If you’re from any kind of minority identity or community, you’ve likely experienced it. You get hired at a new job, everyone is overjoyed to begin working with you, and then there’s a sudden shift in the vibe and it becomes increasingly obvious you’re off the office A-list.
Workplace trauma expert and host of the “Glass Ceiling” podcast Chrissy Barron has experienced this herself. In a series of TikToks, she outlined the subtle shifts that indicate you’ve fallen prey to an all-too-common workplace phenomenon.
A work trauma advocate highlighted the ‘pet to threat’ workplace dynamic identified by Dr. Kecia Thomas.
The concept of going from “pet to threat” was originally coined in 2013 by University of Georgia and University of Alabama psychologist Dr. Kecia Thomas to describe an all too common workplace experience among women, especially Black women and other women of color.
Dr. Thomas’ theory explores how women of color are frequently sought out for positions in the workplace by colleagues and superiors, often white men, who are eager to cultivate and mentor them. But once they get their proverbial sea legs in the job, these superiors’ attitudes often shift dramatically as they come to see their “diverse” employee as a threat.
I have experienced this as a gay man too (though surely not anywhere near to the same degree; I am still a white man, after all)— being hired by people excited by the “opportunity” to benefit from my “diverse perspective,” only for them to abruptly change their tune once I stepped out of my “place” — or at least was perceived to do so.
In her videos, Barron shared that this experience frequently happens to women across the board, regardless of any other marginalized identity they may have, herself included.
The transition from ‘pet to threat’ tends to occur once you stop needing training and guidance at a job.
Barron laid out a simple and easily recognizable way the “pet to threat” dynamic tends to play out for many people. “You are hired, and your bosses are so excited about working with you, and they’re telling the whole office,” she said.
What typically follows is a commitment to training and mentorship to help mold you in the position “because they know more than you, right?” And a sort of honeymoon period sets in “because you still need them” since you’re new.
“But the caveat is,” she went on to say, “that you’re pretty smart, and you pick it up pretty quickly… and then you become a threat. And now, instead of being excited about you, they talk [expletive] about you to drag you down, and they isolate you.”
Dr. Thomas herself put a finer point on it earlier this year in an article in Forbes about her and her colleagues’ pioneering “pet to threat” research: “The threat these credentialed and experienced professionals seemed to pose was a threat to the status quo.”
Once you begin truly excelling in your job, the ‘pet to threat’ dynamic can become even more pronounced.
The pet-to-threat phenomenon “is not a theory,” Barron said in another video on the subject. “I think, as women, we have seen that happen so many times — how people are so excited to work with you when you’re their pet until you become a threat because you’re competent and you’re smart.”
I experienced this in a job I had years ago, as well. I was hired by a veteran editor at a prominent publishing house to help spearhead a new digital PR initiative for the company’s authors. (Social media soon made this entire concept obsolete, but at the time it was an exciting project!)
What excited this editor about me was the “sensibility” and “voice” I’d bring to the project. “Frankly, we could use a gay man’s take on things to inject some life into this place,” she joked in one of my interviews. We were immediately thick as thieves.
But as soon as we got into the nuts and bolts of the job, which proved a bigger undertaking than anyone had planned for, things began to sour — especially when I began suggesting ways to solve problems that others on the team thought were great ideas.
It became clear what this boss wanted was a sort of gal pal/gay sidekick spin on the “Devil Wears Prada” relationship — she, the Meryl Streep dragon lady, I the Anne Hathaway-but-gay-and-cooler underling who made her look like a hip genius.
In short, I’d fallen prey to precisely what Dr. Thomas described in the aforementioned Fortune article: “being celebrated while being exploited for what one of our research participants called their ‘diversity social capital.'” Once I breached the hierarchical “status quo” of this structure and dared take charge of the position she’d given me, my boss immediately turned on me. I was pushed out within six months.
Like many others, it left me asking questions similar to those that Barron posed in her video. “Is it the person? Is it the company?” she wondered. If the company is creating such a toxic work environment, meaning that everything is competitive and you have to stab each other in the back, who’s to blame there?”
The answer, of course, lies within the bigger structures of capitalism, race, gender, and all the other intersecting dynamics that create these hierarchies in the first place. It may have been more than a decade since Dr. Thomas first put a name to this toxic dynamic, but sadly, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
