Good morning, everyone. This is Lois Lane Miami, “the equalizer” on the Purple KoolAid podcast. Today we’re talking about falling for the okey-doke, but this is about falling for the okey-doke in a professional setting. Previously, I talked about falling for the okey-doke as it pertains to men, women, and money. It was geared towards helping men avoid different situations with women and their money. My second okey-doke podcast went on to talk about women and how to avoid the okey-doke with men, going over things like men saying they’re single when they’re not and how to avoid that okey-doke.

Great, so this one is business-related okey-doke, and some of those include having you train your replacement, telling you they can’t pay you what you’re worth, having you pay for company things out of your own money, and things like making you feel like they’re doing you a favor by giving you benefits.

So, a lot of us have subscribed—you can subscribe to this podcast too if you’d like what I’m saying—but a lot of people have subscribed to the notion that businesses are doing you a favor by giving you benefits. Businesses think they’re doing you a favor by giving you benefits, and I’m not saying that they totally are not. But if you have a business, you need your employees to be there; you need them to show up. Both of those things are the same, right? You need them in good enough health so that they can continue to show up and make you money. Providing you with healthcare keeps you coming to their job. If you get sick, you’re not able to be cured, or you’re not able to get medical care. That means that you’re not going to be able to come back and perform your job, or you’re not going to be in the best condition or in ample shape when you are performing the work that they need you to do, whether it’s physical or mental.

So, I’m not saying it is a good thing, but it is a trade-off. It is not a huge benefit to you alone; it is a huge benefit to both the employee and the employer that they provide you with healthcare. But one of the things I want to start off with today is business-related okey-doke, and one in particular is having you train your replacement. Alright, in case you didn’t hear that, I said having you train your replacement. This is a book that I’m almost finished with called Falling for the Okey Doke. Once again, this is Lois Lane on the Purple Kool-Aid podcast. Anywhere you look up the Purple Kool-Aid podcast, you’ll find my podcast. It’s all over the place, right?

So, I start out by saying, have you ever trained someone to do your job only to find out they’re your replacement? If you have, good for you, but this actually happens a lot. The funny thing about this okey-doke is it happens without you having any clue it’s happening. So typically, you have in your mind—or this is what I’ve had in my mind when it happened to me—you’re doing a great job. You believe you have a great relationship with your boss, and then for some reason, unbeknownst to you, either your boss, your supervisor, or manager, or a concoction of all three have collaborated, and they have decided that it is time for you to go or they don’t want you around anymore.

They need to find a way to get rid of you. You have a skill set that they need, or you have skills that they need. You may even be smarter than them or better than them at their own business. You could actually be a top performer in that company; however, they’ve decided that they don’t want you around anymore, and there are various reasons why they may not want you around anymore. Those reasons could include you not being a brown-noser or ass-kisser, you not staying late when they want you to when you’re not required to. They don’t like your religious or political stance. They don’t like the way their spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you. They don’t like the fact that you’re a better leader than them. They don’t like that they see a lot of potential in you but potential for you to move on to another level. There are many, many reasons; maybe you said something that they didn’t like, and now they have decided that it is time for you to go.

Right, so what they will do is they will be very friendly and smile in your face, but you’ll notice that they stop including you in a lot of conversations that they otherwise would’ve included you in. There’s more meetings going on without you, and these are some of the ways that you can spot this okey-doke. There’s really nothing you can do about it because they’re eventually going to get rid of you anyway. But there are some key indicators that can help you avoid the full wrath of falling for this okey-doke because what happens is if you recognize it, then you have the opportunity to look for other jobs or find other ways to pay your bills or other forms of income before they set you out on your ass without nothing to fall back on.

Right, one of the ways that you can avoid this, and just remember in the beginning I said training your replacement, that is an okey-doke that you want to avoid or maybe I should say you want to be prepared for. Not a lot at your job about your personal life, you are not going to be buddy-buddy or best friends with your supervisors or your boss or the owner, right? And the reason for this is, first of all, you never tell anyone everything, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. My mother taught me this; she said never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, and basically, what that means is you just don’t tell anyone everything about you and everything that you’re doing. It is good to have some secrets, now I’m not talking about weird ass secrets or crazy ass secrets. I’m talking about it is good to keep some things to yourself, especially in a place of employment.

Do not let people know your weaknesses. Do not tell them about your political views. Keep them out of your personal business as much as you possibly can because it can be used against you, or you will think that you’re sharing, and they’re enjoying what you’re saying, and they will smile in your face and they won’t like what you’re saying, and they will collaborate together when you’re not around or they’ll get something in their mind that they don’t like about it, and then they don’t want you working for them anymore. And for some reason—well, I’m gonna say this—they should probably be more concerned about how much money you’re making them, your performance, and things like that, but most people are not that business savvy. Oh, that’s smart; a lot of them allow their personal feelings to override their business sense.

