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PSA: Mother’s Day is May 9. Which means it’s time to order mom the same old bouquet you’ve been getting her every year since you were 16. Or... not. Just as your relationship with your mother has (hopefully) changed since you were a teen, so too should the flowers you send her on this special day. You want something exciting and unique, but that also feels like her. It’s not an easy balance to strike — which is where astrology comes in.

We look to horoscopes for advice on everything from when to text our crush to how to ask for a promotion, so why not apply it to this dilemma? We asked Ash Sierra, an herbalist and the owner of Ritual Botanica, which sells herbal products and remedies, to advise us on which flowers we should get our moms based on their sun signs. Turns out, Aries women appreciate tulips, while Geminis dig lavender. Read on for the rest of Sierra’s recommendations, plus where to buy them.

At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.

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One interesting part of living in the age of social media is that we’ve all experienced the sensation of finding out that one of our most strongly held opinions is actually an unpopular one — only we didn’t realize it was unpopular until we stumbled upon a cache of tweets and think pieces declaring it so. Here is one of mine: New Year’s Eve is the best holiday. I know, there’s a good chance you vehemently disagree. And while I understand the ritual of staying up until long past midnight, watching a giant ball drop, and kissing somebody may chafe for some, I love that it’s unabashedly sexy and glittery and fun. I love that it’s meant to be spent drinking and gallivanting about town in a seasonally inappropriate sequin dress with friends rather than, like the other winter holidays, sitting at home around the fire with relatives, all of you in sweaters of varying degrees of ugliness (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The great irony of New Year’s Eve 2020, though, is that there’s never been a year to which we’re more excited to bid farewell, and yet, we can’t celebrate its departure in the all-out, stay-up-until-sunrise, shutdown-the-dancefloor way we otherwise might. 

But just as we adapted Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and any number of birthdays and milestones along the way to be more pandemic-friendly, so too can we adjust our understanding of what makes a great NYE. And, if you’re one of those people who cringe at my love of this traditionally rowdy, Champagne-soaked holiday, this might be your time to reclaim the holiday for yourself. Because at its core, NYE is really about reflection, commemoration, and starting afresh — all things that feel especially relevant this year, and all things anyone can do from anywhere, whether in a party dress or sweatpants. 

“I like the idea of ending the year by celebrating that, one, you made it, and two, you’re stronger for it,” says San Francisco-based event planner Edward Perotti. “Make this about celebrating not so much the year ending and a new year beginning, because that feels a bit like the cherry on a cake of negativity, but rather what you’ve taken away from this year that’s been really, really positive.” 

It may sound counterintuitive, but the fact is, as much as shitting on 2020 has become something of a national pastime, it’s not like as soon as the clock strikes midnight all the issues that have plagued us this year are just going to evaporate. Imagining that they might will only lead you down a road of disappointment — and make you less useful as a force for positive change in 2021 and beyond. 

“Personally, I continue to reflect and re-evaluate what is serving me or not serving me this year. 2020 was the year to evolve and I intend to keep doing that going forward. I want to fight for those that don’t have a voice, speaking up for marginalized groups, and to use the little platform I do have to try to solve social issues that must be fixed in our community,” shares JoAnna, a 36-year-old personal trainer from Nashville who says she will be spending the evening making s’mores, drinking hot cocoa, and popping a bottle of Champagne at midnight in her backyard with her boyfriend and her dog. “I do like this holiday,” she adds. “It always has a sense of hope and looking forward to starting fresh in a way. Whatever you might say about 2020, it made all of us readjust, re-evaluate, and really take some long tough looks in the mirrors at ourselves.”

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions — a famously fraught activity that often leads to feeling like a colossal failure circa mid-February — why not write down or talk with friends about some ways you feel you’ve grown this year, whether it’s learning to bake, becoming more involved in activism, or surviving a layoff or other personal loss. Or consider other ways to commemorate your year: “For the past few years, I’ve made a Google Doc of the books I’ve read each year and so it’s fun at the beginning of the year to think about what I want to read,” says Christine, 30, a writer and cheese educator from Vermont who plans to stay home with her boyfriend and cook on NYE. “That’s about as resolution-y as I get.”

If you’re going to have a celebration, Perotti says this year, it’s all about embracing creativity and relishing the necessarily tighter group with whom you’re celebrating(and make sure everyone gets tested beforehand). “I’m not advocating big parties whatsoever — actually, I have people kind of upset with me that I won’t do them — but there’s the option for having five or six, or throwing in the hybrid and putting some people on Zoom,” he shares. “I’m a big advocate of hybrids, and of using technology, because there are people that normally wouldn’t be able to go to your celebration that guess what? Now they can.”

If you’re going to employ Zoom for all or part of your event, Perotti suggests mailing guests matching decor, drink ingredients, or snacks so it feels more like you’re all together. If you’re going to have a small group gathering IRL, he says to consider making masks feel like a natural part of the program — for example, he recently planned an “ugly mask party” in the style of traditional holiday ugly sweater parties. “Why not do something like that for New Year’s — like, who can make the most elaborate mask? It’s little things like that.”

Perotti also says that, this year, it’s nice to shift the focus from NYE being a “romantic” or hookup-seeking kind of night, since that can make those without significant others feel left out in a year when it’s already been tough to be single (and also, making out with random strangers isn’t really a thing right now). “I’m working on [planning an event] right now where it’s a girls party and it’s a celebration of their friendship and how their friendship has evolved through COVID,” he says. “You can’t go out or have big parties, you can’t have that physical togetherness, which sometimes can be a little shallow, so people should be leaving this year knowing their core group a lot better because they’ve been forced to speak on camera, which doesn’t allow the physical environment to distract.”

For those who have historically felt alienated by the cultural emphasis on romance and partying on NYE, these more chilled-out, home-centric celebrations may be a welcome reprieve — not to mention a potential template for future years. “When I was younger and lived in New York City, I sometimes went out and ended up ringing in the new year feeling cold, drunk, lonely, and/or poor,” recalls Christine. “So I tend to be smug about how great of a time I have at home without having to opt in to the nonsense. This year, I will probably feel less smug than usual about staying in, since it’s actually what we’re supposed to be doing.”

As for us NYE traditionalists, maybe just as we’ve discovered new interests, hidden strengths, and a level of tech savviness we never knew we possessed this year, we may also find that a New Years Eve spent with a small group honoring these changes can be just as — if not more — fun than hitting a crowded club or sold-out concert. And if not, well, there’s always next year to go extra hard.

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Consider how much the events of this year have reprioritized your world: Are you thinking about injustices or societal problems you hadn’t considered before? Do you still spend money in the same way? Have you altered big career goals or personal life plans? 

For many of us, this means that the social media celebrities and influencers we used to love (or maybe loved to hate) have dropped to the bottom of what feels necessary these days. Frankly, some have become just plain difficult to watch. Whether they’re hopping on the latest hashtag trend that seems like just another excuse to post a selfie, or engaging in more actively harmful activities — like attending crowded gatherings, posting performative “social justice” messages, accepting PPP loans they don’t need, or knocking off struggling small designers — it can be hard to justify tuning in, if it means lining their pockets. The simplest-seeming choice is to smash the unfollow button and move on. But for some observers, that’s not enough. 

