Watching hapless Katie Zacharia attempting to navigate the role of Donald Trump’s White House press spokesperson, I found myself experiencing an unexpected emotion. A little irritation, yes, even amusement, but also some sympathy.
Because most of us, if we’re really honest, have at some point found ourselves in a job for which we are spectacularly unsuited. Not necessarily because we lack the intelligence, but because something about the role is at odds with who we are.
In Zacharia’s specific case, it was more incompetence than incompatibility. She is a Trump loyalist and conservative commentator, but she seemed unprepared. She froze in front of journalists and made the fatal PR error of becoming the story via her claims about being a lawyer.
That’s not imposter syndrome, the relatively fashionable, performative affliction of successful people who worry they don’t deserve their success. It’s something more uncomfortable: you feel like an imposter because, well, you are one. Zacharia lasted just five days in the job.
I once spent 11 months working in public relations. Not quite a year – although it felt considerably longer. Long enough to discover that there are few things more dispiriting than spending your working life promoting people or products you don’t care about, defending positions you find uncomfortable and trying to persuade others of things you don’t believe in yourself. That said, almost everyone I worked with was lovely.
I could do the work, but almost immediately I knew I didn’t want to. It was almost as if I was in a parallel universe; everyone else could be so convincingly enthusiastic about the people and products I had such doubts about. Three months in and I was wracked with self doubt. After six, I was planning an escape route. But after nine months, we agreed mutually it wasn’t for me – despite the healthy salary!
Compared with journalism, where cynicism is practically a contractual obligation, the PR world was bursting with goodwill. People were supportive and genuinely encouraging. Despite all this positivity, I was miserable.
There is something peculiarly soul-crushing about having to manufacture enthusiasm for something that leaves you cold, or worse, actively uncomfortable. Every day brought another opportunity to polish an argument I didn’t believe in, to put the best possible gloss on something undeserving. Weirdly, it wasn’t that I was incapable of doing the job. In some ways, that made it worse. I could write the words and make the case. I simply couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be doing either.
Journalism, for all its faults, never made me feel quite like that. Of course, journalists compromise. But there is a difference between the everyday compromises of working life and feeling that the work itself challenges your personal convictions. I actually do believe the aphorism that a principle isn’t really a principle until it costs you money. It’s easy to be principled with nothing at stake, much harder when the potential price is your salary or career progression. Leaving PR cost me a lot but staying would have cost more.
That realisation sparked my search for later life work that felt genuinely worthwhile and led eventually to teaching. The pay was hardly an incentive, but the sense of purpose was something I had been missing. Teaching has its frustrations, naturally. But never once have I wondered whether helping a child learn was something I fundamentally believed in.
So when I watch someone like Zacharia struggling in a role that seems so wrong for them, I try not to laugh. Sometimes the problem isn’t just that you’re bad at your job, it’s that the job is bad for you.