Why you keep getting fucked over at work

What conscientious people need to know

This article was written in response to the many readers here and across other platforms who have asked why they keep getting fucked over at work, despite doing everything they were taught would lead to success. This is a premium article. Upgrade your subscription for full access.

You’ve probably spent years trying to understand why this keeps happening.

You’ve blamed narcissists, dark tetrad personalities, toxic workplaces, office politics, weak leadership, dysfunctional cultures, or bad luck. You changed jobs hoping the next workplace would be different. Perhaps you’ve wondered whether there’s something about you that attracts these situations or already concluded that your empathy, integrity and ethics make you a target to these psychopaths.

I won’t deny that narcissistic people, workplace bullies and toxic workplaces exist and make life hell. They absolutely do, or I wouldn’t have written so much about them already.

Before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing. If you're currently experiencing bullying, hostility, aggression or abuse, or have experienced it in the past, you are not the cause of another person's decision to target you. Nothing in this article changes that. The purpose of this specific piece is to help you understand why the same workplace pattern can keep repeating, not to blame you for another person's behaviour.

If you’ve repeatedly found yourself working for narcissistic leaders, being scapegoated, excluded, undermined, or becoming the person expected to clean up everyone else’s mess, there is one part of the story that almost everyone overlooks because whether you like it or not, you’re the common denominator in these events.