There’s a small but growing number of social media users dedicated to calling out shady influencer behavior, whether it’s photoshopping images and pretending they’re hadn’t, or potentially endangering the lives of others during a pandemic. Among most popular of these social media vigilantes is Instagram account InfluencersTruth, which currently has over 68k followers, and is structured similarly to Diet Prada, the famed fashion world caller-outer. The creator, C., who spoke to Refinery29 on the condition of anonymity, says that InfluencersTruth’s goals are simple: “I can assure you that this wasn’t part of some grand plan. Right now, InfluencersTruth is a solo act with no plans to monetize itself in any way,” she explains. 

For C., her motivation was purely emotional. After seeing how some high-profile influencers — ones with millions of followers, high-profile sponsorship deals, and successful businesses in their name — dealt with COVID-19, she felt compelled to speak out. “I started InfluencersTruth the first week of April during the height of the pandemic in New York City. My friend was at that time in the hospital due to COVID. He later passed away. What I kept seeing on Instagram from influencers was disgusting. The lack of self-awareness was and continues to be appalling,” C. says. 

While much of what InfluencersTruth posts are observations about influencers’ content that anyone could theoretically come across, followers also occasionally send along secrets — some of which, C. says, are too mean to post. “I try not to be too snarky,” she explains. “But I think that everyone is tired of these influencers presenting a version of life that just isn’t reality.”

Indeed, what may have once felt like fun voyeurism — a window into the world of an ultra-connected one percenter, where designer bags come free in the mail with handwritten cards and everybody has a house in the Hamptons — now feels incredibly tone deaf, especially when the content creator in question tries to have it both ways, posting faux-woke social justice content alongside unboxing videos and #sponcon. Our fatigue for the community is growing, and people are noticing. Earlier this year, Marie Claire asked “Is This The End of The Influencer?,” Vanity Fair questioned “Is This The End of Influencing As We Know It?,” Wired to inquire “Could The Coronavirus Kill Influencer Culture?,” and Adweek shot back, “No, Coronavirus Isn’t the End of Influencer Marketing. But It Has Put It Under a Microscope.”

It may be premature to tout this backlash as the definitive “end” of influencer culture. Certainly, it’s slowing down, especially as marketing budgets have been slashed for all but the biggest content creators. But thanks to our diminished IRL social lives, we’re spending more time on social apps than ever before. According to data from eMarketer, time spent on social media is expected to rise by 8.8% this year, which means there’s still a real hunger for content. If it’s not the end of influencer culture, then it’s perhaps the end of eye roll-inducing, aspirational-at-all-costs influencer culture. It makes sense to have high expectations of those who claim to lead the lives, inhabit the perspectives, and communicate the ideas that are valuable enough to influence others.

These call-out accounts are hardly the first internet-personality watchdogs. Before there was InfluencersTruth or Diet Prada, there was Get Off My Internets (GOMI, for short), an abundantly snarky message board on which anonymous users posted about bloggers, vloggers, and whomever else  annoyed them on the internet that day. Reddit also has a similar community called BlogSnark (there’s also, incredibly, now another subreddit called “blogsnarkmetasnark: a place to snark on the snarkers,” because the snarkers will inevitably become the snarkees, I guess?). But while GOMI and Reddit allow unverified gossip and pure speculation, accounts like InfluencersTruth tend to do some due diligence before publishing. “I think these ‘influencers’ forget that Google is a really powerful tool and you can find anything and everything on there,” C. says. 

Sophie Ross, a copywriter and freelance journalist and former Refinery29 employee, has brought the business of calling out bad influencer behavior to Twitter, where she has about 11k followers. “A lot of people are so fed up with the facade, especially right now,” she says. “We’re experiencing a cultural shift. People are really seeing through the bullshit. The influencers that are flaunting their Chanel bags when there’s record unemployment rates… there’s just a lot of privilege-flaunting and bad behavior happening.”

Neither Ross nor InfluencersTruth have dealt with much backlash, perhaps because what they post tends to be rooted in truth and legitimate issues with influencer culture as opposed to pure snark for snark’s sake. C. says she’s received some “poorly veiled threats” from unhappy influencers, and Ross has, too: “I don’t care,” she says. “Maybe people are thinking I could be burning bridges. But I’m okay without these people. The people who I call out on Twitter aren’t people I would want to associate with ever, anyway.”

Though InfluencersTruth has a fraction of the followers that many of the influencers she posts about do, the conversation C. starts around our expectations from the people our likes, clicks, and views support are more relevant than given the events of this year. The demand  for authenticity, accountability, transparency, and just plain reality is what consumers are asking for in other sectors, too; we’re outraged for the same reasons when we find out the cute leggings or direct-to-consumer suitcase sold to us as emblems of progressive values are actually the output of abusive and unhappy work environments. And, like entrepreneurs, business leaders, and pretty much anyone else trying to brand themselves, social content creators who want to remain relevant in a post-2020 world are likely going to have to find a way to adapt.

“I don’t think you should wait for something to blow over or wait for people to forget about it,” Ross advises influencers who may have come up against criticism in recent months. “I think you need to handle it head-on, because all of your followers are wondering what’s happening. You owe transparency to your followers. Just be real for a second.”

But for those who have spent the better part of a decade airbrushing every aspect of their lives, do they even remember what real looks like? And is it possible for an influencer to apologize or rebrand in a way that doesn’t feel like a self-serving ploy to keep cancellers at bay? There are plenty of jokes about influencers donning messy buns and thick-rimmed glasses to make hollow apology videos, but for those who have had to do this, it can be crushing to realize that the persona you’ve spent years cultivating doesn’t resonate anymore, and maybe even hurts people. 

But the fact is, having an audience is a huge privilege that nobody is owed. And there are so many people on social media these days — like Ziwe, Rachel Cargle, or Kelli Brown — who are doing the important work of starting dialogues about race and privilege, celebrating diversity, or even just making people laugh, who many might rather see reap some of the benefits other creators with “safer” or more brand-friendly content have long enjoyed.

Even among more traditional influencer-types who want to stick with product recommendations and lifestyle shots, observers seem to think it’s still possible to cultivate an authentic relationship with an audience. “I really like Grace Atwood,” says C. “In my opinion, she’s so genuine and really puts in the work unlike a lot of other influencers who just take pictures of themselves.” That being said, C. thinks it’s impossible for influencer culture writ large to be reformed: “What I think should change is their relevance within our culture. If we all stop following, stop swiping up, and stop idolizing, I believe that our society will be healthier and happier.”

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It’s late July and across the country, tense conversations are taking place between teachers, parents, politicians, and state officials about reopening public schools. Coronavirus cases are spiking across the country, especially in states like Arizona, Florida, Texas, California, and Mississippi, and as reopening plans nevertheless push forward, there’s real fear that it’s only going to get worse. For teachers, this means coming to grips with the reality that they may be forced to re-enter the classroom before case numbers significantly decrease in their cities and states. Some are so scared of this that they’re working on their wills in preparation.

