On ping-pong tables, polite smiles, and what four months taught me about people instead of work.
Hi. It's me. Talking about work, again.
A few months ago I lost my job. It has started to feel like a routine, and I'd honestly prefer a workout routine to this one. My boyfriend says I should just write full-time. I suspect his opinion is not entirely neutral. He pays the hosting for Miss Trend, which makes him my strictest investor and the only one who checks the numbers.
I'll admit something first: I wasn't ready to talk about this, and I was even less ready to write it down. Writing about it now is mostly how I'm getting ready.
The promise
It was a four-month job at a company that promised me everything. Six of us on the team, each from a different background. The first weeks felt like a welcome tour. I was walked through the whole building and introduced to every floor. I shook hands with the CEO. This is a place that sees people, I thought.
My manager was a year into her first management role. She smiled all the time. I could never read what was behind the smile, and I'm someone who reads rooms for a living. Every feedback session went the same way: all good, keep going.
Then one day it wasn't all good. It was over.
The décor of culture
There was a game room, bright and very photogenic, the kind of thing that ends up in a recruitment post. If anyone actually saw you in it, you were reported.
That game room taught me more than any onboarding deck. A lot of companies don't have a culture. They have décor that looks like one. They hang "we care about people" on the wall and then quietly keep score.
Here is the best part. My contract had no fixed hours. In Chile this is called Article 22: you're paid for delivering the work, not for clocking in. One of the official reasons I was let go was arriving late.
Late to a schedule I legally didn't have. Lagerfeld would have framed it.
That's when I understood the game room. At that company, the rules were whatever was convenient that week.
I would have taken strictness over this. I would have chosen a manager who told me to my face that I was falling short over one who smiled through every check-in and then reached for a rule that didn't apply to me.
The manager
I'll say it plainly: she was not a good manager. She wasn't cruel, and she wasn't a villain. She simply wasn't ready.
She said yes to everyone on the team and decided almost nothing. The tasks written into my contract were treated as suggestions. And the biggest problem was that she avoided confrontation at any cost.
In my first month, the commercial director called our team out for being disorganized. It was a fair point, delivered in front of everyone. Her first reaction was to laugh it off and make a joke.
I froze. Is this how things are done here?
I still don't know the answer. I did learn something from that moment, though. A title doesn't come with the knowledge and skills it requires. Nobody gets the judgment along with the job. You build it, slowly, usually by getting it wrong in front of other people.
I'll give her some credit, since it was her first time leading anyone. But a lot of what I learned in those four months, she still has to learn too.
I don't hold anything against her, and I don't admire her either. What she gave me was something I didn't ask for: a clear look at a kind of person and a kind of leadership I'm sure exists in other offices. I'd rather not visit them. But if I do, I'll recognize it sooner and I'll know where the exits are.
The morning
They let me go on a Friday morning, on the rainiest day of the year. Whoever chose the timing has a dark sense of humor.
I didn't even get my laptop open. My things were taken before I could log out. Four months of work disappeared in the time it takes to shake off an umbrella.
I felt heartbroken. It's a dramatic word for a job, and I'm keeping it, because something did break. I had believed what they told me. I felt deceived.
What it actually taught me
The useful part is this. Work is not school, and it's not university. Nobody hands you a syllabus, grades are often given without explanation, and doing well on the work doesn't make you safe. Each workplace lives its culture in its own way, and you only find out what that culture really is after the welcome tour.
So, for anyone going through this now, or who will someday:
The feedback you get is not always the feedback that exists. If someone's reactions confuse you, ask directly what would change their mind about you. Ask it out loud, and early.
Watch what gets punished, not what gets advertised. A company's real values show up in what it reprimands, not in the game room.
Read your contract, and know what it actually asks of you. When the rules start changing to fit a decision someone has already made, you'll recognize it sooner.
Being let go is not a verdict on who you are. It tells you something about a place, a manager, and a moment. Sometimes it also tells you something about yourself, and that part is worth keeping. Leave the rest at the door.
I'm curious and I'm friendly. In that office, some people turned their backs on me for exactly those reasons. I've decided not to change either one. The job was a mismatch. My personality wasn't the problem.
What I'm keeping
Strangely, I learned more about people than about the job. I saw different work styles and different reasons people show up in the morning. I learned to notice the gap between what someone says and what they do, and to take that gap seriously.
I'm grateful for it, the way you're grateful after a bad relationship that showed you exactly what you won't accept again.
It rained all day that Friday. Now I have more time to write. My strictest investor seems to agree.
