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Zoom Trauma
I work as a social media manager at a nonprofit. This past year I convinced my organization to sign a two-year contract with a third-party app to help with our social media tracking and analysis. A year into the contract, I met with our rep at the app on a Zoom call to discuss the app’s overwhelming glitches.
Toward the end of our hourlong meeting, which had so far been just the two of us peering into our respective laptop cameras, something flesh-colored crept into the corner of her screen and blocked her shoulder. To be polite, I’ll just say it appeared as a dildo. I was flabbergasted and kept talking like I didn’t notice. A few minutes of me filling the silence passed and the dildo crept up again. This time she couldn’t hold back a giddy smile. We ended the meeting, and I didn’t know what to do.
A few days later, and after what felt like a ritual in humiliated silence, I told my manager, who immediately understood the discomfort I must have felt and agreed that we needed out of that contract immediately. My organization’s legal team and managers met with the app’s team, who said I was wrong: According to them, an oddly shaped, flesh-colored “vase” crept into the frame, and that’s what I saw.
I was then told by my managers that, as a result, we were locked into a two-year contract that we couldn’t escape. The shame didn’t go away, and now I can’t even open the app because I am so angry. I have no legal recourse. The experience has left me feeling humiliated. What should I do? Leave my organization even though they did what they could?
— Anonymous
What should you do? I think you should examine your feelings of shame.
I recognize this is a bit woo-woo, and not the kind of proactive, cut-to-the-chase advice people hope to receive when they write in, but I think the most important thing you can do for yourself — and your ability to continue doing your job — is recognize that you have no reason to feel shame in this situation. You haven’t done anything wrong. You acted professionally and appropriately every step of the way.
Your counterparts at the app, unfortunately, did not. Even under the most generous possible interpretation of events, they created an uncomfortable working environment and then refused to take any responsibility for it, all while your organization continued to pay them for an app that doesn’t even work. Anger, I think, is an understandable response to that sequence of events. But shame seems misplaced. You did not fail here; you were failed.
I get the feeling from your letter that the shame you feel is at least in part about a worry that you’ve let down or disgraced yourself to your manager and co-workers. Not only is your organization still obligated to pay for another year of degraded service from a company indifferent to your concerns, your manager and company lawyers directed their time and energy toward the futile goal of extricating your organization from this contract. To make matters worse, I can’t help but notice that you specify that you are also the person who persuaded the company to contract with the app in the first place.