Intern fired for declining boss’s demand to immediately join last-minute 3:30 pm Sunday meeting on Memorial Day weekend, raising concerns of unrealistic employment demands: ‘They just expect 24/7 availability from interns getting paid the bare minimum’ – FAIL Blog

I think these types of situations usually take another approach, but it usually takes a level of emotional control, forward planning, and social engineering of our own bosses that is somewhat foreign to us. It doesn’t occur to us in the moment, and it isn’t a quick solution either. As in, you can’t simply use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card; it needs to be carefully orchestrated over a long period of time. 

The answer is to be willing, do all that is expected of you, quickly and without problem, slowly distancing yourself from the things that are unrealistic expectations, while simultaneously still becoming invaluable to leadership.

This is, really, where politics come into play. Politics really are just what we have orchestrated and synthesized for ourselves socially on a level that stretches and warps the fabric of facts and re-stitches the thread of truths. (Legendary items, btw.) Being good at something isn’t nearly as important to standing in the workplace as being perceived as having those same talents. 

This, of course, won’t help you in the moment and doesn’t help the intern in the story here, but over time will get that water off the simmer and allow you to hop out, or however that apologue is supposed to go. 

Our ability to come across as the successful, experienced person that we are is, perhaps, something that we could all think about and spend a little more time working on.