Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

Here is how I got every single one of those jobs: I sat across a desk from a man old enough to be my father and I enveloped us both in a force field of earnest competence, the kind I’d been practicing since kindergarten with my hand permanently raised in class, the kind that says I will die before I let you down, and at some point in each of those interviews the man pronounced me “impressive” and gave me a job and the prophecy came true. I never let him down.

But I’m too worried about looking as stupid as I feel, and too self-conscious about being the slow newbie asking them to jog alongside me when they need to sprint, and too afraid of making the merchandisers seem like weaklings who can’t handle a doubled workload. They can’t, of course. Who could?

But also, I don’t really know how to disagree. My family had two settings: Everything Is Fine, and Screaming Fights with Lasting Damage. There was no tradition of lively debate around the dinner table. So when I see two Amazonians bluntly countering each other’s ideas in a meeting, it’s like watching an exotic martial art that I don’t yet have the muscle to practice, even if I had the guts.

“Kristi, please try hard not to be an idiot,” Arjun says. “You know how to manage people, yes? You know how to write a solid document and think critically. You understand how Amazon uses data. You can persuade people on other teams to do things. This is 90 percent of most jobs at Amazon. The other 10 percent is just shit to learn, which you can also do.”

“Whitestrips and Rogaine both say you’re trying to fix a flaw that people might not even notice otherwise.” He points at his shiny shaved head. “Someone who meets me probably just thinks bald guy. But if they saw that I was using Rogaine, they’d think sad bald guy. I don’t want that for myself.”

“Being tough isn’t the same thing as being mean, you know. I think you need to internalize that.”

Amazon didn’t create our yearning for recognition, but it exploits it for maximum return by holding the rat pellet just out of reach and then frowning on any rat who looks hungry.

You try so hard to be good at things you don’t actually want to do. You never ask yourself if maybe you should just stop doing them.

This is the moment it finally truly lands that I will never outrun my gender. Of course on some level I’ve known that for years, but never so starkly. I will never overcome the belief that the presence of women means a slower, softer, weaker Amazon.