I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.
The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.
And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.
(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)
Holy fucking shit American corpospeak is pure fucking cancer. Just fucking talk normally.
“I hear what you’re saying, feebl, and those feelings are valid today. But unfortunately American corpos will not be able to change the outcome of how fking stupidly soulless they are today mmk?”
You’re absolutely right. It is a cancer, and stupid trends like this spread until there’s no hope of escape and even a freaking gas station manager tries to talk to you like this.
This is, no joke, not trying to exaggerate, exactly the kind of language-as-weapon stuff Orwell was always talking about.
Honest, authentic communication and doublespeak look the same on the surface, but the way they’re generated is completely different. One enhances perception and information processing using a shared semantic context built in the air between people trying their best to accurately describe what they see. The other degrades the quality of the language model in everyone’s heads, due to continually violating the relationship between words and reality, making everyone in the room less capable of understanding literally anything.
Unless the person in the room doesn’t put up with it. Brittany stayed on task and didn’t accept bullshit answers, and so even if there were some consequences to speaking up (in this case it sounds like she had nothing to lose) they’d be less severe than the literal brain atrophy that results from swallowing bullshit with a smile.
It’s not just in America.
This kind of thing is one of the main products of the new style MBAs from the late 80s forward - it’s all about appearances and emotionally managing other people (notice how she says something and the guy goes “I understand”, “100%” or something like that and then just proceeds to not actually answer her question: it’s all about making her feel she’s being heard without that at all being the case, and he’s not even very good at it).
The same perspective into managing companies that brought us calling employees as “human resources” and firing employees as “letting go” (or in this case, “recallibration”) normalized a whole discourse technique of half-truths, evading the question and in general use of Conversational Jiu-Jitsu (anything that comes your way, you just deflect it to the side) to manage a conversation.
You see the same kind of think in modern Politics.
Mind you, I’ve now watched more of the video and it’s really cringey how all sides are behaving: the guy clearly has no power whatsoever, she’s nervous as fk and doesn’t get it that whatever she says makes no difference at all (clearly the decision was already made well above that guy who go given a shitty task to do) and the HR lady is just doing the smart thing which is keeping out of it as much as possible.
In her position I would’ve focused on extracting as much compensation as I could from them (not necessarilly money: something as simple as a great letter of recommendation that makes it clear it wasn’t about ones own performance specifically could be useful) or gone completelly around these people to make my case (for example, via my own director) as that meeting is at best a discharging of fidutiary responsabilities and the people talking to her are definitelly not empowered to keep her on and even if they did, they’re not going to risk their own careers for somebody they don’t know (it’s actually part of why she’s not getting her own director: she has chance at all appealling to these anonynous randos). It’s not by chance that the guy is going so heavy on “I hear you” kind of messaging: she’s supposed to feel listenned to so that she doesn’t cause any problems but whatever she says here makes no difference)
Honestly, it’s not just corpo talk.
My mother talks the same way. “I understand that you don’t feel well. But you still have to do this completely brain-dead thing that everybody else is doing.” “Why? Because I tell you so. Do children not respect their parents anymore? I’m your mother. You must do what I say. Once you grow up, you can do what you want. But as long as you live in my house, it’s my rules. No, you can’t keep your door locked. Privacy? I’m your mother.”
doesn’t get it that whatever she says makes no difference at all
She’s well aware she’s being fired. She’s trying to get them to admit that it’s not about performance and that she’s actually being laid off. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the HR goons are shitting their pants.
Well yeah, the recording of it does make it seem like she’s trying to extract something out of that meeting, but I’m unfamiliar with American employment legislation so I only have some vague that over there might be a legal/compensation difference between being “fired” and being “laid off”.
I only know American culture from the internet, and knowing all of the memes and blog posts and everything, it’s still mindblowing to see it in action to this degree and in a situation that is probably representative for so many.
As an American it’s a relief to hear there’s a place left on Earth where this behavior would still be unexpected.
Fucking Amen dude. I’ve traveled to other countries and actually cried a little at how straightforward things are there. It’s so easy to forget. This doublespeak shit creeps up on a people.
