When Is Enough, Enough?
By: Alex Weiss
Tags: Corporate Culture, Burnout, Career Advice, Respect, Overwork

When Is Enough, Enough?

Photo by Rux Centea on Unsplash

It is Friday evening, and you are getting ready to have dinner with your girlfriend. She has spent the whole day preparing a new recipe which she found online weeks ago, and promised to make a special dinner out of it. She even went out of her way to get the special spices from different markets and had to marinate the ingredients hours in advance. Basically, long story short, she made an incredible amount of effort to have a nice, cozy, and romantic dinner with you.

You have been working so late every night, and yet in the back of your mind, you have been pretty excited to be spending some quality time together.

As you sit down at the table, you realize how much the long week has taken a toll on your body and your mind…but you feel great that finally, it is Friday. Now you can start your very well-deserved weekend — in a relaxed and peaceful environment.

Your girlfriend brings a nice hot and delicious looking plate, and you are all set — ready to enjoy each bite.

As you start eating and asking your girlfriend about her day, your work phone starts vibrating, and you can´t help but check what it´s all about, hoping deep down that it is not your demanding boss.

And no, it turns out that it is not your boss who is sending emails…but rather David, that super annoying colleague of yours who is always trying to take credit for your work. He has sent you an email, cc-ing your boss, and as you are processing the whole thing, you see that your boss responds to him on your behalf — almost immediately.

This feels awful. What is he thinking responding so late on a Friday night? Does he think that you are not capable of responding to David yourself? Why can´t this wait until Monday? Your ego is hurt even more as your phone continues vibrating with emails back and forth between the two of them.

And now, you are the one on CC.

You have to say something now. They are completely sidelining you here. And it looks as if you are not dedicated enough to your job. And even though it is 10:30 PM, you feel this sense of pressure to respond and participate in the chain of emails.

The deadline for the project is not until next week; however, you feel that your perception will be damaged if you don't respond. You have worked so hard on this project. It has been 6 months of non-stop psychological and mental labour, and let's not forget all those late nights you put in. You have barely had time for your family…and your girlfriend is super annoyed at you.

But you have given your all to this project. And now, you can´t sit still and watch your colleague steal the thunder!

The overwhelming thoughts race through your mind, and you feel you have no choice but to respond.

“It will be just an hour of work” — you tell yourself, and then your girlfriend.

She is not happy at all, of course.

You start participating on the email chain and want to tell them to stop sending emails on a Friday night. But you are afraid to do that. How could you say that? This is not acceptable in your company. You are very well aware that the harder you “show” that you are working, the more highly the bosses think of you. And the more dedicated they think you are.

If you don't respond to these emails on your Friday night, you are risking your career future.

You keep thinking in your head:

“When it comes to getting the next promotion, of course, they will choose David over me because he is willing to go the extra mile”.

The thought of this drives you crazy. And puts even more pressure on you to forget about your Friday night.

You end up working for the whole weekend.

And this is not the first time this has happened. In fact, this has been happening regularly for the last few years. Having a weekend all to yourself has become an exception, and is not the norm.

And you have completely normalized this pattern.