenure off by insulting us. Within a year that team, one of the best teams and certainly the most resilient team I have ever worked with, was gone. We all took new jobs or got fired under dubious circumstances.

My wife had worked at a small bakery for a few years when the owner decided to sell. That owner was great and much beloved by her staff, but she had to free up time to care for her aging parents. The bakery was purchased by a retiree who clearly thought that this would be fun and profitable without taking up much of her personal time. In other words, she was a fool. She had no idea the kind of margins that small independent bakeries struggle with when they have to compete with inferior but cheaper products made at the local supermarket. She soon became frustrated with how difficult running the business was and started taking it out on her employees. My wife was done after the first time she was screamed at and called an effing idiot because she asked for clarification on a task. She sent out her resume and hopped the proverbial first train out of town.

We’ve both moved on to jobs that pay better and are far more professionally rewarding. Most importantly, we have supervisors who are competent and respectful. Any workplace will become toxic if either of those factors are absent in your supervisor.

I could write a book on toxic work environments, from the employers, to the workforce itself, from the coal mine and tunnels in Utah and Alaska. Some jobs were better than others. Construction in general is a brutal sport, and the winnings are slim, and painful..

This is awesome and I appreciate it.

I've got a really bad one. I told my manager I bought a house and he immediately started writing me up and told me I had to do all the work I would lose my house.

There’s also the overhelpful type of toxicity that keeps overstepping their boundaries into others. It creates more work to align and figure out a way forward when someone takes it upon themselves to just do your job without asking.

With thanks to Tested members @monkeycircus509, @SuzyRevenge and @Vickie-Bligh for their support and questions.
Is your workplace toxic now, or have you ever worked in a toxic environment?