Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I am grateful that you are here. On today's show, we'll speak with Max Miller, creator of the YouTube channel called Tasting History, which is now a cookbook. It covers everything from Roman dinner etiquette to what passengers ate on the Titanic. We'll talk about it.

We'll also learn about the history of New York City's Wards Island, which author Philip Yanos says has been used as an "institutional dumping ground." He's researched its history and he joins us to talk about it. We will take your calls. Plus, singer-songwriter Samia will be here to perform live in WNYC Studio 5 and preview her new album, which comes out next week. That's the plan.

Let's get this hour started with the balance between your job and your identity.

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Alison Stewart: Today, we are talking about the F-word; fired. Writer and editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay was working on everything until one day she got fired. Afterwards, Samhita felt lost, upset, even depressed. She realized how much of her identity and self-worth were tied up in her job. She writes, "I have long been in a prison of my own ambition, stuck without a narrative for moving forward. I'm slowly starting to find my way out, but it means accepting that success looks different than I thought it would." She writes about this experience in her book from 2024 called The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning. The Cut published an excerpt that has been making the rounds. Writer and editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay joins me now. Hi, Samhita.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Hi, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you been fired from a job? What experience did that teach you about your relationship to work? What got you through it? Did it set you down a different career path or even a better life path? How did your work life change after being fired? We want to hear from you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call or you can text that number. This is a no-judgment zone, by the way. 212-433-WNYC. Your piece starts with a negative performance review. Now, before this performance review, how would you describe your relationship with work?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Work was something that I believed and valued above everything else, and really, just fundamentally thought that it came at the cost of having good health, a personal life, and having time for your family. To me, work was a great sacrifice that you made for the pride of knowing that you're good at your job.

Alison Stewart: What did being successful look like to you at this point?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: For me, it was less about money because I think that's often when people talk about, "I want to be successful," they're talking about high-paying jobs. For me, really, what mattered the most was doing work that felt really impactful, that felt like it was aligned with my values and what I believed in, and that I was getting to manage a team and be part of a bigger conversation. That was what excited me at the time.

Alison Stewart: Up until this point, if someone had asked you, "How much do you think your identity is wrapped up in your job?" What would you have said?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: My work was who I was. I had completely bought into the idea that if you love what you do, you don't work a day in your life. I didn't even see a differentiation. I was a feminist writer. I was personally just the embodiment of that person, so however that looked in the workplace. I took a lot of pride in what I did. I very much identified personally with my own journey, with the obstacles that I had overcome. It's a very seductive narrative to say that I overcame all these obstacles. I was told I couldn't do this, and, "Look at me, I could."

Alison Stewart: Let's go back to that negative performance review. First of all, how did you think you were doing in your job?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I kind of knew something was off. I think we often know, right? Like we have a sense that something not fully landing. I was working in an environment that didn't have a lot of transparency, so I didn't have a really clear line into how I was doing. I hadn't gotten a ton of feedback prior to this performance review. I'm just one of those people that really prides herself in being liked, which is another trap that a lot of women fall into in the workplace. Not only did I feel that I was effective and I was good at what I did, but that people liked me. If people like me, why would they ever give you a bad performance review? They like you, right?

I knew something wasn't right and I could sense that the company was going through transition, but I don't think I fully understood where I sat in all of that. I kind of assumed because I was so self-sacrificing, I would be sacrificed.

Alison Stewart: You took a few weeks off of work after this negative performance review. What were you thinking about during this time?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: It wasn't a great time for me. I had a bit of an identity crisis. I went into a pretty deep depression. I started suffering from very intense anxiety attacks. As I write in the essay, I had some pretty negative thoughts about my own future on this planet, I guess we could say. I think some of that was a result of how hard I had been working, that I was deeply burned out, and that so much of my identity was caught up in this idea of being successful in this job and being valued. So much of my self-perception was in that value that when that was threatened, I didn't really have a foundation to stand on because I don't know that I necessarily believed that I was valuable without the external validation.

