Flagged in the ATS for Having Standards Hardcover – March 21, 2026

Flagged in the ATS for Having Standards is a funny, sharp, emotionally honest book about modern work, modern hiring, LinkedIn culture, and the polished absurdity of trying to remain professional inside systems that often deserve a full documentary and a wellness check.Written in a bold first-person voice, this book follows one professional’s journey through recruiter ghosting, fake urgency, endless interview rounds, unpaid strategy decks, passive-aggressive emails, toxic bosses, performance reviews written in fog, and workplace cultures that call chaos “collaboration” with a straight face. It pulls apart the language, rituals, and theater of corporate life, exposing what so many people feel but are rarely allowed to say out loud.This is not a gentle career guide filled with soft advice about networking, positivity, and trusting the process.This is a witness statement with jokes.Across its chapters, Flagged in the ATS for Having Standards explores job descriptions that sound like three careers hiding inside one salary, “confidential” roles that feel like organizational witness protection, surprise panel interviews, AI hiring absurdity, LinkedIn hypocrisy, and the emotional cost of being dependable in badly run environments. It is about what happens when the strongest people in a workplace become the human shock absorbers for weak leadership, and what it feels like to be called difficult simply because you noticed what everyone else was trying to rename.But beneath the satire is something deeper.This book is about the people who were ghosted, strung along, underestimated, overworked, politely dismissed, or professionally gaslit by systems that still expected gratitude. It is about the people who were told to be patient, flexible, strategic, and positive while carrying burdens created by avoidance, executive ego, and organizational cowardice. It is about reclaiming reality from the polished language designed to hide it.If you have ever uploaded your resume into the void, been praised without being chosen, sat in a blazer waiting for an interview that never started, completed free work disguised as an “assessment,” or worked for a boss who wanted excellence but brought chaos to work in a travel mug, this book will feel painfully familiar.Part workplace satire, part professional reckoning, and part survival manual for anyone trying to stay human in a system built on performance, Flagged in the ATS for Having Standards is for job seekers, employees, leaders, and anyone who has ever suspected the problem was never their standards.Because if you have standards, you were never the problem. Read more