Being that go-to person in your workplace has many benefits. For one, well, when the company falls on hard times, and you watch others being laid off. You know that as long as sanity prevails, your reputation and usefulness will keep your name off the list.
On the other hand, the workplace can become overly reliant on you over time. Resulting in a situation where you have to be available pretty much at all times. This is basically like being on-call at all times without any of that extra pay. Just so that you can sort out whatever problem it is you’re good at solving when one pops up. Just so the leaders feel comfortable that you’re serving your special purpose and, well, you get to keep your job.
But, as that line between your work and your life blurs and erodes, you’ll find things increasingly less tolerable. And you might find yourself wondering if this is worth it after all.
Any one of us who was in this situation of existing in this working purgatory found things a lot worse in 2020. Now, working from home full time in a job that wasn’t explicitly remote. With leaders’ anxiety amid all the newness and uncertainty. The expectations they created. Making situations where now there wasn’t even a blurred line when it came to work-life balance. You were pretty much just working all the time.
Having good, confident, strong leaders who can convey this to their staff is no small thing. Which is why the VP in this story is such a standout for his willingness to draw a line in the sand for his staff.
Want me to reply to an email, even though I’m off? Sure!
Story Source: ITNW1993
This systems analyst, like a lot of the world post-2020, worked from home full time. He worked as a non-exempt worker, meaning he would earn pay and overtime for any work that he did over 40 hours. You can probably tell already where this is going. The VP of the company had expressly forbidden staff from doing unpaid work. So, when his supervisor repeatedly called and texted him on a Saturday demanding a report, he logged in to reply and copied the VP into the email.
So, this is from a while back, on one of my old jobs as a systems analyst. This was during the height of the p*ndemic, so we were all WFH at the time. I worked as a non-exempt employee, meaning I did my 40 hours Monday to Friday, and overtime for any work over that.
Our VP at the time, when we were getting ready to lug all our stuff home once lockdown was announced, made sure to remind us that unless we were exempt we were not to answer any work-related emails, texts, or calls outside of our work hours and said that if anyone tried to give us grief over that, to let him know. He was a good bean, that VP.
For some background, I was the main analyst for our systems, and I was also the main guy to reach out to for reports and things like that. Most of the folks knew how to run basic reports and export them to Excel, but the more complicated ones I was one of probably only two in the company who knew how to really make them.
Anyway, a few weeks into lockdown, a supervisor, who worked at a different city, emailed me asking for a report on a Saturday morning. After not getting an answer from me, being off work that I was, they decided to call my phone instead.
I ignored it the first time, but they seemed pretty determined to reach out to me, and called me a second and third time, before sending me a text demanding that I stop being unprofessional, get on my work PC, and answer their email. I decided, f** it, they want a reply, I’ll get them that reply.
Author: Kayitsi.com