I definitely went through a pretty dark period where I didn't know what was going to come next for me. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't really know how I would recover or really show my face. A lot of shame came up, which I think a lot of people experience when they have basically lost something that they really value.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think many people tend to place so much significance on their jobs?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I think it's a neat little trick that's been played on us. We have to work to survive. There's very few people that don't have to work. Most of us have to figure out how to survive in some capacity. I do think that in the last 30 or 40 years, we've really been sold this idea that work is a net good, working hard is valuable. I'm saying this, and I don't necessarily disagree with it either. I do think hard work is valuable and I do think that getting invested in things you care about is part of having a meaningful life. I do think that we've convinced ourselves that work brings us more value and more good than it necessarily always does. I think the tide is changing on this.

We've kind of had to talk ourselves into loving what we do. How else could you sacrifice so much, right? How else can you take that call after putting the kids to bed and cleaning up after dinner? How else could you convince yourself to wake up at 6:00 AM to answer those emails before the morning rush, other than to genuinely believe that you're doing something that's good and you're doing something that's right?

Alison Stewart: My guest is Samhita Mukhopadhyay. We are discussing her piece in The Cut called My Job Was My Life. Then I Got Fired. It's an excerpt from her book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you been fired from a job? What did the experience teach you about your relationship to work? 212-433-9692, 221-433-WNYC. Did it set you down a different career path or life path? How did your work life change after being fired? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on air or you can text us at that number. By the way, this is a judgment-free zone. Let's talk to Christine from Long Island. Hi, Christine. Thank you so much for making the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

Christine: Hi. Thank you so much for giving me some time. I absolutely love this topic because it absolutely changed my life. When I lost my job in 2009, I was working as a brand-new nurse practitioner right out of school for a cardiology practice on Long Island. I was doing about 15-20, maybe even 25 nuclear stress tests a day. With the downturn in the economy in 2009, a lot of insurance companies were no longer reimbursing the cardiology practices at the same rate so we went down to about 10-15 at best, stress tests a day. I wasn't really worried about my job, but I think that's the reason why I lost it.

I was one of two nurse practitioners and I was making a lot more money than the other nurse practitioner. Two of the cardiologists and the office manager came in to see me one day and said, "We're going to have to let you go." I was like, "Why?" They were like, "Well, we can't really discuss that. You're doing a fine job." I knew it was because I was making a lot more money than the other nurse practitioner. I found myself looking for another job. Although I did really love doing cardiology, it put me down the path for diabetes, which is a far, far more necessary specialty.

I ended up continuing on. I became certified in diabetes. I got my doctorate at Stony Brook University in diabetes prevention. In 2020, I opened up my own diabetes practice. Had that not happened to me, I probably still would have been doing nuclear stress tests under cardiologists.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling. Christine, you go. I have a question, Samhita.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Being let go or being fired, did it matter to you?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: No.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Technically I was laid off. I wasn't even actually fired, but the way that I metabolized it, I was fired. I took it as a rejection of who I was and the value I brought.

Alison Stewart: Yes. You use the word "failure" a lot in the piece. What was your relationship to that word?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Alison, I had a good relationship to that word because I failed a lot in my life.

[laughter]

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Part of why, I was a little bit of a late-in-life success story. I really struggled academically, I struggled to find my footing, to find what my career would ultimately be. I didn't have things figured out until I was a little bit older. I had a lot of anxiety around failure because I associated it with an earlier time in my life that was much harder and much more confusing. I overcame that. I'm not the girl that got the D in English class. I had turned my life around.

I think failure is something that I take very personally. That's not necessarily always fair because if you'll read any business book, any part of a successful person's journey is quite a bit of failure and an ability to be resilient in the face of that failure.

Then I also think there's an additional pressure, my parents are from another country. They immigrated to the United States, and so the stakes felt a little higher in terms of they came here for me to be successful. Then look at me, I'm not. Right? What does that say about my ability to live in their shadow and their ability to be successful in America?

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Joanna, who is calling in from Dobbs Ferry. Hi, Joanna, thank you for calling All Of It. You are on the air.

