Member-only story
Company Red Flags Are Glaring When You Know Where To Look
How to spot them before it’s too late
It was my third week in a new job. Normally that‘s the “honeymoon period,” but already, I was thinking about divorce.
A few awkward things had made me tilt my head on my first day, but I told myself: you’re new here, you need to settle in and get the lay of the land. I had just left a disaster of a situation and was still feeling a bit raw about organizational life.
In that third week, sitting in a staff meeting, one of my colleagues announced she was leaving. It wasn’t a huge shock — I knew this already — but she was the third person to quit since I arrived. Immediately after, in the same meeting, another colleague raised his hand, stood up, and — choking back tears — announced that he also was leaving. The entire room was stunned into silence.
Like a scene from The Office, I pictured myself looking at an imaginary camera and saying, “What have I done…”
Red flags and where to find them
The car ride home that night was filled with many internal monologues. I consider myself a good judge of character and situations, but clearly, I had missed some glaring red flags.