To get a better sense of what teachers are going through right now and what we can do to support them, we spoke to Katrina, a high school algebra teacher in Texas, who also has a son in high school, and is the president of her local teachers union chapter. A few hours after we spoke, her school board officially approved a request from teachers for the first eight weeks back to be online. She’s relieved, but she also knows that schools like hers are under significant pressure — from parents desperate for respite as well as local and national leaders, including President Trump — to resume in-person learning ASAP. In fact, Trump has even threatened to cut funding for schools that don’t fully resume in the fall. And while she says she wants to be back in the classroom with her students, she’s concerned about getting sick, or bringing the virus home to her family, and she’s not sure how plans for social distancing or mask-wearing will play out in the reality of the school day.

Refinery29: What grade and subject do you teach, and how long have you been teaching for?

Katrina: This year, I’m going to be teaching 11th and 12th graders. I’ll be teaching Algebra II and Advanced Quantitative Reasoning. And I’ve been teaching since 2012. I specialize in teaching students from other countries.

Texas schools are slated to re-open at the end of August, right?

Yes, that’s when we’re supposed to. Texas law doesn’t allow you to start earlier than the fourth Monday of August.

How are you feeling about the prospect of going back? Do you think, given the coronavirus numbers in the state, that it makes sense to head back to the classroom right now?

Well, given the numbers in the state now, it makes no sense to come back. There are too many people getting sick. And all of the people that keep on talking about how kids don’t transmit this — well, most of us have been keeping our kids home. That’s why they’re not transmitting it. I have my own son and he doesn’t go out — he’s pretty much been homebound since March, unless we really need to go out, and even then, normally he stays home. It’s not a comfortable thing to put your kid at risk. And even if the kids do have a less likely chance of transmitting it, the teachers and employees don’t. They can still get it and they will die from it. They can still transmit it. And the kids can still bring it home to their guardians, to their families, to their friends. It’s just a circle that doesn’t need to happen. A lot of people are saying well, you know, you still go to Home Depot. Sure, but you don’t stay there for eight hours. And my school has about 3,400 students, and about 300 to 400 employees. That’s not the type of situation you want to put yourself in. And they’re asking us to do that.

Do you know what kind of measures they’re planning to put in place to make it safer once you do go back?

I know they are purchasing PPE for us. They are trying to put plexiglass wherever possible. They are doing temperature scanners kids getting on the bus and kids entering the schools. I think that they’re going to try and do these six feet [apart] desks, but they haven’t put that out yet because they’re still trying to figure all of that out, if it’s even plausible.

Also, we’ll have the first eight weeks online — I know our superintendent doesn’t want to go back until our county is down to a Stage 2. But it’s up to the Texas Education Agency if we’ll still get funding if we wait until Stage 2. So that’s another issue, we’ve got to figure out how to get our funding. Because it’s not just Trump, our governor [Greg Abbott] also said that. I mean, it starts with [Trump]. But they’re trying to have accountability for us to teach our students, and I mean, I would personally prefer to be in my classroom with my students. But I also don’t want to bring home something to my family that could kill one of us.

[In a statement to Refinery29, a representative for the Texas Education Agency said: “Please see the press release issued last week detailing new reopening guidance, including a local option for a remote-only start to the 2020-2021 academic year. The press release coincides with revised public health guidelines that provide a framework for students, teachers, and staff to safely return to school campuses for daily, in-person instruction.“]

It might be a little easier with high school students than with younger kids, but do you think it will be possible to get students to social distance, or commit to wearing a mask for eight hours a day? How do you think that will work?

Honestly, I think it depends on their parents. If their parents instill that in them at home, then I don’t see it being a problem. If their parents don’t instill it in them at home, then I see it being a fight. And I mean, kids are kids. You’re happy to see your friends. You don’t want to sit six feet away from someone all day long. It’s part of being human. You want to touch and talk, you want to give someone a hug. I can see them possibly doing it for a little bit — two, three days — but then you get used to being back in school, to doing whatever you want, and I see it going downhill pretty quickly.

Are you concerned that, for some of the kids you’re working with, they’re getting very different messaging at home about things like wearing a mask?

Yeah. Like, “oh it’s not that big of a deal.” But, you know, one of my co-worker’s husbands just died earlier this week, and another co-worker’s dad just died earlier this week. It’s something that’s coming and it’s getting worse.

When state officials and other decision-makers are having conversations about re-opening, have teachers been involved?

I’m the president of my union, and we’ve been fighting all summer long. We meet monthly with the superintendent and her board, letting them know exactly what we think needs to be done. We’ve done everything we can to fight this idea of going back.

I know in some states, teachers with health conditions are being allowed to stay remote, even if their schools are reopening. Is that the case in Texas?

I think it is, but that’s with a whole bunch of caveats. I haven’t heard of anybody trying to set that up yet [in my area]. And if they are, it’s going to be a long process — I know one of the other presidents of another area union, he has health issues, as does his wife, and it’s a long process. It’s definitely causing — [there’s a lot of questions like], “Well how are you going to do your duty? Are you going to make someone else do your duty for you?” They’re having to work out, not just how to teach or how to counsel (one of them is a counselor), but how are you going to do everything else you’re supposed to do while you’re here on this campus? You’ve got to have a really good case. You need to know your contract inside and out so you can fight it correctly.

I’ve seen some news reports of teachers making end of life plans prior to the start of school, because they’re afraid of getting sick at school. Is that something you’ve heard of, or considered for yourself?

I do have a lot of friends who have been doing their wills. Honestly, I don’t want to, because I don’t want to think that could happen. I just don’t want to worry about that. I know it possibly could. But I have my husband, so he would have to take care of stuff anyway. If I were a single mom, I would definitely be doing that. But since I have my spouse, I’m not as worried about filling out my will. But I have considered writing letters to my children. Like, if something happens to me, that type of stuff.

I’m sure there are many, but what’s your biggest concern about going back?

Getting my son sick. He has asthma and that puts him at a high risk. If I’m talking about a school concern, what causes me the most stress is how am I going to successfully teach these students? Because, I mean, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: You need to feel secure. You need to be safe. You need to be fed. All these things that the students need. And, right now, learning my material is not at the top of what they need. So how do we make sure that the kids are taken care of enough so that they can learn this material so they can move on? That’s what keeps me up at night.

Do you know people who are leaving or talking about leaving the teaching profession?

A lot of people are just finding other jobs, or trying to. I’m trying to convince them not to, I’m not sure if it’s working. One of our [union] members was talking to me and was saying, “I feel like I’m being held hostage. Like I either go to work or I get penalized. And I don’t like this feeling of, you have to do this, you could die, but we don’t care.” I’ve done my best to talk people out of leaving. But, I mean, it’s a personal decision. I tell the school board or the superintendent what’s going on, and I told the president of the school board what’s going on. So they’re aware that we’ve got this issue. But it’s hard to move because the Texas Education Agency comes out with something new almost every two days. They change their minds. So how are you supposed to make plans when every two days it changes? It’s been going like this for at least a month, maybe two months, where there’s this constant change. It could be so much simpler if they left it up to the school district to be smart with their communities, to figure out how best to serve their community and just do it instead of having these constant changing regulations that they need to abide by.