Joanna: Thank you for having me. I got fired from three different jobs. I was a dental hygienist. I still am. I was upset at the time, but in retrospect, I was exceedingly pleased because now I'm very, very happy. I'm 70 and I'm going to retire soon, but I found the best dentist to work for. I'm a dental hygienist. I was just so tired of not being able to do my job properly and not following protocol. One of the offices became corporate, and they just put more and more and more and more stuff on. I was trying to do my job. I would just go in and go in, and go in. Then I got fired, and I was so happy in the end.

Alison Stewart: We're going to stop you there. Thank you so much for calling, Joanna. We wanted to get to Brian, who's calling in from the Upper West Side. Hi, Brian, thanks for calling All Of It.

Brian: Hi, Alison, thank you so much for this topic, it is a big one. I'm nearing my eight-year anniversary of getting fired. I was laid off, fired. Same thing to me. I left. Here's the thing. I knew it was coming. You can sense when it's coming. I feel like all my allies were fired. My head was next on the block. My CEO flew up from Atlanta. He came to my office, we talked. He laid me off the last day of May. I got up, I hugged him. I said, "Thank you so much. I hate working here." I was like, "I needed a reason to leave." I said, "Can I leave right now?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Really? I can leave right now?" and he goes, "Yes." I got up, grabbed my bag, walked out, and went and had a margarita. I loved it.

On the other side, I'm eight years into now having my own small business, doing exactly what I was doing, but making the money for myself, working with the clients that I want to work with to help people live healthier, happier lives. I've never been happier. You just got to face the fear, go for it. If you get fired, great for you. Collect your unemployment and take some time off.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Brian. We are talking about a piece that was in The Cut called My Job Was My Life. Then I Got Fired. My guest is Samhita Mukhopadhyay. She is the author of that article. She's also the author of the book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning. We'll take more of your calls, and we'll talk to some more with Samhita after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Samhita Mukhopadhyay. We are discussing her piece in The Cut, My Job Was My Life. Then I Got Fired. It's an excerpt from her book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning.

All right, so you get a new job, you get a swanky new job. You become the executive editor at Teen Vogue. That's a big job. You say that you were never really good about setting boundaries at work. Looking back, what are some boundaries you wish you had set?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: You would think that after I hit rock bottom from losing a job, I would walk into a new job with a sense of skepticism. Instead, as I write in the essay, I hit the ground running, like a rebound boyfriend, where I hadn't really healed from the breakup, but I just immersed myself completely into this new universe and environment. It was exciting. It was a very exciting opportunity for me. It was this new moment. It was the ultimate revenge fantasy for anyone that looked over me in the past. If anything, I doubled down.

I think some of the things that I probably would have done differently is not internalize so much the success of a job or an organization based on my contribution to it. That work comes and goes. We can always have profound impacts on the environments that we're in and the ways that we treat people. I would probably put a little distance between me and the overall success of any type of project I'm working on or any management position that I'm in because we can't take on every single thing that we're kind of managing in these environments. That's definitely something that I've learned.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Douglas, who's calling in from Rumson. Hey, Douglas, thanks for calling All Of It. What's your story?

Douglas: Hey, thank you for taking my call. I was in tech for about 30 years. I got laid off from a behemoth technology company last January. January '24. I went back to something I did 30 years ago with my brother in DC, and that is to restore bronze statues and objects. Last January '24, I started my own company. I reached out to four world-famous conservators in the United States. I basically wrote them, "How would you like to hire a 64-year-old intern?" They all chuckled. Two of them took me up on it. One sent me to a job at the Supreme Court. The other one sent me to a project at Columbia University. Then, last year, I completed about seven of my own bronze statue conservation projects.

Alison Stewart: Congratulations, Douglas. Well done. Let's talk to Mary from Belford, New Jersey. Hi, Mary, thanks for calling All Of It.

