Let's just say it out loud: Your job is not your calling. Your manager is not your mentor. And your company? Not your damn family.
We've been duped. Emotionally manipulated. Love-bombed by LinkedIn posts and HR slogans into thinking our worth lives inside our work. That if we just "find our passion," the burnout won't feel like self-betrayal.
Yet it still does.
The Great Workplace Rebrand
Somewhere between "do what you love" and "bring your whole self to work," we got scammed. Hard.
The rebrand was masterful. Jobs became "journeys." Roles became "callings." Coworkers became "your tribe." Before you knew it, you were having feelings about quarterly reviews and taking PowerPoint feedback personally.
We started chasing meaning and forgot to ask the basic questions: Is this work actually any good? Does it make sense? Is it sustainable? Or are we just too emotionally invested to notice it's busy work wrapped in mission statements?
They encouraged us to bring our whole selves to work—until that gets us on a layoff list with the claim that it's "not personal, it's business." One-sided devotion at its finest.
The Devotion Hook
Here's how they get you:
First, they notice your "passion." Suddenly you're the go-to person. The one who "really gets it." The reliable one who cares enough to fix what's broken. You'll handle that extra project until they hire more headcount, which they never do. You say "yes" so much you can't start saying "no" now.
Translation: You're useful until you say you can't do it all anymore. You're convenient until the weight of the out-of-scope work is breaking your nervous system down. Until you suggest that maybe the system is the problem.
Then the love evaporates, and you're left wondering why you ever thought a paycheck was a relationship.
This isn't career development. It's emotional manipulation with performance reviews.
Marketing Disguised as Culture
Everything—the passion language, the family metaphors, the culture speak—is marketing designed to get you to work harder for less. To mistake being busy for being valued. To confuse your manager's comfort with your career growth.
The greatest corporate con job of the last 30 years was convincing us that work was supposed to fulfill us. That caring about your job was a virtue. That burnout meant you were doing it right.
We don't need better employee engagement initiatives. We need to break up with the fantasy that organizations are designed to love us back.
When they ask for your passion, they're really asking for your willingness to accept dysfunction as culture.
Disengagement Is Pattern Recognition
When someone stops going above and beyond, that's not laziness. That's pattern recognition. That person has figured it out. Cracked the code. Found the hidden exit.
They've figured out that:
Extra effort doesn't lead to extra rewards—it leads to more work. The promotion was always going to be "next quarter." "High performer" is code for "does more work for the same money." The people who get ahead manage up, not produce results.
Engagement surveys keep showing most people are checked out at work. Only 32% of workers are engaged, while 18% are actively disengaged—the worst numbers in almost a decade.
Companies respond with pizza parties. As if the problem is insufficient fun instead of insufficient respect.
The Questions That Break Everything
We're asking the wrong questions to get to the heart of what's really wrong. We should be asking:
Why do the worst managers never get fired?
Why does every new hire burn out in six months?
Why are we always "restructuring" but never getting more functional?
Why does asking for a raise feel like justifying the job I already have?
These aren't mysteries. They're features of a system designed to extract maximum value from people who've been trained to ask for minimum value in return.
You Are Not Your Job
Look, if your workplace disappeared tomorrow, you'd still be you. The same person with the same relationships, interests, and capacity for joy. The same person who existed before you learned to perform professional enthusiasm.
You are not your job title. You're not your company's mission statement. You're not your manager's assessment of your "potential."
You're a person who happens to work. And that work should serve your life, not consume it.
The emotional catfishing ends when you realize that work is supposed to work for you, not the other way around.
Stop falling in love with places that don't love you back.
Because the only thing worse than being emotionally manipulated by your workplace is staying after you figure out that's what's happening.
Genius! You have such a gift for artful directness. Thank you for putting this into the consciousness of the world!