Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

When one of the women comes to me with a problem, just by agreeing that yes, this is something in need of fixing, I run the risk that she’ll decide everything she does is in need of fixing. I empathize, because inside I feel the same way, and I used to be just as bad at hiding it. Now, as I struggle to communicate transparently without destroying their self-critical souls, I sometimes imagine my old AMG boss nodding and saying, “See? See what it’s like to manage someone who’s already decided she’s a failure?”

But as yogafied, Oprah-reading women, Marnie and I are already saturated in petty life hacks like making breakfast the night before, or finding and eliminating “hidden carbs” to make our bodies acceptably small. We’ve heard all of this before, and sorry, but ginseng tea and an “energizing cold plunge” are not going to mitigate the effects of working in a wind tunnel full of projectiles.

“Then can you help me understand why you did it?” “Help me understand” is Amazon-speak for “you are an absolute fucking moron.”

Question Mark emails are sent when something is so wrong or strange or seemingly inexplicable that words and sentences are a waste of time and Jeff wants a full accounting of what happened, exactly why it happened, and what is changing to ensure it doesn’t happen again. The universal reaction to receiving one is fuuuuuuuuuuck, because responding can easily consume several days and nights of your life and because the response has to satisfy one of the most terrifyingly powerful people on earth,

2013: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is published, and I skim it in an afternoon. “She wrote this whole book, when she could have just bought a Molotov cocktail for every woman in America,” I tell John. “I’ll never understand that choice.”

Amazon could be depositing a million dollars a month into my checking account and I would think, Yes, this seems about right, given the fear and the chaos and the ugly surroundings and the endlessly escalating demands and the way no one ever says thanks.

The silver lining: if you can’t outrun your gender, you might as well live as you please. It may be the freedom of the truly fucked, but I suggest you take it.

That like one of those champagne towers, Jeff’s demands fall onto the Mitchs and Iras of Amazon, and from them onto the Calistas and Rons, and from them onto the Joshes and Sallys, and then onto me, and from me onto Coco and Vance and George, and then onto their people, and so on all the way to the very bottom of the pyramid, all because nobody is willing to say when enough is enough. That this entire company is built on the fear of being exposed as merely human.