Mary: Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Your stories, the people I'm hearing are really inspiring. I'm going to be retiring at the end of this year. It turns out we have new management and there's a chance I'm going to be fired, laid off, whatever you want to call it. I don't want that to be my legacy. I'm having anxiety because of it, but hearing everybody else turn their lives around inspires me. T

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. This is an interesting text, Samhita. I would love to get you to respond. It said, "My friend just texted me to tune in. I just got laid off Tuesday, my six-year anniversary. Reason? Budget cuts. Although I was doing above my job description, telling me it had nothing to do with my performance, I'm rated an exemplary employee, no warning. Yet if I resign, I'm expected to give four weeks' notice. I'm just angry about how it all went since they knew since February and they waited to the last minute. I wasn't valued, being given a heads-up. I'm three years away from full retirement age. How am I expected to start over? Especially with the salary that I feel that I am worth." Could you give this person some guidance, something from your experience you think might help them?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Yes. First of all, I'm so sorry that that happened. I understand that feeling of absolute shock. No matter how many times someone can tell you that it had nothing to do with you, obviously, it did on some level because I was the chosen one and the other person wasn't. I'm not going to share a bunch of phony sayings that I think a lot of people do, where it's like, "This is this huge opportunity."

The thing that I've learned, and I'm in the middle of my career, not towards the end of it, is that there are so many opportunities. You get to reinvent yourself, find new types of work, find new ways to engage in issues or areas that you've never thought about before, and try and see it as a gift. I really struggled with that and I see other people, especially really ambitious women in my life, struggle with this. When they hit a wall, when they lose their job, when they lose an opportunity, they don't take it as a chance to take care of themselves, to step back, to reconnect with their family, to re-establish what their values are, or what's important to them. I think giving yourself that space to just heal a little bit will set you up better for whatever next opportunity might come your way, assuming that you're financially able to do that.

Obviously, for a lot of people, when they lose a job, they immediately need to start looking for a new job. That was definitely true in the environment that I was working in. For most, I think young employees in New York City, that is definitely the case. If you have the opportunity or if you have some severance and you have a little bit of time, think about a hobby that you've never worked on before. Think about some way that you can nurture yourself to get through this moment so you're in a better place mentally when the new opportunity comes along, which it will.

Alison Stewart: I'm sort of interested when she said that she was really angry, "When I got fired, I was really mad." How did you get through the anger? That's a hard one.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: It's a great question. I still get angry. If we keep talking, I might start getting angry right now.

[laughter]

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Fully, honestly. I think that's a necessary and important piece of it. I appreciate the callers that have been saying, "This was an opportunity. I got to redirect my life." I was not in that energy. I just was so angry. I felt so deceived and I felt so shut down by the experience. I think that's okay. I think it's okay to be angry about it because it is something that's deeply unfair. Yes, you can lay it out and say it's budget cuts or it's this, and it's true. People often have to make decisions that are really challenging and really hard to make.

I should also clarify, Alison, I have been in a position where I've had to also help eliminate people, too. I've sat on both sides of it, and I know how awful those decisions are and what you know the consequences of them are going to be. I think it's normal to be really angry about it. I think that's okay. Also, that's where the workaround, like, "I am not what my job is," comes in. Once you start to remove yourself a little bit from how important that job is to your identity, you get less and less angry because it is just another opportunity.

Also, this segment is really well timed in a moment where a lot of people are going through major transitions in terms of work and losing their jobs. We are in a moment that none of us are alone in this right now. A lot of people are experiencing this.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Christine, who's calling in from West Orange. Hi, Christine, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Christine: Hi, Alison. Thanks for taking my call. The identical situations I share with your guest and so many of the callers are ridiculous. I could spend an hour talking about how similar my situation was. When I got fired from a job, it sent me into a terrible, terrible, deep depression. It wasn't even that I loved my job. It was that, as a child of immigrants, I was taught that, "Work is everything, work is life. You have to work and you have to earn a way through your life." Working in the tech world, where I didn't love what I did but then got fired anyway, it sent me into this huge identity crisis because no one ever encouraged me to follow my bliss, do something you love and are passionate about.

I'm still struggling with it but I ended up stumbling into becoming a professional organizer. I help other people declutter their homes. It's been so fulfilling and satisfying. I really wish that society had more empathy and grace for people and work. It's like, "You're not your job. If you lose it, it's okay. There's other things you can do. It doesn't mean you're worthless or lazy or any of those things." People are so hard on people when they get fired, just, it's not fair and it's not right. I really appreciate the segment so much. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Scott, who's calling us from Red Bank, New Jersey. Hey, Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to call us.