Is there something you wish more people understood about what it’s like to be a teacher right now?

That we get paid and we don’t have to work over the summer. That’s not true. We give the school district permission to hold that part of our money so we can get paid over the summer. We love our students. We’re in it for the kids. And I told my students before, like when we do the drills for if there’s an active shooter and they’re like, well, what would happen if someone came in? I say, they’d have to get past me. They’re like, really? And I’m like yes, I will die for you guys gladly if somebody is in here trying to kill you guys. I will get in the middle of it. You guys don’t have to worry about that. But this isn’t like a bullet. This is a virus that can take out my entire class. It can take out all of my colleagues. It’s different than an active shooter. I can’t train and teach my kids how to stay away from this all the time. Fear keeps kids safer. When there’s an active shooter, when you’re doing these drills, the fear keeps them quiet. The fear keeps them to the side. But the fear of something that you can’t see, it’s just intangible. And it is hard for them to understand unless they’re taught it. And you get taught that at home. We want to be with our students. We want to be able to teach them correctly. We want to keep them safe. And we want to be able to identify, you know, disabilities that they might have, or food insecurities, or if they’re being abused, we want to help them get away from that. But we want to make sure it’s safe for them and for us. And I just wish people understood that. We’re not hospital workers, we’re not doctors, we’re not nurses. We came into this to teach the future generations to be doctors and nurses, not to be the ones on death’s doorstep.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

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What do you remember about the last day you spent in your office? Before the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic led to the sudden abandonment of those spaces, and taking Zoom calls from the comfort of our beds became a professionally acceptable practice, those of us who worked in offices had dramatically different daily lives. Personally, I’ve thought quite a lot over the last few months about my now-empty workstation. When we all shuffled home that day in early March, none of us had any idea how long we’d be away from the conference rooms and the tiny kitchens with the dirty microwaves and the blasting air conditioning and all the other bittersweet things we’d become accustomed to over the course of our careers. We left papers and documents out. We abandoned calendars and notebooks. I still think about the pile of untouched books and beauty products under my desk — not to mention the team snack drawer left unattended all these long weeks. Now, as offices slowly begin the re-opening process, many people have been asking: When will we return? But, there’s another question to consider: What will we be returning to?

Over the past few months, both the coronavirus pandemic and the protests following the police killing of George Floyd have resulted in a world that often feels wholly different from the one of earlier this year. And while, it’s impossible to predict at this juncture what the true “future of work” will look like, some realities are becoming more clear. For one, it doesn’t look like those of us who can easily work remotely are headed back to the office anytime soon. Remote work is poised to become much more mainstream, as both companies and employees realize its possibilities, and that could mean large-scale changes in things like real estate, family dynamics, politics, and the distribution of wealth across the country.

Let’s be clear, there can be no real silver linings to a crisis that has killed almost 500,000 people globally and resulted in, as of late May, almost 40 million Americans losing their jobs.  However, as we shift the way in which we think about labor, reimagining what we expect people to sacrifice in order to make a living, and what we understand and are willing to accept about how people work best, it is possible that we can conceive of a better future for ourselves, and for generations to come.

The Death Of The Open-Plan Office?

Almost every office I’ve ever been to, whether for a job interview, a visit with a professional acquaintance, or as my own workplace, has had a shortage of conference rooms, or other private places to talk. This is a fact I often joke about with people as we’re en route to whatever makeshift corner of space we can find for a meeting. It’s a flaw inherent to the modern, open-plan office, which has a layout that’s supposed to encourage communication, but that, somehow, offers nowhere to actually sit down and talk. The open-plan office allows managers to keep tabs on their employees’ productivity, but makes it harder for anyone to actually be productive. There have been plenty of studies that bear this out, including an oft-cited one from the Harvard Business School in 2018, which showed open offices actually reduce face-to-face interaction by about 70%, increase the volume of email and electronic messages, and decrease employee productivity. In the context of coronavirus, open-plan offices, especially those where employees are packed tightly together, make it practically impossible to socially distance and contain the spread of germs. 

For many companies, the reality of these spaces may mean keeping the bulk of their employees — especially those who can do their jobs effectively from home — remote until there’s a COVID-19 vaccine, or at least a serious drop in the number of local cases. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have announced plans to do this until at least early 2021.  

For companies that want to have some employees come back earlier, there’s a push to rejigger offices to allow for more personal space, among other things. A recent New York Times article, “The Pandemic May Mean the End of the Open-Floor Office,” lays out strategies like sneeze guards, bottles of hand sanitizer built into desks, air filters, and an increased reliance on outdoor gathering spaces. The CDC recently recommended even more stringent guidelines for a return to offices, including abolishing communal seating areas, replacing high-touch items like coffee pots and water coolers with single-use versions, and requiring daily temperature checks for workers. And yet, all that may still not be enough to effectively reduce viral transmission. And in cities like New York, where the majority of people commute via public transportation and then often need to endure a crowded elevator ride, whatever an office layout might look like still doesn’t mitigate the other risks associated with leaving one’s house to go to work. 

David Galulo, principal and CEO of the business-centric design firm Rapt Studio, says he’s been having conversations about this with many of his clients. “There’s a lot of discussion about social distancing and diminished density and [air] circulation patterns. The immediate goal is to develop a plan that allows people to come back to work safely.”

There has been some talk about staggering how many people come into an office at a time — some are calling for similar measures in schools to allow students to return to classrooms in the fall. That could mean something like working from home three days a week, and coming into the office for two. Offices would, of course, need to be deep-cleaned between every shift, and the way we use desks might need to change in order to make more room for social-distancing. But having two or three people using the same desk at different times — assuming said desk is properly disinfected between each person — might not be so unappealing if the space wasn’t one you were forced to call home for 40+ hours a week. “If part of your workplace is your home office, where you’re surrounded by your dog and your kids and all of your personal items, maybe it’s less important that, for example, you have the picture of the dog and the kids at the office,” suggests Galulo. 

Galulo doesn’t think we’re seeing the death of the open-plan office, though — and certainly not of offices altogether. “You know, the whole conversation about, ‘do we start building fewer offices? And, is this the final nail in the coffin of the open office?’ I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m a firm believer that the workplace is an important driver of culture. It pulls people together. It reminds them of a shared mission. It reminds them that they belong to something larger than just themselves.”

One way this could happen is through the development of new office technology that will provide the sense of simultaneous privacy and collaboration that has previously eluded us. In 2018, Rapt Studio designed two “cubicles of the future” for a Fast Company series called “Provocation,” one of which actually sounds kind of ideal for social distancing. The idea is this: Each person gets their own cubicle, and underneath each cubicle is a small robot, similar to those Amazon uses to move products in its warehouses, which can move the cubicles around as needed. “If you have a day of heads-down work, you’d get assigned a private cubicle so you can focus. If you have a day full of meetings, and you don’t need private space, your cube combines with other cubes to create a larger space in which to work with your colleagues. The robots shift the office in real time to make this happen,” explains writer Katharine Schwab. If you’re essentially remaining in the same square of space all day, even as that square moves around, it’s likely you’re spreading less germs. It’s also likely you’re getting a lot more done — especially given that you never have to worry about finding and holding down an empty conference room again. 

