Category: Working

Is quiet firing really new?

This Labor day morning I was enjoying my morning coffee when an article caught my eye, the title of the article was “quiet firing”, we all heard about the great resignation & quiet quitting so naturally i had to read it as it intrigued my curiosity.

Quiet firing means that an employer will make your work life miserable by demoting, adding extra unpaid work and generally mistreating you  so you will quit, this way the employer does not have to pay you severance as they did not fire you. There is no need to prove that your performance was bad,  involving HR or paper work. 

The article spoke about this as a new trend, but as being employed for many years, I know it has always been there. We have all seen it in our professional life and sadly general life. Instead of quiet firing we all need to call it in its true name – a hostile work environment .

This is not caused by one person, the article kept talking about the work place’s behavior, but workplaces/ companies are not some anonymous entity, they are built with people who are not only demonstrating bad leadership but are also letting the rest of their employees know that they are condoning it. Should we stay and suffer? Look for a new job while being mistreated or just start speaking about it publicly? I have no answers as each person has their own decision to make.

I took the scenic route!


Some people take the shortest way possible, it has many advantages.
However with life and things unexpected we might sometimes have to take the long way.
I personally prefer to call it the scenic route, I started my MBA journey many years ago, had to stop for a while to prioritize, went back to school during the pandemic and finally completed my last class this past December, 25 years after I started.
I learned a lot during my in between years, but mostly that it’s never too late to go back to school and it’s never too late to go to school.
It might have been a long route, but personally after finishing my last class – it was the scenic one! #mba

Yes, I have an accent.

I have been recently told that i have an accent, frankly i wasn’t surprised as I assumed everyone has an accent. Having lived in several countries and being able to converse in several languages my accent situation, quite frankly, was a sure bet.

I am used to people asking me where I am from, they never like my initial answer as it is always the town I currently live in. Of course those who ask me are never satisfied as they always inquire further- but where are you originally from? I have been known to reply from earth and even ask back why you are asking me. This usually gets a reply – cause you have an accent, and yes I do have one.

When I do disclose my country of origin, I get – but you don’t look it, I’m never sure what they really mean when they say that. I do look human most days. My daughter was asked the same question recently, she replied with the California town she was born in and the person who asked persisted with a before that, her response was from my mother’s womb (she does get the snarkiness from me). When she asked why they were asking she was told she has an accent.

But I digress, the person who told me I have an accent had an accent themselves, a quite thick what I would describe as a foreign accent, or better yet an accent that is foreign to me, an accent that was very hard for me to understand with my very technological hearing aids. And no I didn’t reply back what about your own accent.

My workplace is multicultural, between all of us we have more than 15 languages spoken and we all have some form of accent, does it change our friendship and mutual respect, no! In fact it enriches us

But my main point is that we all have accents, whether we are from California, Louisiana or any place else in the world, why does it matter that we have an accent? My personal thought on this whole issue was , yes I have an accent because I am multilingual as so are most of the people who have accents, but the fact I have one does not reflect on my life, my work, my friends or anything about me besides the fact that I am fluent in several languages and frankly asking someone with an accent where they are from is rude, unnecessary and definitely not embracing diversity.