In this solo episode of the Outrageous Workplace Stories podcast, host Natalie Fisher opens by positioning the series as a guide for professionals who want to stay human while climbing the career ladder, noting her own rapid rise from receptionist to HR manager without a formal degree. She then tells a detailed story about a boss who tasked her with arranging an unusually complex travel itinerary for the CEO and a potential business partner—full of variables like different time zones, altitudes, and long flights—to test the partners’ relationship. After spending a week meticulously planning the trip, the boss abruptly cancels the deal and tells Natalie she no longer needs the travel. Natalie describes her immediate internal coaching: she quickly moves to acceptance, cancels the arrangements, and reframes the situation as a learning experience rather than a personal failure. She emphasizes depersonalizing setbacks, focusing on her role as a supportive employee, and recognizing that the cancellation cost the company money but also gave her valuable planning experience. Natalie reflects on how this mindset helped her survive a five‑year tenure where many colleagues quit in frustration, and she shares a client example where a sudden project change required the same adaptable attitude. She concludes that adaptability, rapid acceptance, and maintaining professionalism while staying human are skills anyone can develop. The episode ends with a call to action to join her "Professionally Human" waitlist and receive future videos.
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Welcome to the Outrageous Workplace Stories series of the podcast. In these episodes, you'll see ways to handle even the toughest of workplace situations with power and impact while making humanity a priority. These stories shaped how I went from receptionist to HR manager in 4 short years without a degree, without the qualifications or experience that you would've thought I needed. This series is designed to help you turn everyday challenges into momentum for your next No matter where you're at right now. If staying grounded in your humanity and being true to who you are as a person is important to you, yet you also wanna get to your next level, you wanna earn more money and you wanna create a professional life you're proud of, that is also at the top of your list. I'm here to tell you that you can do both, and this is where you start. Let's go. Have you ever had a boss that you went to a whole bunch of work And then all of a sudden she's like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Basically a whole project that you had spent days, weeks on, and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, that's not happening anymore. And they didn't even tell you. I was in charge of booking travel, quite complicated travel. And she had me booking a trip for the CEO and a potential new business partner. Her thing was that she wanted me to book this. She wanted me to book a trip with the most variables possible because she wanted to make sure that after the trip they'd still want to do business together. And so that involved putting them in a lot of different difficult situations where they would have to talk to each other. And if they were still friends at the end of the trip and they wanted to do business, then that was a good sign. If not, then they wouldn't go. They wouldn't go forward with the deal. She said, I want it to be a different time zone. I want it to be a different altitude. I want it to be a long flight. I want basically everything that can be a variable to be a variable to test their relationship. Basically, I had just booked one of these flights. I had it all set up, all of the things that you wanted are checked, and it took quite a bit. This is before AI because AI would have been so helpful for this. I had to look at the altitude levels, the temperature, the language, the time zone, the flights. Everything had to be a certain way.
I went to all this trouble to do this. I went into her office to ask her a question about this trip, and you know what she says to me? She's like, oh yeah, they're not doing that anymore. The deal's off. They're not gonna go. And so in that moment, I could have like been like, what? I spent the better part of a week trying to figure this out, like making sure everything you said was good and that I had everything checked off here. And you didn't even tell me. I had to come in here and ask you a question about this for you to tell me. How long have you known that we're not doing this anymore? Easily activated and probably was a little bit. And here's the coaching that I gave myself at the time. I said, okay. Okay, I accept that. We're not doing it. So we're canceling everything, right? So I said, okay, just to confirm, you want me to cancel everything? She's like, yeah, go ahead, cancel everything. And I was like, okay, I guess that's what I'm doing now. That was my task. So the fastest that I could move to acceptance was gonna be better. I moved to acceptance pretty quickly and I said, okay, I'm gonna cancel everything. This company, they had a lot of people come and go. They had a lot of people who could not work with the boss I'm talking about and a lot of politics and dynamics that did not work out. So while I was there for a good 5 years, a lot of people came and went. And this is one of the reasons why I was able to move to acceptance on things pretty quickly. I wasn't complaining and I wasn't saying it was unfair and I wasn't making it their problem. We'll cancel everything, no problem. And then I got to work on canceling everything. Here's what I told myself: I'm getting paid to be here. She's my boss. Whatever she needs, I'm gonna do it. She's the one who wasted resources. This is the company wasting their resources on me to do something that they ended up changing their mind about. Ultimately, I'm not out anything. I got the experience of planning this trip. That was really interesting. Now I know how to do that. And now I'm simply gonna cancel it because that's what they've asked me to do. I was good at knowing that there was no point in getting upset about this. It wasn't gonna serve me in any way, shape, or form to be angry or upset about the fact that they had just asked me to cancel a week's worth of work with all those cancellation fees that it was going to take. It was going to cost them money to cancel this trip. It cost them all the money that it took them to pay me for that week to work on that project. And that's not the first time it happened. It happened a lot. A lot of people got really upset and angry about this. They ended up leaving on their own or they quit. It taught me to be somebody who would go with the flow, roll with the punches, not make it personal. I'm like, okay, I did all that work. Yeah, but it's not personal. I'm not— the trip's not being canceled because I did a bad job of booking. It has nothing to do with me. I was really good at depersonalizing, accepting things, and just moving forward. The narrative I told myself was, yep, she's my boss, I'm here to support her, whatever she needs I'm gonna do. And that was felt by her, which is why she kept me on her side, and which is why she trusted me, and which is why I got a bunch of referrals hired at that company, because she trusted me. And that is what got me through the first leg of my career very successfully, and I am grateful to that. A lot of people did come and go because they couldn't handle that. They were irritated, they were very angry. There was one woman I always saw, she was always pacing up back and forth, like it took her a very long time to recover when something shifted or something pivoted. And so becoming more flexible was something that taught me, and I'm glad for that lesson, and I would do it again. And I think it's a huge lesson that you can learn in your professional career because that's happening. One of my clients who just got a job recently, it got changed on him. So they said, you know what, this is going to be your job, great. And then all of a sudden they're like, actually, we've had We've got a change of plans. We're gonna have to throw you into this project instead. It's just gonna be temporary, but you're gonna need to hit the ground running on this. Something he knew nothing about, wasn't planning to do, didn't really want to do. But his attitude in that every— in that situation is everything. He's either gonna go into it like with a whiny attitude, I don't want to do this, or he's gonna go into it being like, okay, this is what they've asked me to do. This is my mission. This is my assignment. Let's go. And it's not easy to get there if you're not there.
That skill is something you can create, something you can build, something you can become.
And being professional and human throughout the whole thing is what will get you through. I'm Natalie Fisher. I help people get the job in the first place that they want and then thrive in that job by giving them the help, the tools, the stories so that they can turn whatever's going on into momentum to move to your next level. I will see you in the next video.
If you wanna get these videos emailed to your inbox, click the link below and we will send you every single video. Every single story. You don't wanna miss these. If you enjoyed that story and you gleaned something from it, if you wanna learn how to master your professional life while being both impactful yet deeply human, join the waitlist for Professionally Human. The link is in the show notes. I can't wait for you to see what I have in store.
