Corporate Leader Had To Talk To Angry Men In The Workplace Like Toddlers — ‘If You’re Feeling Big Feelings In Your Body You Can Remove Yourself From The Situation’
"That's not part of my job description."
Jacob Lund / Shutterstock Having a toxic job makes maintaining a work-life balance feel almost impossible, as former corporate employee Chrissy Von Baron knows all too well.
Von Baron is the host of the “Work Trauma” podcast, which covers the topic of toxic jobs. She shares her personal experience in the hopes of helping others navigate toxicity at work. Her conversations shed light on just how harmful the corporate world can be.
The corporate leader had to talk to angry men in the workplace as though they were toddlers.
In a clip from the podcast “Just A Job,” Von Baron discussed how to manage other people’s emotional outbursts at work.
“It is not your responsibility to manage other people’s emotions in the workplace,” she advised.
She upheld the phrase “That is not part of my job description” as a way out of doing emotional labor at work.
“You did not hire me to be the therapist, so I do not need to manage your emotions,” she reiterated.
She shared that she used what could be called “gentle parenting” to de-escalate tense conversations with her male counterparts, noting, “I ended up talking to angry men like I talk to toddlers because they wouldn’t listen.”
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Von Baron gave an example of the type of communication she relied on with those angry men, telling them, “If you are feeling big feelings in your body, you can go ahead and remove yourself from the situation.”
While her technique might have worked to ease tension, the larger, more troubling point is that her co-workers acted like literal babies, as though they were small humans whose brains haven’t fully developed yet, instead of people wielding powerful positions in a space that’s supposed to be professional.
By casting light on the darker parts of corporate America, Von Baron hopes to create a new kind of workplace where people feel supported instead of cut down.
She was Vice President of Marketing for “a very established brand in the direct consumer E-commerce marketplace” that’s “now valued publicly at $350 million.”
She shared a story of her own experience with a toxic boss, describing a moment when the Chief Financial Officer at the company slammed her door open to yell at her and demand the results he wanted to see.
“I was also told in a meeting with me and one of the other C-suites, one of the founders, that since I’m ‘not married and don’t have kids and they pay me enough, that this job should be my life,’ that I should live, breathe, [and] die this job, and that I wasn’t doing that at the moment,” she said.
Von Baron refuses to back down from scrutiny and, by doing so, takes power back for herself and anyone who’s been harmed by their workplace.
She responded to a comment calling her “a handful” by saying, “I sound like a handful because, in my exit interview, I told the CFO every single thing that happened to me, that I witnessed, that I was around for, that included discrimination, sexual harassment, racism — not towards me, towards other people — unfair treatment, hostile work environment… So, I sound like a handful because I stood up for myself.”
“If you hire me, my seat is already at the table,” she exclaimed.
In a separate post, Von Baron discussed the root causes of abuse in the workplace, expanding on a comment left by a follower who said, “Workplace abuse is not about work. It’s about abuse.”
She said, “Abuse tends to stem from an imbalance in power.”
“In power dynamics at work, it aligns with a theory called Social Dominance Theory, which suggests that societal structures foster hierarchies, where the people at the top seek dominance,” she explained.
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She then touched on Social Learning Theory, “which states that we absorb our surroundings and we learn from them; therefore, if the bosses are abusive or abuse their power, then people are gonna assume that’s the norm, which is gonna perpetuate the cycle of abuse.”
Her current work aims to disrupt that cycle of emotional violence. She’s building a platform to “deliver in-depth evaluations of company cultures.”
The goal of her new project is “to bring awareness to what is happening behind closed doors at these companies so that no one else ends up in these toxic situations.”
Von Baron describes her mission as a way to “illuminate the shadows of toxic workplaces,” which can only be done when people speak up and share their stories, as she so skillfully does.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.