It’s an out-there concept, but if we’re reimagining the workplace from the top-down — and indeed, we may have to — why not consider how technology and design can aid in constructing an environment that prioritizes human creativity and productivity, rather than one that simply serves to jam the most people into the smallest amount of space?

Remote Work & The Promise Of Flexibility 

On May 12, about 10 weeks after much of Silicon Valley had instructed employees to start working from home, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced via email that staff would be allowed to stay remote “forever,” should their jobs allow for it and should they choose to do so. The announcement made waves online and in the business world, where the whims of big tech tend to have a trickle-down effect on how smaller companies operate. But, it wasn’t actually much of a departure from policies the tech giant already had in place. “We started down this path a couple years ago,” explains Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s Chief Human Resources Officer. “People can work remotely, if they want. They can also change office locations. For us, it was really about talent and optionality and offering a competitive advantage.”

Companies like Twitter, that had already begun to embrace remote work, have obviously seen a much easier transition over the past three months. But even more traditional organizations that once balked at the notion of allowing employees to work from home are finding that it’s really not that bad — even under the hurried, makeshift circumstances through which it has occurred. 

Prior to the pandemic, says Brie Reynolds, a Career Development Manager and Coach at FlexJobs, “The people who really, ultimately make the decision to allow workers to work remotely didn’t see the benefit, because they hadn’t done it themselves. It just wasn’t the way that they were taught and the way they had planned their careers.” But now that office workers at varying levels of power have experienced it and many can point to months of success working remotely, it’s going to be much more difficult for companies to argue it’s not feasible. What’s more, many have come to see that there are long-term benefits for them — remote work often means higher employee satisfaction rates, more competitive hiring pools, and big money saved on office rent and overhead. 

But for companies that do decide to double down on long-term remote work, they’ll have to realize that setting employees up for remote success means much more than handing them a laptop and a Zoom login and wishing them good luck. At Twitter, Tracy Hawkins heads up the Real Estate & Workplace and Remote Experience departments, which means she’s constantly thinking about ways to meaningfully translate the experience of working at Twitter HQ to the folks at home. “It’s looking at all the good things we have and trying to extend them,” she says. “You can’t exactly recreate everything that’s in the office because of the scale of it, but just so that they know that thought and intention has gone into their world, just like it has in an office.”

Perks for remote employees at Twitter include a cultural ambassador program to represent remote teams, a “productivity allowance” that gives remote workers money to furnish a comfortable home office, and a dashboard that allows them to easily request the tech equipment they need, which the company has discussed extending to “things like snacks and beverages.” “Most of all, we’re working with the people who are remote to say, you know, what are your challenges? What you really love about being remote? How can you educate us in the office on better ways to work with you?” says Hawkins.

While some workers may be longing for the camaraderie of a traditional workplace and others crossing their fingers they never have to go back, what most are finding is that some balance of remote and office work is what makes the most sense. “A lot of the discussions we’re having with clients are about, how do you think about the workplace — as in, the actual office — as part of an ecosystem of spaces and tools,” says Galulo. “I think a lot of people are appreciating the fact they’ve now gained an hour or two a day back [by eliminating commute time]. If I can do that on those days that I don’t really need to be in the workplace, but the workplace is still there for those times that I do, for those important gathering moments where I really need to see my team, then that’s ideal.”

What Does It All Mean?

It’s both maddening and quintessentially American that it took a global health emergency of catastrophic proportions to force companies to engage with the reality that so much about the modern workplace is — and has long been — broken. But regardless of how we got here, the answers we come up with today could have huge effects on the world we live in tomorrow.

The more companies invest in remote work, for example, the more workers may look around and realize there’s no longer a reason for them to remain in overcrowded, overpriced urban areas like New York City and San Francisco. Already, talk of families and young professionals leaving New York for more socially distant pastures has emerged online, inspiring Goodbye to All That-esque Twitter missives and equal parts concern and indifference from those who have chosen to steadfastly remain. Personally, in just the past week, I’ve had two sets of friends announce they’re planning to leave NYC — for New Jersey and South Carolina, respectively. 

If people can move to, say, South Carolina on a Silicon Valley salary, that’s going to have a huge impact on their new chosen community, in both potentially positive and negative ways. While there’s always the legitimate fear that newcomers may breed gentrification, they can also provide struggling local economies with a boost. (This could also have implications for the political sphere: If left-leaning urbanites begin to decamp to more rural areas, or states that are historically “purple” or “red,” that could prompt a shakeup in local, state, and national elections.)

Skilled workers moving from big cities to suburban and rural areas is one thing, but if more companies begin actually hiring remote workers — as opposed to just letting employees they already have start working remotely — that means people living in those areas have increased opportunities for employment, too. And that could be an important step in lessening economic inequality across the country. 

“We’ve been partnering with local economic development organizations to bring remote jobs to rural places that do not have a job market locally,” says Reynolds of FlexJobs. “And now, we’re seeing in these communities, when even a handful of people get a really good, well-paying job, they’re able to do so much within their community, and it becomes a ripple effect. Any real remote work on a large scale definitely has great implications in terms of the distribution of wealth, bringing more equality to the workforce, and letting people live and work in ways that are more balanced for them.”

That being said, not all companies determine pay for remote workers in the same way. According to Reynolds, there are three common ways remote salaries are determined: where the company is located, where the individual employee is located, or the national average for the job title. “Some companies will have different salaries for people doing the same type of work, but who live in different places with different salary levels,” she adds.

In a statement that’s since been widely circulated on social media, Facebook recently revealed that “employees who wish to work remotely, and are approved to do so, will be paid based on their new location,” adding that the company will “localize everybody’s comp by January 1,” and that by the end of the year, employees have to either return to the Bay Area, or let the company know where they plan to be working from going forward. CEO Mark Zuckerberg added that they plan to ramp up remote hiring. 

One thing companies looking to invest in remote work have to contend with are employment and tax laws, which vary from state to state and can get complicated if people are based all over the country. Sometimes, that means companies stick to hiring only in certain states, or even just in the same state where their headquarters are. 

While remote work has the potential to bring about some much-needed changes in our society, from allowing families more time together to bringing much-needed opportunities to economically depressed regions, a huge number of Americans who don’t work in offices won’t have the luxury of doing their jobs remotely. And, these are often the workers who are already the most vulnerable. If we’re going to engage in a conversation about how to make life better, safer, and easier for office workers, we must be willing to have the same conversation about workers in service and other industries. The coronavirus pandemic has made abundantly clear the failings of the gig economy, and the economic precariousness under which so many people live their lives. There’s not an easy, one-size-fits-all solution for any of these problems, but now is a potent opportunity to push for better working conditions for everyone, not just those of us privileged enough to do our jobs from desks — wherever those desks may be.

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Cait Munro, Khareem Sudlow

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For many of us, our primary pastimes used to look something like this: patronizing restaurants, bars, and various “non-essential” businesses. That kind of leisure activity is, of course, all over for the time being. These days, the lucky among us are trapped inside, alternating between stressed, bored, and some kind of new stress-boredom hybrid. One way that many people are filling their at-home time is by exploring hobbies with a fervor once reserved for, well, all the other stuff they used to do. 

