Bad Fit: A Memoir by Mary Carns

A memoir about work broke me and how I repaired myself

Join the Bad Fit Alliance

A community of people who refuse to accept broken systems

Every two weeks, I send frameworks for recognizing toxic workplace patterns - and what to do about them. No corporate platitudes. No "resilience" BS. Just hard-won insights from fifteen years of being fired for telling the truth.

What you'll get:

  • Pattern recognition frameworks you can apply immediately to your current workplace
  • Stories from the book before it's published - the experiences I'm still documenting
  • Early warning signs of dysfunction (the CEOzilla trap, the Team of One seduction, startup cult dynamics)
  • OOUX methodology applied to workplace analysis and decision-making
  • First access to community programs and consulting services as they launch
  • Validation that being labeled "difficult" often means you're the sanest person in the room

Recent topics:

The Scapegoat Economy: How companies use individuals as convenient explanations for systemic failures.

Translation Tax: The invisible labor of translating between creative/technical and business perspectives - and why it gets weaponized.

The Isolation Economy: How NDAs prevent pattern recognition among workers experiencing the same dysfunction.

Privilege and Power: Why my financial independence allowed me to maintain integrity - and what that reveals about who gets to speak truth.

Who this is for:

You've been told you're "not a culture fit" after identifying problems no one wanted to hear about.

You've left meetings thinking "am I crazy, or is everyone pretending this makes sense?"

You've been fired for speaking truth to power, then watched the same problems destroy the people who stayed silent.

You already know: being a "bad fit" is often the sanest response to insane systems.