26/10/2026
Some people get promoted and spend the rest of their careers making sure nobody beneath them feels tall enough to stand beside them.
And the damage goes a lot deeper than hurt feelings.
Toxic management can change the way an entire station feels when someone walks through the door.
The conversation stops. Shoulders tighten. People start watching their words, checking who’s listening, and wondering which harmless comment will make its way back to the office with three new details attached.
Everyone knows who they can ask for help.
Everyone knows who will use that request against them.
That is an exhausting place to work.
Especially when the person creating that environment keeps asking why morale is so low.
Toxicity isn’t always somebody screaming in your face.
Sometimes it’s a supervisor who stays perfectly calm while humiliating you in front of your coworkers.
It’s being told to show initiative, then getting reprimanded because your idea didn’t come from the right person.
It’s management asking for honest feedback and spending the next six months treating you differently because you gave it.
It’s being praised when they need an extra shift covered and treated like a disappointment when you finally say you can’t.
It’s expectations that keep changing, so you’re always defending yourself against a rule nobody explained until you supposedly broke it.
After a while, people stop trying to succeed and start trying to stay out of trouble.
They stop bringing ideas.
They stop volunteering.
They stop asking questions.
They stop believing that effort will change how they’re treated.
Then management calls them lazy, negative, or disengaged.
You cannot repeatedly punish people for caring and then complain that nobody cares anymore.
And we need to talk about the managers who build their reputation by damaging someone else’s.
The ones who turn every correction into a performance.
Who answer a question with, “How do you not know that?”
Who bring up an old mistake whenever an employee starts gaining confidence.
Who need the room to laugh at somebody else so nobody looks too closely at them.
There is a particular kind of cruelty in recognizing that someone is eager to learn, and using that vulnerability to establish your superiority.
That new responder already knows they’re new.
That struggling employee already knows they’re struggling.
They came to you because your position suggested you were somebody who could help.
What you do with that trust matters.
We can have high standards and still treat people like human beings.
If somebody’s performance puts a patient or a crew at risk, address it. Be direct. Take the necessary action. Explain what has to improve and give them a fair chance to demonstrate it when appropriate.
But explain what the humiliation accomplishes.
Explain how gossip improves clinical judgment.
Explain how favoritism builds trust.
Explain how making someone afraid to ask a question makes the next patient safer.
Because a crew that fears looking stupid may hesitate to admit they’re unsure. An employee who expects ridicule may stay quiet when they need another set of eyes.
That should concern every person responsible for leading first responders.
And the burden doesn’t magically disappear when the shift ends.
People take that tension home. They replay conversations in the shower. They lie awake wondering what they did wrong. Their families watch them become quieter, more irritable, less like themselves.
Some start questioning a career they once loved because going to work means bracing for another day of being picked apart.
Then they leave, and the explanation is that they “couldn’t handle it.”
How convenient that the exit interview somehow becomes another opportunity to blame them.
If you manage people, pay attention to what happens after someone disagrees with you.
Do they still get opportunities?
Can they explain a concern without having their loyalty questioned?
Can they make a reasonable mistake without becoming the department’s running joke?
Do you hold your friends to the same expectations as everyone else?
And when you get something wrong, can your crew expect an apology, or do they have to pretend it never happened?
Those everyday choices shape the culture far more than the mission statement hanging on the wall.
To the responder who has slowly started believing they have nothing to offer: take an honest look at what you need to learn, but also at the environment you’re learning in. You can own a mistake without accepting someone’s decision to make it your entire identity.
You deserve clear expectations, fair treatment, and corrections that help you improve.
A title gives you influence over someone’s workday, opportunities, and confidence. Use it with some damn care.
Your crew should be able to grow under your leadership without having to recover from it afterward.
~ Medic Humor