This has led to a new trend in social media: the hobby humblebrag. Part nesting impulse, part distraction, and partially born out of a need for something to help define us, the hobby humblebrag is a well-intentioned, if sometimes oblivious advertisement of people’s newfound love for things like baking, floral arranging, and jigsaw puzzling. Take a look at your Stories if you don’t know what I’m talking about; you soon will. 

All the excitement is understandable. For many of us, the last time we had a true hobby — as in “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure” — was childhood. In fact, if the concept still sounds like something from another planet to you, then you’re not alone. “There has been a cultural shift in society about the importance and understanding of free time and leisure activity,” explains Haris Karim of the website Discover A Hobby. “Because of this, the idea of doing something casually, for pure, intrinsically rewarding reasons, has been somewhat devalued and replaced by the need to succeed and reach a goal.”

Over the past few years, the rise of the side-hustle — aka the practice of monetizing a hobby — has spawned plenty of tweets, think pieces, and memes, many of which lament the untimely death of leisure activities in favor of making everything into an opportunity to work. It’s also one explanation for why millennial burnout is rampant (and certainly not limited to millennials). Because, while some people do find solace in starting a side business or engaging in such faux-hobbies as organizing or exercising, they don’t exactly fall into the “fun for fun’s sake” category of activities; like so much else we do, they’re about self-improvement, the care and keeping of an enviable existence. 

But suddenly, for many of the millennials who have  been over-scheduled, overworked, and success-obsessed practically since birth, there’s now a chance to just try things out, and the impulse to share the end results of their efforts is strong. Obviously, not everyone has leisure time right now — essential workers on the front lines are risking their health and putting in longer hours than ever — but for lots of others, trapped inside with nothing but Netflix and maybe a roommate or two? It’s a revelation. One that leads to an increase in Instagram engagement, sure, but also, potentially, a much-needed diversion.

“I keep thinking ‘maybe at the end of quarantine I’ll be a better painter,’” says Tatum, a 26-year-old who started painting right before quarantine and has since invested more time into the hobby. “It’s a distraction, at the end of the day, and a way to keep my eyes and thoughts away from the news. I mostly paint flowers and the plants in my apartment. I like having a definitive thing to do each day that I can track my progress with.”

Hobbies can be a way of getting in touch with parts of ourselves that we don’t get to exercise as much at work, school, or in social settings, whether that’s creativity, athleticism, or just a sense of natural curiosity that many of us have a hard time maintaining within the rubric of our adult lives. This can be a balm for a time when it feels like so much, including our sense of who we are as people, is in flux. For some, hobbies can even be a way of mitigating anxiety and depression, which many are struggling with right now. “I have a much better handle on my anxiety than I used to, but I have definitely used knitting as a way to calm my jitters,” says Sophie, 25, who paints and knits. “It’s something to focus on and also something physically soft in your hands. It can be very repetitive and so is very soothing when my mind starts to run away with me.”

The impulse to share every lopsided loaf of sourdough bread or haphazardly assembled crochet project is understandable, if a bit annoying for those of us feeling less ambitious during this time. “Millennials and Gen Z are drawn to active hobbies with an extrinsic value that they can use to ‘define’ who they are and show it to the world via social media. It’s all about crafting an image,” explains Karim. And yet, it’s also putting our extreme privilege — as people who get to stay home during all of this, and have the financial and emotional resources to do whatever it is we are doing — on blast. 

It also may be sucking some of the fun out of all the aforementioned “fun for fun’s sake.” The initial push towards productivity — whether in the form of 10-hour remote workdays or artfully assembled Alison Roman recipes — despite the fact that we’re all otherwise occupied surviving a global pandemic has been real, and it’s problematic. We’re all just trying to survive, it’s okay if you’re not feeling up to learning a new language or ramping up your yoga practice right now. Hopefully, when we’re able to return to a lifestyle that’s more “normal,” we can bring with us some of the flexibility that’s been offered to workers during this time. After all, it shouldn’t take something like coronavirus to afford us time to live a meaningful life outside work. 

And while there’s something to be said for cultivating a hobby from a place of pure, unadulterated, anti-capitalist enthusiasm, there’s certainly nothing wrong with using newly developed skills and talents to support yourself. And as the economy continues to deteriorate — 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week — we may see an increasing number of people putting their hobbies to this kind of use. Not every hobby has to or should become a side hustle, but it’s understandable that some people want or need them to. And there are certainly ways to do that without sacrificing all of the freedom that a hobby allows. 

For 21-year-old Graciela, transforming her ballroom dancing hobby — which sets her back between $300 to 500 a month — into a side-hustle has allowed her to continue with it. It’s also changed her relationship with it for the better: “I definitely appreciate my own lessons more because that’s when I’m learning and it’s more me time,” she says. 

But if you are choosing to pursue a new hobby right now, make sure you’re doing it because it feels right, not because you’re feeling the pressure to have something to post on Instagram. These quaran-times may indeed be well-suited to engaging in a new hobby, side hustle, or amalgamation of the two, but it’s also okay if you just wanna play iPhone games, stare at Twitter all day, or just… sit with your feelings. Everything else will be right there when you’re ready.

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Why Is Everyone So Into Making Bread Right Now?

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Cait Munro, Khareem Sudlow

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The restaurant industry has been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic downturn. Across the country, bars and restaurants have been relegated to “takeout only” status. Restaurant workers, meanwhile, have seen mass layoffs and shift cuts, leaving many wondering how they’ll pay their rent this month, not to mention what their next career move is.

To get a better idea of what those workers need and how we can help, we talked to a server at a popular NYC restaurant, who was recently laid off when it was forced to temporarily close its doors. She’s filing for unemployment, finding emotional support within her network of colleagues, and is ultimately hoping to return to work at the same restaurant when this is all over.

What’s your employment status right now?
So, as of now, everyone who works at [redacted] is being temporarily laid off. The owners are planning on reopening, and if and when that happens, they are going to offer all of us our jobs back. It is pretty scary because we don’t know when that’s going to happen. It could be in two weeks, three weeks, three months. [The owners have] been pretty good about the situation, the way that they’ve handled it, being able to make sure that they will be able to open up again, unlike a lot of other places.

How long had you been working there?
I have been with them for a little over a year and a half.

Is the restaurant able to do food delivery or takeout during this time?
They’re completely shut down. Just the way that our restaurant functions, we’re not set up for any type of takeout, and a lot of our inventory is not set up for that as well. It’s not really applicable to us to be able to do that. It’s great that they’re giving that option of selling off wine and beer to restaurants. But if we were to start doing that, we would have to be doing something completely different than what we normally do.

Was the closure something that you had seen coming based on everything happening, or was it still a surprise?
Everyone at my restaurant knew that it was coming. Also because the management, specifically our manager, was very open and honest and transparent with us, and we were all talking to each other about the reality of the situation. Probably three weeks before we actually shut down, we were seeing some decline in people coming in due to the coronavirus news. Then they put out the cover cap, so we could only have 50% of our covers come into the restaurant about a week before [the shutdown]. That really hurt us. And so we knew that it was inevitable, that there was going to be a shutdown of all restaurants. We’re all very aware of all health and safety standards being in an industry that is dealing with those things on a day to day basis, even outside of coronavirus.