And they will allow their personal feelings or opinions about something that you or someone else has said to affect their business decisions. If they were smart, they wouldn’t do this, but a lot of them do. So when you go buddy-buddy with them and telling them all your business and they don’t like something, that could end up with you training your replacement because they may want to get rid of you because they don’t like the fact that you like Trump or you like Biden, or you’re an atheist, or you’re a Christian or a Muslim, or whatever the case may be.

Never tells someone about how someone else has mistreated you because, for some reason, they will feel like you are easy prey, and they will attack you or go after you, and when I say that I don’t mean physically, I mean psychologically, mentally, they may use you more and things like that. And I don’t wanna get into that part of it too much, don’t be buddy-buddy with your boss. Don’t be buddy-buddy with your managers and supervisors. I’m not saying be a jerk, I’m not saying be an ass, I’m not saying be rude. Be pleasant, be cordial, go to work and do your job. Do not tell them, and this one is very important and will definitely lead to you training your replacement.

Replacement not seem too ambitious. I know you like to sit around, especially men, and talk about all the things you wanna do, all the things you wanna have, and your dreams and hopes and aspirations. And this goes for women too. Men tend to have a pissing contest more than women do, and what I mean by that, a pissing contest, is bragging about what you want for your future or what you’re doing towards working towards your future. Employers don’t want to hear about how you plan your exit. And when you talk to them about maybe, oh, I’m you know, I have a TikTok channel, I have and I have 10,000 followers, or I’m writing a book, or I’m going to start investing in real estate, or I have this other part-time job that I really like, or I’m going to college and in a couple of years when I finish I’m gonna start my own business, they don’t need to know that because you’re hearing, you’re saying all these things you have excitement, you believe that your friends, you believe they want the best for you, but what they’re hearing is this person is going to quit, and who am I gonna have to stay here for the rest of their lives to serve me?

Right, so then, what they will do, they collaborate with each other or not, but most of the time they do, and they decide that it is time for you to go. But since you have proven that you are a good employee and you do good work, or you have a skill set that, and maybe they don’t have that skill set, or maybe they don’t have time to train someone else, so what they’re going to do is they’re going to go hire someone else. They’re going to have you train that person, and that person is going to replace you. How does this usually happen? They build you up to think that you’re now going to be a part of a team, and this is not always how it’s done, but they hire someone else, they bring them in, they put you with this person, and they go away.

This person has a similar background as you, and we think it would be really advantageous if you guys work together. For whatever reason, they come up with it; it may be that there’s the workload, the workload has grown, or you know maybe you, you know when you’re out, we need everyone, or we need everyone to be cross-trained. They do this a lot. They go “we need everyone to be trained for everyone’s job.”

So typically jobs start doing this, especially if they haven’t done it from the beginning, from the beginning when you got there, and you’ve been there a couple of years and nobody has been cross-trained, and all of a sudden they come out of nowhere, and now they decided that everybody has needs to be cross-trained on everyone’s job, and they make it a priority. And they bring a new person with similar skills and sit down with them, and it, you’re gonna know because it’s gonna feel funny. It’s gonna feel funny when this person comes in, and all these situations falling for the okey-doke I talk about trusting your gut, so it’s gonna feel funny, but you know, you’re a fairly decent person. You’re a decent person; I’m gonna say that, and you believe in teamwork, and you think this might be an opportunity to prove yourself. Right, so you take this person in under your wing, and you teach them everything you know. And a couple of weeks go by, and they’re learning and learning, and then you notice that they’re going into meetings that you’re not going into.

Then, then your managers, boss, supervisors, or the owner, you’re excluded from more things, not that anyone tells you you can’t go to these things, meetings, or outings, or whatever it is, you just, they just kind of forget to tell you, so all these things are signs that you are training your replacement. And I’ll say this, or once you’re in this position, there’s really not much you can do except for start looking for another job, maybe take more time training, they’ll make the process slow. But the thing, the way that you can prevent getting into the situation at all is number one, definitely do not share with your employer.

I don’t care if they’re your friend or you think they’re your friend, all of your hopes and dreams and aspirations, especially if they include an ex-strategy for you to move away from their business, whether it’s two months or 20 years from whatever date you’re at right now. Do not share all that with them, do not share with them other things that you’re doing on the side, do not tell them all of the type of things that trigger people like your political views, your personal opinions and preferences, your, do not debate with them about religion and politics and things like that, in other words, keep them, keep them the fuck out of your personal life.

And do not buddy-buddy with them too much unless you guys really are friends, and you are sure, and be very, very sure that you are not replaceable. For example, maybe you own part of the business or something like that, and this whole spiel that I’m going through is irrelevant, but if you are just an employee and a job, and you can be replaced, you were going to want to follow the things that I just mentioned in order to stay away or to avoid falling for the Okey doke, and that okey-doke is training your replacement without knowing it.