Scott: Hi, Alison. Thanks for taking my call. I'm 59. I've lived in Monmouth County, New Jersey, all my life. I work in the blue-collar trades, but I have a lot of friends in the white-collar trades. I see my friends in their late 50s and early 60s getting laid off at this point and having a real struggle finding another job, and then just mentally coming to the realization that you can't make your identity your job.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Scott: I'm very fortunate in the trade. We have the opposite problem. I'm 59 and I had worked at one shop for 35 years. My boss was in his late 70s and sold the shop, and they developed it into some apartments. I was a little nervous. I went to 10 different body shops. I got 10 different job offers.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Scott: They're just desperate for talented guys. I'm not even the most talented guy.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Scott: I'm just a hard worker.

Alison Stewart: Who says you're not the most talented? That's what I want-- Who says? Thank you so much for calling, Scott. We're going to run out of time. I did want to get a couple more questions into my guest Samhita Mukhopadhyay. You talk about certain generations having certain expectations. You're a Gen X woman. I'm a Gen X woman. Do you think the generations have a different relationship with work?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Absolutely. Well, I think one thing that is probably universal right now is anxiety around the future of our economy and the future of all of our jobs. I actually think that's something we're all universally experiencing, from what I can understand. I do think that Gen X and some elder millennials, we were very much indoctrinated into the "work hard, play hard" ethos. You sacrifice everything for work, and you have that payday one day.

Younger generations are seeing that payday isn't really coming. We're retiring older and older. Many of us, even our elders, are retiring without a lot of resources, without a lot of pensions or retirement accounts. They're seeing that and they're like, "Well, why did you do it?" So many people my age who have worked for 20, 30 years and still can't afford a house. They still can't afford their daycare bills and all of those different things.

I think that the dream that we had worked for for so long, going to college, owning a home having this type of life, this kind of nuclear family American life, there have been a lot of holes poked into that. It has become cost-prohibitive for many, many Americans to do that. I do think that younger generations aren't really putting up with that. You see that they're agitating a lot more for equitable workplaces. You also see that they are much more comfortable with the language of boundaries, which can be very challenging when you're a manager and you never had any, and you're like, "Well, I worked really hard to get here." They're looking at you and they're like, "Worked hard to get where?"

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Let's check in. I think this is going to be our last call. Emily from Brooklyn. Hi, Emily.

Emily J. Smith: Hi, Alison. I love your show, Samhita, I love your work and your book. Thanks for having me. I got laid off in 2017 from a tech job. I was a computer engineering major and an MBA. And I used the opportunity to dive in and pursue a new interest in creative writing. Eight years later, I just published my debut novel with HarperCollins. Since then, I really shifted my view of work from this career-driven climb-the-ladder, get-my-MBA, all this stuff, to more of a day job where I collect a paycheck and then pursue what I actually love on the side. I really appreciate this segment because that layoff was a big turning point for me.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Emily, what's the name of your debut novel?

Emily J. Smith: It's called Nothing Serious by Emily J. Smith. Thanks for asking, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Samhita, before we wrap up, what kinds of responses have you gotten to this piece?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Overwhelming, Alison. Overwhelming. People have told me that they decided to quit their job after reading it.

Alison Stewart: "I'm out of here."

[laughter]

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, are you sure you should do that?" They are realizing that something's off or they're not being valued in their workplace. Similar to all of the callers today, from every type of industry in every walk of life you can imagine, from the creative fields to dental hygienists to secretaries to nurses, I have gotten so much feedback from people that have just felt seen in terms of identifying all of the feelings that we're talking about in terms of being angry, feeling let down, feeling like a disappointment, realizing how much their job was their identity.

I really do think we are coming upon this time where people are starting to decouple this idea of success from their own personal success, and they're redefining it. I think what scares me, and this is the thought that I'll leave you with, is it's unfortunate that overwhelmingly, that's a lot of women who are self-selecting themselves out of further opportunity because they are tired of having the door shut in their face.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Samhita Mukhopadhyay. The name of the piece was My Job Was My Life. Then I Got Fired. It was available via The Cut, or you can read her book The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning. Thanks for joining us, Samhita.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Thank you so much for having me.