When the free coffee stops…

When I walked into the room we all had used to teach classes the week before, there were only a handful of us left. One of the HR reps was clearly upset and before leaving he made a point of telling us “remember, they need to pay you for your remaining PTO” before angrily closing the door. I never saw him again. Things clearly were not going well that day…

At the beginning of 2014 I was over a year out of my graduate degree program, managing the pizza restaurant I had worked at all through grad school, and applying for teaching jobs at junior colleges and some charter schools and getting nowhere.

After an offhand conversation with a friend, I added that I was coaching high school rugby to the bottom of my resume, and what seemed like a “and just like that” moment, I got an offer to teach. It was part-time, it wasn’t in public school, but I was on my way to becoming a real life educator.

From the outside, the company was all moving in the right direction. It’s learning centers were in nice office parks (this wasn’t a traditional teaching gig), the facilities were very polished, the pay was GREAT compared to what I had been making, and there was a lot of aspirational talk about expanding into underserved communities and giving scholarships etc. etc. etc.

What I wasn’t seeing was all the tumult at the top. How within a year of me joining both senior leaders had left under some…mysterious circumstances. But the leadership now in place seemed to be rowing the boat in the right direction. Heck, we even hired a CEO and marketing team (an ad on NPR? AWESOME!). Surely things were going well.

After a year and a half, I got promoted and brought on full-time, leaving the restaurant I had helped open and build up that offered benefits and a stable salary while working an expanding teaching schedule at the same time. I even met with the CEO about FINALLY expanding into those underserved communities in the next quarter. I was going to be the lead at one location!

And then the free coffee dried up.

In retrospect, big, flashing, blaring alarms were ringing. But I was loyal and committed (read: oblivious). We were deep into the work of creating a whole new curriculum, and for the first time in a long time I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was all in.

Easy to put the blinders on and fingers in my ears when you have purpose.

Fast forward, when I walked into that classroom after most of the staff was let go, it was like the twist from the Sixth Sense (spoiler alert for a movie released before the 21st century) where Bruce Willis’ character realizes he’s been dead since the opening scene. All of the problems from the last few months washed over me like a toxic workplace tsunami, and I was left sitting in a student’s desk wondering what the hell just happened!

This is a reminder for everyone in the market; all the free coffee in the world can’t save you from a company “restructuring” and kicking you to the curb. The important things to look for are what a company is putting into their employees, and if the leadership has a plan for the long term.

If you haven’t had a frank conversation with your boss about your future, schedule one.

It’s been almost 8 years since that day, and I saw a post on LinkedIn that said, “All the free coffee in the world won’t keep an employee if the aren’t comfortable in their work environment.” This is true, and more people are realizing that free coffee and pizza parties aren’t the perks management thinks they are.

You should be challenged at work, but also supported in meeting that challenge.

You should have difficult conversations with your management, but feel better and stronger on the other side of those conversations.

You should WANT to get feedback, and not feel like every time it is given that you are just being criticized/micromanaged/nitpicked to death.

And you should also have at least a working sense that all of “this” may go away at any moment, leaving you with no means, no direction, and no way to pay your bills.

If you are looking for a new job, or a new career, remember that feeling safe and secure in your position should be a condition of employment. The leadership should be comfortable enough to give regular updates about the state of the business, good, bad, and ugly.

Because when the free coffee stops flowing, all bets are off.