And there have been times in my career, especially recently, where I’ve had somebody — I’ll just give the more recent example — they included me on an email thread that I had no business being on because they were trying to flex their muscles by throwing me on it, which is an interesting move given that they don’t actually respect me in my role. But they understood the game they were playing with the other people on this thread, and so by including me, it was, in essence, saying, “[Name] was aware. That makes it okay.”
I was not aware. It did not make it okay. I never okayed any of this, but they gave this impression from the way they wrote the email, and the way that they included me, that I was somehow a part of whatever was going down. And so I was very quick to nip that in the bud, and said, you know, “I was very unaware I was gonna be CC’d on this email. I have no business being on this email, and I’ve not been a part of this to date. And here are the people you really should reach out to ‘cause maybe they have more context.” Which were just other men managers.
I threw them under the bus quite hard. It blew up in their face quite hard.
And my supervisor, who also — my — both levels of my supervisors were on the email, and both of them were just like, “Yeah, that was necessary. He was gonna definitely tank you in some way if you didn’t speak up.”
So I don’t really love to say, like, “Yeah, I throw people under the bus all the time.” No, but I’m very clear. Like, if it’s my monkeys, and my circus, sure, I’ll take responsibility, but if it’s not, I don’t wanna be a part of it, and I’m not gonna sit by and have my reputation and my name attached to something that it shouldn’t be, even if it’s great. I don’t wanna be a part of something I really didn’t have anything to do with.