Have you been able to get severance pay?
Nope. They were just like, hey, everybody, we’re so sorry this is happening. They were able to do the normal payroll for the hours that we worked. I know some other restaurants weren’t actually even able to do that. That’s actually really common. And it’s not any restaurant’s fault. It’s just so many restaurants are going week-to-week to just survive, which is common for a small business. So, no, we didn’t get any severance. I don’t know of any restaurants, personally, that can have the financial capabilities of giving severance pay. It was just my last hours worked, and the tips I made were all I got paid. I had to apply for unemployment this week. That was really hard.

Is filing for unemployment harder when part of your income is tipped?
To be honest, I don’t know how it really works, and I feel really silly saying that, but I went online and it took me over a week of trying to get on to even get my application to go through because the website kept crashing. All I know is that I’ve submitted my unemployment on the website and I have no idea when that’s going to come in, if it’s going to come in, if it’s going to be approved. I don’t really have much information. I’m just kind of sitting at home every day hoping that this ends and that maybe I can pay rent.

Have you had any conversations with your landlord about that?
As of now, I won’t be able to pay it. I know that there’s at least one or two other people in my building that are in the same boat as I am in the restaurant industry, and they said very honestly that they weren’t going to be able to pay rent as well. That did make me feel a bit better, to know that there are other people in my exact building — so hopefully, when I do contact my landlord, it won’t be a surprise to them. And also, I’ve kind of been hoping that maybe something’s going to go through on a government level, of them saying, hey, don’t worry about rent. I don’t want to jump the gun and send something if it’s going to resolve itself.

What do you think the government, locally or nationally, should be doing to help restaurant workers right now?
I think that they need to be a lot more aware of those small businesses and how this is affecting them in general, and I don’t think that they fully grasp how much this has changed the restaurant industry forever. They need to have a bailout or some sort of financial package that’s going to include these restaurants and small businesses. You know, McDonald’s isn’t going to go out of business. These big places are gonna be fine. But it’s all of your neighborhood restaurants, it’s your favorite restaurants that aren’t going to be able to survive. People don’t understand how important restaurants are until they’re gone, and you realize you’ve lost a sense of community.

Are you hoping to return to work in the restaurant industry after this?
There’s a lot of people who are doing this because it’s their passion and something that they love. And also there are people who are doing it just to pay rent, and I’m also in that position. But I still have come to really love this industry. It’s something like my chosen family. That being said, I personally am not looking to stay in the restaurant industry long-term. It’s not something I can sustain as a lifestyle forever; I have some chronic health issues. So for me, it’s not really a long term thing. But who knows? Maybe I literally won’t be able to return to this, because there might not be a restaurant there for me to return to. Even after my restaurant opens back up, who’s to say business is gonna be thriving? So that would mean I might not have enough shifts, or there might not be enough job positions. Restaurants have always been something I’ve thought that I can always do, no matter what hard times are, but now I’m not sure that’s viable.

What are you the most concerned about right now when it comes to your career and your personal finances?
It’s a simple answer — it’s just finances in general, getting paid. There just might not be any work. This whole thing might clear up and the industry might have tanked and there’s going to be all these people searching for jobs. The whole economy just got hit so hard, people might not be going out to eat. I personally really enjoy working in casual fine dining, but people might not be able to go out or they won’t tip 20%. So I just don’t know if I’m going to be able to pay my rent, my student loans, my credit card bills, my phone bill. I’m honestly really scared about just living.

How have you been dealing with the stress of all that? Has there been a support system within the food community?
That has probably been one of the most inspiring parts of it, is seeing the way that restaurants have banded together and started creating so much awareness on social media platforms. My manager has been the lifeblood of it. I personally think she has been so amazing. She created this group text thread and has been sending through anything she can find — relief funds for service workers, resources, petitions to sign, anything she can. Her leadership skills have really shone through.

If people want to help support restaurant staff, what’s the best thing for them to do right now?
If you’re in a spot where you’re able to help out financially, that’s really important. I know there’s a lot of individual GoFundMe’s, a lot of restaurants are starting them for their staff. And that money is going directly to the staff members to help pay for food and rent and bills. So that’s really helpful. And share people’s fundraisers. I put on social media asking if people would share the GoFundMe for my restaurant in their Story, but no one’s done it. Not a single person has shared my GoFundMe to their Story. That takes ten seconds and is no skin off your teeth. What’s also helpful is signing petitions. I don’t know if they really do anything, those Change.org petitions, but you just write your name and sign. Showing that we can mobilize I think is probably the only way that the government and the state government are going to actually hear and see that people care about this.

Is there anything you wish people knew or understood about your situation and the situations of others in the food world right now?
It’s not that I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s a really hard thing to answer, for me, because sometimes I almost feel crappy that I work at a restaurant. But I’m also so proud of it because I’ve worked so hard. And it’s really emotional, honestly. Because I want to pay my bills and I don’t want to be in a situation where I have to ask for help. It’s not like I was unprepared, or I didn’t have savings. I just happen to have a different job where I don’t get to work from home. Our job is so important for — and I said it before, but I’ll say it again — community and creating bonds, with people breaking bread together. And I’m so proud of that, and I just don’t want this industry to go down. I don’t want my chosen family that I’ve made through this industry to suffer.

Is there anything else you want to add?
Yeah, I don’t think people who aren’t taking this seriously understand that every day they’re going out, they could potentially be extending this longer and longer, and that’s time I don’t have a job. Stay home! Be an adult and wash your hands and we can get this all done with a lot quicker.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

The coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic downturn have disproportionately affected some professions — doctors, nurses, teachers, small business owners, cashiers, and food industry workers are just some of the folks on the front lines of the new normal. So, we’re passing them the microphone to tell us what they think we should know about their hopes, fears, and needs right now. Click here if you want to participate

COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic. Go to the CDC website for the latest information on symptoms, prevention, and other resources.

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It’s become incredibly hard to think of an industry that hasn’t been “disrupted” by shiny, new direct-to-consumer brands — so hard that we can barely even utter the d-word with a straight face anymore. From makeup and mattresses to wine, cookware, dentistry, and even hospital scrubs, the common denominators for these new brands include adopting a millennial-friendly pastel-tinged, minimalism-adjacent design aesthetic, an abundance of Instagram ads, and a promotion of a workplace culture that prioritizes employee-perks like free snacks and flexible hours. This (admittedly oversimplified) formula has made many of these companies into household names, legitimately upending entire retail categories. Their success proves that taking risks, having a vision, and doing things differently pays off. So why are so many of these companies suddenly up against accusations of toxic, abusive workplace culture? And what does it mean that so many of them have young, female founders?

Most recently, Outdoor Voices, the trendy athleisure brand known for its tri-color leggings and “exercise dresses,” was the subject of a Buzzfeed News report that levels charges from employees who say there is a rampant culture of favoritism, gaslighting, fear, and distrust, caused in no small part by founder and former CEO Tyler Haney, who left her post at the company in February. (Haney declined a request to comment for this story.)

