The day I got put on my performance improvement plan (or PIP) in my content marketing job, I drove back to an Appalachian folk magic store I’d happened into the weekend prior. I bought a bottle of Boss Fix Oil, a “conjuring oil” touted as a way of “improving work dynamics.”
I’m not a particularly spiritual man, but I truly was at my wit’s end. I’d been in this role for nearly a year, and in my 25 years of working, I’d never struggled this badly to prove my professional worth.
A little Googling—and texts from friends—produced the same verdict: PIPs mean they’re trying to get rid of you. Start looking for new employment.
Needless to say, I was freaking out. But I buckled down, kept my confidence and worked hard through the PIP—and yet? There was something that was bothering me beyond just the PIP.
Getting put on one made me accept something I was struggling to: the fact that I simply didn’t fit into the culture there.
The “Culture Fit” of It All
The term “culture fit” is divisive in corporate spaces, and understandably so: It introduces subjectivity into a world that likes to pretend it’s a meritocracy. But I also think you can’t overstate the importance of fit in the workplace. A 2023 research review found organizational fit has a much stronger relationship with job satisfaction than job performance.
The workplace is many things. Objective isn’t always one of them.
I suspected pretty early on that the way I worked and the way this company worked didn’t align. I remember talking to my mother after attending an in-person department summit for the first time. “Everyone was nice enough,” I told her. “But I feel like we approach things very differently.”
I’d tried to get most of my work done ahead of the summit so that, during our downtime, I could participate in the kind of small talk Zoom calls and Slack just don’t facilitate. But during those times? Heads were down, dutifully typing away, and conversations stuck to strategy. Even at our team happy hour, the conversations kept coming back to work projects. My perception? It felt performative—a contest to see who was most devoted.
There were other traits I didn’t fully align with. It was a workplace where climbing the corporate ladder sometimes seemed to take precedence, and navigating office politics seemed more prudent than simply doing good work.
But the big differentiator—and what I suspect ultimately led to my PIP—was what details mattered most. I’m a bigger-picture guy, more concerned with a piece of content’s angle, takeaway, and value to its audience than whether it uses curly or straight quotation marks (something that was apparently important at this job).
By the time I was put on the PIP, I spent less time thinking strategically and more time stressed about whether an em dash or a semicolon would warrant another talk with my manager about “attention to detail.”
But I didn’t leave. I stayed and worked through the PIP. After all, I’d been laid off a year earlier and had blown through my savings; this new job was a big pay increase I convinced myself I needed.
But I also wanted to prove I could succeed. I wanted to show I was the kind of guy who could work in tough environments. I think that’s part of why I became so determined to beat the PIP.
Corporate culture lionizes the person who can “work with anyone,” “thrive in any environment,” and “adapt to changing priorities.” “Agility” and “flexibility” are worn as badges of honor. I’d internalized that. Being good at my job meant being malleable.
And, frankly, I’d failed at one of the most important aspects of any job: reading the room. I knew my approach differed from the company’s, yet I’d been overconfident in my own. Leaving felt like admitting I couldn’t hack it.
Success Is Subjective
The easier piece to write—and frankly, the piece my id still wants to—positions me as the victim of the dreaded toxic workplace, the aggrieved creative just trying to do good work somewhere that prized a degree of precision I sometimes found superfluous. But I’ve been deliberately using qualifiers like “my perception” and “estimation” because one person’s toxic could be another person’s ideal.
At a job that was a great fit for me, I remember turning in my first piece of writing and apologizing when a member of upper management had to fix a few typos.
And yet? “We all make typos,” she told me. “If all I have to do is clean up a few small ones, but the stories are good? You’re excelling.” Plus, at that company’s in-person summit, she started a happy-hour conversation with, “No work talk.”
That was my favorite job. And it’s 100% the toxic job in someone else’s story: While I liked its informal, collaborative, and relatively unstructured environment (we worked from home and had a lot of freedom in setting our own schedules), there were colleagues—people who thrived with more structure or preferred more hierarchical, competitive environments—who weren’t a good fit.
I don’t believe in magic. I do believe in reframing your thinking.
So when I Googled ways to optimize conjuring oil use back at the job that served me the PIP, I found a Reddit comment that advised using it with an open mind. It reminded me of another comment I’d found (I’m paraphrasing) during my earlier PIP Googling: “PIPs often aren’t about the quality of your work. They’re about you not fitting in.”
Whether or not that’s the most common truth behind PIPs, I did something I probably should’ve done earlier. I swallowed my pride. It didn’t matter if I thought fixating on quotation marks or putting on a show of productivity was ridiculous. It mattered that this workplace valued it.
Beating the PIP
So, I made myself malleable. And a week into my four-week PIP, things already felt like they were turning around: I focused on the small details. I executed new initiatives without question. I thanked my manager profusely for sharpening my editorial eye and made sure to talk about my “working lunches.”
I passed my PIP with flying colors.
The month afterward was probably the most aligned I felt with the company since coming on board. I felt like I was making real contributions. I felt like I fit in.
Was I happy and thriving? I wouldn’t say that. I was the one performing now. And I don’t know—for me, at least—how sustainable that would’ve been.
I never got to find out.
A month after passing my PIP, en route to an outdoor weekend in Shenandoah National Park for a friend’s 40th—and what felt, a bit, like a victory lap after a stressful Q3—I got a text asking me to check my email and log into a Zoom call about “structural changes that are impacting your role at the organization.” I was laid off in the waiting area of a Virginia rest stop.
My department head assured me it had nothing to do with my performance. Everyone had been very impressed with my recent efforts. This was a business decision. Nothing more.
I believe them. Not only because they wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation, but because I know I’m good at content marketing. Just maybe not . . . there. I also know now that there’s no magic cure for a bad fit. After all, a 2026 survey found that 62% of workers said adopting a professional persona helped their careers, but 65% said doing so drained their energy or motivation.
I think that’s what surprised me most about the whole experience. The PIP worked. I changed the ways I was approaching my job, figured out what was expected of me, and proved I could deliver.
Even if I disagreed with what this workplace valued, I still had something to learn from it. In fact, I’ve carried some of those lessons into my current job, where I’m noticeably more attentive to details that old me would’ve considered nitpicky. I even value them more.
But I also think there’s a difference between being capable of succeeding somewhere and being somewhere you can succeed as yourself. I spent nearly a year trying to overcome what I now recognize as incompatibilities, convinced that if I just worked harder or became more adaptable, I’d eventually feel like I belonged.
And maybe that’s the lesson I’d offer anyone facing a PIP: Take the feedback seriously. Make the changes you need to make. But don’t confuse proving you can do a job with proving it’s the right job for you. And don’t be afraid to admit when something isn’t working and proactively change course.
I have three-quarters of the bottle of Boss Fix Oil left. Just in case.