The Waves: Under the Influence
Slate Books
Slate Podcasts
3.8 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate Senior Supervising Producer of Audio, Daisy Rosario can’t get toxic female bosses out of her head. She’s joined by Noelle Crooks, author of the new book, Under the Influence and former employee of one Rachel Hollis, so she knows a lot about bad workplaces. They discuss the insidious nature of saying your workplace is “like a family,” why an office dance party is a BAD thing, and how some powerful women leverage their minority status for ill.
In Slate Plus: How to recover from a job that burned you out.
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Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Vic Whitley-Berry with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to The Waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and today what it's like when your toxic boss is a woman. |
| 0:13.8 | Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing that we cannot get off of our minds. |
| 0:17.8 | And today you've got me, Daisy Rosario, senior supervising producer of audio here at Slate. And today I'll be talking to Noel Crook's, author of the new novel Under the Influence. Now, I don't know about you, but I have worked at more than one toxic workplace. They tend to have a lot in common. So as I get older and more experienced, |
| 0:38.1 | I've gotten better at both recognizing the signs and asking questions that help me see any |
| 0:43.0 | hidden red flags before getting pulled in. But one thing that has thrown a wrench into these |
| 0:49.8 | situations, especially over the last 10 years, is when the toxic workplaces are led by women. Yes, I am |
| 0:56.9 | talking about the hashtag girl boss era and the way that some of the very women pushing the concept |
| 1:01.8 | were later shown to be toxic bosses themselves. Think Sophia Amorusa, founder of the website |
| 1:07.9 | Nastygal. She took what started as an eBay store |
| 1:10.9 | and turned it into a hugely popular online store. |
| 1:13.9 | She literally wrote a book called hashtag Girl Boss. |
| 1:16.8 | Then Netflix made a show based on it. |
| 1:21.3 | So what exactly is your business? |
| 1:24.3 | You know how people flip houses? |
| 1:27.2 | Well, I flip clothes. |
| 1:29.3 | Boom! Dalla, dollar bills, y'all. |
| 1:38.3 | But not long before the show was released, Nasty gal had to file for bankruptcy. |
| 1:43.3 | Then the Wall Street Journal put out a report that |
| 1:45.0 | featured interviews with 10 former employees talking about the company's toxic culture. Or think of |
| 1:50.4 | an influencer like Rachel Hollis, author of the best-selling book, Girl Wash Your Face, who built |
| 1:56.0 | her brand on relatability. BuzzFeed reported on Hollis attributing well-known quotes from women like Eleanor |
| 2:01.8 | Roosevelt and Maya Angelou to herself online. And Hollis blamed her employees. Eventually, she would go |
... |
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