“[Haney] spoke to me like I was in an abusive relationship,” an anonymous former employee told Buzzfeed News. “Each day I walked into that office I felt more and more worthless. She had beaten me down, like she had done to many others.” For her part, Haneywrote on Instagram, “There is an unsettling trend lately to interview ex-employees of female-founded companies and report their claims either at face value or without any context.” (According to Buzzfeed, writer Brianna Sacks spoke with over 20 current and former employees and viewed Slack messages, documents, emails, and texts that legitimate their claims.)

Indeed, in December, The Verge published a similar expose about suitcase company Away, leveling accusations that co-founder Stephanie Korey bullied workers via Slack, forced them to work long hours, and, on at least one occasion, referred to her employees as “millennial twats.” In 2017, Miki Agrawal, founder of period underwear company Thinx, was accused in a report by The Cut of sexually harassing and fat-shaming employees and creating a culture of embarrassment. While these might seem like disparate tales of a few mismanaged companies, remember that for every one of these stories that is published, scores of instances of workplace abuse go unreported.

It isn’t necessarily surprising that these things may have happened — research estimates that 75% of people have been bullied at work — but what’s shocking is that they’re alleged to have occurred at companies predicated on doing things differently. In addition to creating an entire class of products with better design and lower prices than have ever existed previously, millennial-run start-ups have allegedly led the charge in revolutionizing workplace culture. In traditional workplaces, millennials have pushed companies to allow for remote work and flexible hours, to have comprehensive maternity and paternity leave policies, to prioritize diversity, and to crack down on sexual assault and harassment. So it would seem to follow that at millennial-led brands, workplace equality would be implicit, as matter of course as Summer Fridays and kombucha on tap. Yet what’s become clear with the scandals surrounding all these start-ups is that many of the companies and founders who were thought to be changing things are actually guilty of perpetuating them, and this feels especially surprising when a brand promoted a feminist outlook and had a female founder.

“Brands like Away and Outdoor Voices are always being marketed as aspirational, and people have ungrounded expectations about who you need to be as a female founder — female founders have to be really in touch with their culture, female founders have to be strong and dominant, but also kind and respectful, too. It makes it so much more wild, from the public’s perspective, that founders of these brands are anything less than perfect,” says Amy Buechler, a founder coach. “In that way, their branding actually works against them.”

The idea that start-up culture — with its long hours, tight quarters, and fixation on the “work hard-play hard” mentality — might be a breeding ground for toxic personalities isn’t exactly new, but a lot of the toxicity was credited to “tech-bro” culture. It’s possible, then, that the focus on female founders is simply because of the unmet expectation that women would be “nicer” than male founders, but it’s also possible that it’s just a sexist glee over the fall of women who couldn’t live up to society’s ultra-high standards. Winnie app founder Sarah Maukopf wrote on TechCrunch in December: “Articles often highlight when female CEOs curse, yell and show anger or bawdiness, because the shock value is higher than when male CEOs demonstrate these behaviors. We ask women leaders not only to be successful, but also to be ladylike and likable. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been criticized for not being warm and friendly enough, or saying things that were too blunt.”

This public desire for women executives to be perfect has not gone unnoticed by other women execs. “I am soooo done with the takedown of the visionary female founder story. Next! Let’s try to understand the context behind the story and cover the positive alongside the critique,” tweeted Rent The Runway founder Jenn Hyman. Business Insider reports that fellow female start-up founders like Glossier’s Emily Weiss, The Wing’s Audrey Gelman, and Away’s remaining co-founder Jen Rubio have rallied around Haney, leaving supportive messages on her Instagram. Gelman also recently penned a story for Fast Company outlining some of the times she has gotten it wrong as a leader, perhaps attempting to preemptively address potential criticisms, like that the company has a diversity problem.

Of course, it’s not just female founders who have been accused of workplace misconduct. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was accused of sexual misconduct and cultivating a sexist “bro” culture at the company. WeWork’s Adam Neumann has been accused of pushing employees to their breaking point, and, according to Vanity Fair, acting less like a CEO and more like a cult leader. But of the 134 US-based “unicorn” companies, just 14 have a woman as a founder, co-founder, or CEO. (Among them are Glossier, Rent The Runway, 23AndMe, and Houzz.) There’s an understandable desire to protect these women. We want to cultivate female leadership and inspire young women to pursue business, a world that’s still largely dominated by middle-aged white men. 

Female leaders are still perceived differently — both within and outside of the companies they helm — than their male counterparts might be. A 2019 study from University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, created fictional news articles about a fictional company, randomly changing the CEO’s name from “Adam” to “Abigail” in half of them. The gender of this fictional CEO made a significant difference in how respondents reacted to the articles.

“Our study found that consumers’ trust in, and willingness to support, an organization after a failure varied based on the gender of the organization’s leader and the nature of the failure,” researcher Nicole Votolato Montgomery said in a press release. “Women incur greater penalties for ethical transgressions because of persistent gender stereotypes that tend to categorize women as having more communal traits than men, such as being more likable, sensitive, and supportive of others. Even in leadership settings, women are still expected to be more communal than their male counterparts.”

And yet, dismay at hearing that CEOs threaten and bully their employees isn’t a gender issue — it’s more about the realization that these ostensibly mission-driven companies are nowhere near as progressive as they pretend to be. Part of the reason people buy Away suitcases and Outdoor Voices leggings is because they like the ethos of those brands. These consumers want to support something different and revolutionary — in as much as consumer goods can be those things.

As long as we’re still participating in consumer culture, though, it’s important to strive toward a goal of gender equality in the workplace. We still have a long way to go toward achieving that, and so seeing otherwise inspiring female founders called out isn’t great for optics or morale. But we also need to protect workers — the ones who don’t have money, fame, and an army of Instagram followers on their side. If female-helmed start-ups want to ensure they don’t get dragged in the press, how about making sure things are as rosy on the inside of their companies as they project them to be on the outside? 

Of course, nobody sets out to create a toxic company culture, and often, there isn’t an easy Band-Aid one can apply to eradicate one, either. “It’s hard for people to understand how difficult it is to be a founder, and also how… people are complicated,” offers Buechler. “I am 100 percent confident that each of these female founders do have a component of their psychologies that are absolutely congruent with that aspirational vision they’re putting forward. And who do we know that is ‘all that’? People also have a shadow side, people struggle to have appropriate boundaries, or to manage their anger, or frustration, or stress. We expect people, especially women, to be these visionary leaders while forgetting their humanity.”

Two years after the MeToo movement, it seems we’re finally ready to have a reckoning about abusive behavior in the workplace that isn’t of a sexual nature. It’s bound to be difficult to call out someone who is abusing their power in a more insidious way, whose “shadow side” is tinted millennial pink. But we still have to do it, even when we’d rather not, even when we love their leggings and follow the founder on social media. Otherwise, all the progress we’ve made is going to seem as dated as buying a rose-gold suitcase. 

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Cait Munro, Khareem Sudlow