On Work Families: Let’s Talk About Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 7

Contains spoilers for Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 7. If you’ve seen other season 6 episodes, let’s keep the discussion just on episode 7 to avoid spoiling anyone else.

Molesley has been at Downton—and, prior to that, Crawley House—long enough that he is considered part of the family, in the sense that his employers use the word “family” but could also fire him at any time. Certainly his willingness to, as I wrote earlier in the season, “fill in any gap, do whatever you ask, and be grateful for the opportunity” helps ensure the rest of the staff will always be glad enough that he’s there.

But he’s never quite fit in. You see this in the way he stumbles and flubs and says the wrong thing. He’s the sort of person who pauses before entering any conversation because he’s never sure that he’s earned the right to speak, and he’s less sure that what he has to say will be understood.

You can fake a lot of that, with time—and with judicious workplace social skills—but if you don’t fully fit in to a work family, it shows. I remember one of my early temp jobs, where I was told by more than one person that I did my work well but didn’t fit in, and I was puzzled because my job was to sit in a room by myself and stuff envelopes, and twice a day walk around the large office and refill all of the copy machines. How can you not “fit in” to that?

But I wasn’t that puzzled, because I understood.

I also know that when you find the right place to work and the right group of people, it gets so much better. You are excited to talk to your teammates instead of worrying all of the time about whether you’re going to say something wrong. You can share your thoughts and ideas. You become, literally, at ease.

Daisy “brought” Mr. Mason to Downton, as it were—it was not the most graceful method of recommending a new hire, but that’s another topic for another day—and now she has to deal with him making friends with everyone else, and possibly building closer friendships with them than the one he has with her.

Who hasn’t felt that same sense of loss when a work friend gets promoted, or moved to a different team, or—worst of all—just starts hanging out with other coworkers?

Daisy feels an ownership of Mr. Mason, in part because she helped him secure his current livelihood. He does not feel the same way. From Mr. Mason’s perspective, he’s just been invited to join a big new work family, and he wants to get to know them all and start building relationships that will be beneficial to him in the long run, even if those relationships don’t include Daisy.

Andy, who is relatively new to Downton, does not yet know whether he is part of the work family. You can see this when he refuses to admit that he cannot read. He doesn’t feel safe yet; he’s still a recent enough hire that he can’t showcase any weaknesses, especially when there are rumors of layoffs coming.

There’s always that period, after getting hired, where you feel like you can’t admit that you don’t know how the phone works or that you don’t know this person’s name or that you don’t understand what qualifies as an “expense” on your expense reports. You have to be perfect, until you fit in to the point where you can be a person.

We don’t all get to fit in. “There’s going to be more and more people chasing fewer and fewer jobs,” as Molesley puts it. One of the things I do worry about, when I think of losing the career I have now, is taking a job at a company where I have to fake it. That’s my biggest fear, right after “not finding a job at all.”

You also don’t need me to tell you that “fitting in” often describes a very narrow set of parameters, many of which incorporate privilege and connection. A lot of work families leave people out.

“I never think I deserve anything,” Molesley says. “Perhaps I’ve been wrong all along.”

When you are in a work family where you don’t quite fit—when you’re in any kind of relationship where you don’t fit—it’s easy to feel like you don’t deserve anything because the social structure isn’t set up to reward who you are. It’s easy to see other people doing better, making friends, feeling comfortable in the group and so on, and assuming that the reason those things aren’t happening to you is because you aren’t trying hard enough.

So you start reading those “how to be a better team player” or “how to be a better partner” articles, looking for tips that will help you do better, because everyone around you seems to be doing it without trying.

I bring up relationships because, in this case, we see Mary insisting on being herself and Edith hiding part of herself, and Edith does it because she wants to keep her relationship, while Mary is willing to lose hers rather than compromise. You can guess how these two partnerships are going to turn out. (If you know anything about storytelling, you can predict every plot twist.)

Of course, you don’t need a relationship in the same way that you need to earn a living. That’s why Mary can afford to be honest. I use the word “afford” deliberately.

Thomas has suspected, for a while now, that he will have to leave his work family and start the process of relationship-building all over again somewhere else, not knowing whether he’ll fit in.

He did not, however, expect that the group would cast him out even before he left. But they do. Work is like that. They still let him sit at the lunchroom table, as it were, but they arrange their bodies and their conversation to exclude him. Humans know when someone is no longer a part of their pack. Thomas does too.

And he sits in the kitchen, trying to understand why it hurts so much to leave a job that he hasn’t even always liked or wanted; why it is so painful to see the people he’s worked with for years move on without him.

Previously: Making Money Off Your Life: Let’s Talk About Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 6

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