During my first week at my host office, CAUSE, I was struck by the workplace relationships between CAUSE staff. Effortlessly, they balanced playful teasing and fangirling over Kpop artists with efficiently accomplishing their meeting agenda items and grieving over a recent racially-motivated violent attack on a Filipino family at a McDonald’s drive-thru in North Hollywood. Beyond a task-oriented coworker relationship of trust in each other’s competence and diligence, there was a genuine friendship, a love for each other that permeated the jokes they shared and the way they made sure everyone drank enough water.
Near the end of my shift on Thursday, CAUSE Executive Director Nancy Yap was preparing her speech for a vigil commemorating Vincent Chin’s murder 40 years ago. I removed my headphones, ready to take a short break from work to listen to Nancy’s speech, while my supervisor, Farrah Su, chatted with Nancy’s friend, Juily Phun. Nancy joked around for a little bit, reading sentences aloud in strange accents, and as someone who had never heard her give a speech, I didn’t know what to expect. But suddenly she became serious, and read a beautiful speech which threaded her own family’s story, Vincent Chin’s story, and the McDonald’s hate crime into one larger narrative of AAPI hate, resilience, and hope, giving both context and significance to all three. When she was finished, I was stunned. I thought to myself, “Wow, that speech is good to go as is!” But to my great surprise, Farrah and Juily didn’t stop at praise. In the same breath, they comfortably jumped to constructive criticism.
“I think your ending could be stronger,” Juily said, “don’t end by thanking them, you can use a call to action”.
“Maybe you could use the word ‘recomitting’,” Farrah pitched in, “I feel like I hear that a lot in these kinds of events.”
In a few heartbeats, Nancy revised her ending, which she read aloud to the approval of her attentive audience. “Better!” Juily said, sarcastically gruff in her compliment. Both Farrah and Nancy laughed.
Watching them work together, I couldn’t tell what touched me more: Nancy’s original speech, inspiring and eloquently constructed, or the comfort with which her colleagues offered practical, thoughtful feedback to a piece that already sounded amazing. It revealed not only a deep comfort in working with each other, but also their desire to see Nancy give not just a good speech, but a great one, simply because they knew she was capable of it. That insistence on excellence was their way of showing care and respect for Nancy.
In that moment I learned something new. I hadn’t even know this kind of workplace dynamic was possible. But the joy and love that I felt between these three women convinced me this should be what work feel like: collaborating with friends for a good purpose. Here at CAUSE, I knew I would never have to settle for anything less.