Identifying Pre-Collapse Signals in the Workplace

Hey, and welcome back to Standing on the Ledge, all of you ledge walkers — you rebuilders from the rubble. How are you this fine evening?

Yeah. Late-night post for me.

I’ve talked a lot about collapse. Grand resets. Those moments when the floor drops out from under you and you’re scrambling to find footing — and then doing whatever you can to stop the bleed, stop the downward spiral, and hold your life together long enough to rebuild.

But there’s a part I haven’t really sat with out loud.

The pre-collapse.

And I don’t want this to turn into a shame ledger. I’m not here to spiral backward and flog myself with hindsight. But unless your collapse came out of the blue — like a boss walks in one day and you’re out, no warning, no runway — there are usually signs. Tensions. Pattern shifts. The temperature changing in the room.

In my case, when I look back, the shift started right around the moment new management came in.

And it’s not like new management is always a problem. I’ve watched new management roll in and roll out before, while the old management stayed. This time, the new management stuck — and at first, I welcomed it. The old way felt like status quo. Not malicious. Just… stagnant. So when someone arrived with a different style, it felt like momentum.

Until it didn’t.

Where it turned was scope. Expectations. The quiet rewrite of what “my job” was supposed to include. I pushed back — not out of stubbornness, but because I work within the terms of my contract. And I guess they didn’t like hearing, “No. That’s not part of my scope.”

So the heat went up.

Here’s the part that matters: there was a specific task that needed to be done. I didn’t have the manpower to do it. Under the previous management, I negotiated to have that task hired out — and it worked. No drama. The store got what it needed, I stayed on schedule, and the math made sense.

Then new management took over, and those people were terminated. Whether it was knowingly or carelessly — I don’t even care to argue that part anymore — the result was the same: I wasn’t told. Work got delayed. I fell behind. And then the expectation became: I would pick up the pieces of a mess I didn’t create.

And the kicker? That mess was paid extra work — and I was being pushed to do it without the extra pay.

So now I’m behind. I’m stressed. And the system around me is acting like the delay is a character flaw instead of a resource problem.

Then the pressure got political. Store management against me. Me against store management. Me against him. Triangulation. Misalignment. Confusion turned into friction, friction turned into blame, and blame became fuel.

The store had an expectation that the task be done — and honestly, I didn’t disagree with that expectation. The work needed doing. But I wasn’t going to hand over free labor just so someone else could save face. I said it plainly: “I can do this work. I am not doing it for free.”

I explained what happened. And I guess my boss didn’t like that.

Instead of working with me to find a solution, the problems kept getting worse — until there was enough “evidence” (manufactured or inflated, doesn’t matter) that the store requested I be terminated.

So here’s the clean truth I can offer tonight:

In my situation, yes — there were warning signs. Not always obvious in the moment. Not always readable when you’re busy trying to keep the machine running. And maybe I wasn’t finely tuned enough at the time to adapt fast enough, protect my boundaries early enough, or counter the pattern before it locked in.

But the signs were there.

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A framework for “the signs” (without turning it into shame)

If you’re in a rough patch and you haven’t hit the collapse yet, here are a few lenses that can help you spot what’s happening before the floor drops.

• Weak signals + sensemaking: early warning signs are often subtle — not one dramatic event, but small pattern changes that only make sense when you line them up over time.¹
• Psychological contract breach: not the written contract — the unwritten deal. The understood “this is how we do things, this is what’s fair, this is what you can rely on.” When that gets violated, trust erodes fast.²
• Role conflict / role ambiguity: when you’re getting contradictory expectations (or expectations that keep shifting), stress spikes — and the job becomes impossible to “do right,” because “right” keeps moving.³
• Organizational justice: people don’t just react to outcomes — they react to perceived fairness of decisions and process. When the system feels unfair, compliance becomes fragile and blame games multiply.⁴
• Scope creep (without resources): when the workload expands but staffing, time, and pay don’t — you’re being set up to carry a gap that will eventually be used against you.⁵
• Role overload: when demands exceed resources long enough, you stop operating — you start surviving. That’s not weakness. That’s a stress injury in slow motion.⁶
• Normalization of deviance: the slow drift where “not okay” becomes “normal” because people get used to it — until the accumulated risk finally snaps into consequences.⁷

None of those frameworks are here to help you obsess. They’re here to help you name what’s real early enough to protect yourself: document the change, clarify the expectation in writing, push scope questions back to the contract, and set boundaries while you still have leverage.

So if you’re reading your environment right now and something feels “off,” don’t ignore it. Don’t catastrophize — but don’t gaslight yourself either. Pay attention to the pattern. Pay attention to the drift. Because the signs may already be there.

Godspeed, my ledge walkers — and my rebuilders from the rubble. That’s it for tonight.

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Footnotes

1. Karl E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations (1995); Igor H. Ansoff, “Managing Strategic Surprise by Response to Weak Signals” (1975). ↩
2. Denise M. Rousseau, “Psychological and implied contracts in organizations” (1989); research literature on psychological contract breach and violation. ↩
3. Robert L. Kahn, Donald M. Wolfe, Robert P. Quinn, J. Diedrick Snoek, “Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity” (1964). ↩
4. Jerald Greenberg, “A Taxonomy of Organizational Justice Theories” (1987). ↩
5. Project Management Institute (PMI), definition and discussion of scope creep (PMBOK-based terminology). ↩
6. Work stress research defining role overload as demands exceeding resources (organizational psychology literature). ↩
7. Diane Vaughan, “The Normalization of Deviance” (developed from analysis of the Challenger disaster; concept widely applied in organizational sociology). ↩