A Donut, a Whisper, and the State of Work
Capacity: The Burnout Thread — Part 1
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a morning radio show hosted by a man you’d recognize from the latest Housewives reunion.
It was National Donut Day. To “get people excited” about being back in the office, the station’s parent company was offering free donuts and raffling off gift cards.
“How about you just tell them to come in,” the host said flatly. “This is where their job is.”
I cringed at such an outdated view of today’s world and work life.
Then his producer, a young mom of two, whispered in: “Please don’t ruin this for me. I work from home three days a week.”
The other co-host chimed in: “You get to work from home whenever you want.”
The host paused… “You’re right. I do.”
What started as a throwaway comment about pastries became a window into the divide in workplaces today: the distance between leadership and the lived experience of their workforce.
The producer’s soft, almost pleading voice came from someone who was guarding the one thing that made her life workable. The flexibility to work from home three days a week gave her the breathing room to show up well in her role and still have something left over for the rest of her life.
Then came the host’s blunt take: “How about you just tell them to come in. This is where their job is.” The moment couldn’t have been scripted better as only seconds later, he was reminded that he works from wherever he wants. It was a snapshot of how, for some, flexibility is a given and for others, it’s not in their control. When you don’t have control over how you work, you lose one of the most powerful buffers against burnout: the ability to protect your own capacity.
That’s where the disconnect widens, because while employees are quietly guarding what little space they have left, companies are still trying to sell the office as a place people should want to be.
Case in point: in the same conversation that had the producer pleading to change the subject, so she wouldn’t risk losing her setup, was about the company’s latest attempt to “get people excited” about being there. The company’s solution of free donuts lands less like a perk and more like a quiet acknowledgment: We know this isn’t your first choice.
Yes, you’re expected to work, contribute, and be productive. That’s the agreement that keeps the paycheck coming. But we can’t ignore that today’s technology gives us the capacity to do that from almost anywhere. So when contribution is still tied to a cubicle, the free donut doesn’t feel like a treat. It feels like a distraction—a thin layer of frosting over the real problem.
What was just a casual conversation on a show I enjoy became, for me, a spark in the unraveling of burnout.
I’ve spent a decade working in corporate wellness, building programs and strategies meant to keep people healthy and engaged. Even the best programs were up against a bigger problem— a system that wasn’t sustainable for humans, colliding with lives that were already stretched thin.
When burnout became my own experience, I felt its depths.
I’ve seen many different perspectives on the causes of burnout over the years: workload, mental health, too much to do, too little time, poor self-care.
In my lived experience, burnout is never one thing.
It’s a combination of too little of something, too much of another, layered on top of a body that’s been screaming for help while a human tries to keep going.
Burnout doesn’t discriminate and shows up in varying degrees in everyone. It was never only the exhausted mom or the millennial questioning if this is all there is.
It’s the executive who lives for the rush of back-to-back meetings, fueled by coffee until collapsing into a drink at night.
It’s the dad racing from the office hoping to catch the last minutes of his kid’s game.
It’s the new hire quietly wondering if this place will be better than the last.
It’s the manager loved by her team, but feeling the pressure from above grow heavier each day.
It’s the worker toward the end of their career wondering if they’ll have enough to live on in retirement.
Burnout shows up in different ways for each of us, but it’s not random. It’s the same forces, hitting us all every day in varying degrees, making our bodies ask: Why does it have to be like this?
This series is my attempt to tell the whole story of burnout. It’s one I’ve been piecing together for more than a decade, peeling back the layers between how we’re built, how we live, and how we work.
Next time in Capacity: The Burnout Thread- Part 2: The Pendulum Swings — A reflection on the history of work-life balance and how we traded technology’s potential for humanity’s hustle.
