Jazz (he/him) is a writer and former reporter, and writer of The Wildebeest.
Three Stacks said, “you’re only as funky as your last cut,” and that’s reporting.
I left my job as a reporter for a large financial news company in January, four years to the day after I started. I always wanted to be a reporter speaking truth to power, breaking big stories. When I started in 2020 it felt like I had made it.
Three years into the job I was tired. My news beat was very technical and demanding, and my bosses kept pushing for more—More features, more scoops. I wanted something new but my requests to move to a new reporting beat was met with half-promises and table scrap assignments from my bosses.
The microaggressions felt like death by a thousand cuts. The company preached diversity, but my bosses were white, my editors were mostly white, and so were the reporters. My partner on this beat and I were the minorities on this team, and I was the only Black person.
Before I get into the boss from hell, let me tell you about the rando office microaggressions:
Working in the office pantry (read: glorified lunch room) one day, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked over to see a white dude staring at me, mouth half-open, for what felt like seconds. Then he sputtered out: “OH WOW, YOU LOOK LIKE MY FRIEND JAY FROM THE BACK. MY BAD!” He quickly walked away.
Another time, I was having lunch in one of several conference rooms on the floor. It was like a large fishbowl, with glass walls, so everyone could see you. The room was empty and out of the way, offering a bit of privacy. As I ate, a woman at a desk nearby peered over her monitors and started watching me. She said something to a guy nearby, then they both started looking at me. Inwardly, I sighed. They were gonna say something. The woman walked up and poked her head in. I decided to get ahead of it.
“Let me guess, there’s a meeting?” I asked.
“Actually, this is the conference room for the CEO and no one is allowed in here,” the woman said. “It's reserved for him whenever he wants to use it.”
What? Was the CEO in the room with us right now? Absolutely nothing in the room showed that it was different from any other conference room. I’d never seen the CEO in the building, ever. I was seething. Of course I had to put on a fake smile, because I was in the office and this white woman would run scared if I didn’t. I told her I’d finish up and leave. Never used the room again and never saw a CEO in it either.
Back to the main event
In my last six months at the job my partner and I were transferred to a new team with only a few weeks' notice.
Our manager, who had always been pretty hands off, was going on family leave and pawned us off to another group. In the first meeting with the new team, I again voiced my desire to move to a new beat. I had been making the request for a while. My outgoing manager and the team leader told me I had to do my time and “build a portfolio” on the new team before I could. I already had a portfolio with over three years of work and had multiple glowing employee reviews to my name. My manager said a “good word” from him would go a long way towards a transfer, and to try again after a few months. They had me stuck.
In that meeting they also introduced me to their newly hired deputy editor, who’d be my direct boss, A. The microaggressions became macro with her.
A was a passive aggressive micromanager who wanted to impress the bosses. She bragged that she had been doing my work for years, but didn’t understand the basics of the beat.
Her communication style was unclear and condescending. She’d keep critiques in the chamber until you flagged one of her (frequent) mistakes, then hit you with a “but you did this two weeks ago…”
Some of A’s finest moments:
There was a power outage in the office one day and everyone was sent home. A, who worked remotely, didn’t accept this. She blew up my Teams app demanding to know when I’d file my story, even though no one was in the office to finalize and publish it. A then demanded I tell her the percentage of battery power I had left in my laptop, and how many minutes it would take me to get home. I left that message on read.
A would over-edit my stories, finding mistakes where other editors wouldn’t. Yet, often A’s comments on my work would be longer than the story itself.
One day, A gave me conflicting instructions then said I’d done the task incorrectly. When I sent a copy of her unclear email back to her, she backpedaled and stalled. Over three emails she blamed me, blamed others, and never acknowledged her mistake or actually even told me what I should do.
My partner on the beat eventually quit, fed up with the new regime. I was already hunting for new jobs. One day I got pulled into an HR meeting and given a verbal warning, where the team leader told me I wasn’t hitting the metrics of the team. I also had to be less “combative” with superiors.
I sat in that meeting silently. I knew A was feeding a specific narrative to the bosses.
Towards the end of 2023, I put in my two weeks. I was over it. Two days before my last day things boiled over. I submitted a story to A late one evening when only she and another editor were online. In the company’s work chat, she erupted, stating that I didn’t listen to her about the placement of a word.
The other editor said that this reminded him of a reporter who he assumed “was at home getting high” because of his incomprehensible writing.
I saw the messages, and fought whether I should respond. Instead I took screenshots. I took another screenshot when they deleted their messages a minute later. And the next day I sent the pictures to HR, letting them know that A’s behavior was why I was leaving.
On my last day, HR said they’d launch an investigation and asked if I had anything else. I sent over more messages from A over the past few months. Then I signed off for good.
Thanks for the last minute gift, A!
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