The last couple of weeks before the year ends are usually quiet at work, this year it’s even quieter as a lot of people decided to use the short school time between Thanksgiving and Winter break to take an extended vacatation time with their families.
I stayed at work, I just came back from a 12 day Japan vacation and could not justify taking more time off, tempting as it may. Work is quiet. Quiet for me is not good. Quiet is the enemy and not because I am hearing impaired. Quiet means finding ways to keep yourself busy or as my husband says, quiet me is not a good sign, quiet me becomes antsy . Quiet me looks for things to do.
Looking for things to do requires planning, so I start planning, I do not only plan ahead at work, I plan ahead in life. Some people call it New Year’s resolutions. I don’t call them resolutions, I call them a benchmarks. Every couple of months I check my benchmark to see where I succeded, where I failed and where I need to pivot. Sometimes we just forge ahead because this is what we were taught, but occasionally we do need to re evaluate and change the course.
Pivoting is not easy, changing the course is not easy, but I digress. Being mentally bored or not challenged is not easy either, at least not for me.
It’s the end of the year and we all have to start making decisions again, health plan for next year, 401k deductions, vacations and many more work decisions. However we can not forget our life outside work decisions as well.
Although the lines between our job and private life were a little blurry these last couple of years of work from home, it is time to put some barriers and allow for real work life balance. And that’s a decision I am willing to make. I wrote before on how I am trying to become a recovering workaholic, and I have to admit it is not an easy one.
My last 6 months were trials and errors of me trying to disconnect and set some boundaries, some days I succeeded and some I did not, and that’s ok as teaching my brain is a work in progress. I discovered that long walks with my Sagey girl while listening to podcasts has helped. In the beginning it was podcasts related to strategic thinking and business cycles and evolved to other topics that are the complete opposite of business.
So my decision to continue finding balance will continue in 2023 and possibly find a hobby like macrame might be in order.
I recently saw an article about Job Cushioning, it sounded interesting and I went to research further and discovered it’s a new term for an old concept. Lately they have been creating new terms for everything. I don’t know if they show up on my feed as I am interested in them more or just because what I follow has the latest trends.
The definition for Job Cushioning is looking for a new job while at your current job. Funny, in the old days we were always told that it is easier to find a new job when you still have a job as how else will you be able to explain the employment gap. Quitting or being fired not connected to company wide layoffs was considered bad on your resume and your prospect of finding a new job was not very good.
One of these articles mentioned that it is unethical to find a new job while still at a current place of employment, to this my response was Ha! As long as you don’t use current employment’s resources for finding a new job I believe it is perfectly ethical, especially if there are impending layoffs as most likely will happen according to all the analysts in the next couple of months.
Our main priority at the end of the day is to able to provide for ourselves and our families and to make sure we have back up plans for our future especially in an unstable market.
Vacations are good, in fact vacations are great. Most of us had a couple of days off for Thanksgiving last month, some of us even extended to add a couple more days to get a longer vacation and soon enough we will have, at least in the USA, our winter break.
The vacation part is great, the problem is when we get back to the office after this vacation. A million emails, problems that occurred while we were gone and god knows what fires that need to be put out when we get back.
Some of us hate going on vacation or avoid the vacation for exactly this reason – the returning to work anxiety. Is this normal? Apparently it is and even has a name – Post Holiday Syndrome. A Zapier/ Harris poll from August 2020 found that 87% of us have this issue. This is not just post vacation depression, this has to do with catching up on missed work, tons of emails and phone calls we will need to tackle when we are back, fixing other peoples mistakes when we were away and for some of us it simply means that we really hate our jobs.
The internet is full of suggestions on how to deal with this and I have not seen one that said do not go on vacation, so I guess this is part of being an employed adult even if it is an unfortunate one.
Once upon a time people would finish their work day, pack up their stuff and go home. There was separation between work and home at least for most of us. Lunch time at work was sacred and you got to eat in peace and when you went home you watched TV, ate dinner with your family or just did whatever worked for you on your off hours. Granted some jobs required you to be on call or have late evenings.
Then came the pandemic and most of us went home. A lot of companies discovered that now they can have meetings galore, there is no need for everyone to be physically in the same space anymore. We can have meetings with people in other countries any time needed. Online meetings were the new god! Don’t get me wrong, not dressing up was a blessing for me and I loved the fact that I could cook when a meeting was boring. I even took advantage of the online all hours format and finally finished my MBA from an international school waking up at 5am for class.
But what happens when you work for an international company that has meetings all hours – with countries that have 10- 16 hours time differences. Some that I know have meetings scheduled for them at 7am and then again at 9pm or as my friend says, I know when China and India start working as the meets pinging starts. When do employees have a chance to decompress and relax?
This is not the only problem, employees are expected to be available at all times. If you have small children and don’t mind the weird work hours that is not a problem for you. But what happens with everyone else, the meetings keep being scheduled as everyone is supposedly available, family life is pushed to the side and balance does not exist.
Some employers are great and respect boundaries but what happens when there are no boundaries. Work life balance does not exist anymore and if anything work and those annoying meet pings on the phone become worse.
The dictionary defines nepotism as the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs. In some cultures it is expected as taking care of your family comes first. And in reality most of us would be happy to help a relative or to make sure our immediate family is well taken care of.
But what happens when your manager is not qualified to do their job as they were only hired because they are a family member? In big corporate type companies you can alway go to HR, but what happens if you work for a small private family company where you feel you have no options.
Some family members are groomed from a young age and go to college to get ready for a future job in the family business, in other family businesses family members train from a young age and take beginner jobs so they will know all aspects of the business. These types of companies usually thrive as everyone has the goal of the company continuing being successful after the founders retire. Many of these businesses really care about their employees and see them as vital to the success of the business. The general statistics of successful 2nd generation is 30% and third generation is around 13%. This means that the 2nd generation has a 70% failure rate. So how does nepotism affect this success or failure? Putting people in managerial positions that they are not fit for just because they are family is probably part of the problem. Most of us know a person that you wonder how they tie their shoes in the morning has a c-suite position in the company.
Now if a family member is just a plain idiot who is harmless that’s one issue, but what happens when this manger thinks they are above everything and behaves like they are untouchable. This manager can be toxic, abusive or just a bully. We as employees who are under these managers have a problem, I know for myself I would not trust HR. And even if I would dare to open a complaint with HR as being part of a small family business I would be very afraid of retaliation.
In my opinion I believe part of the responsibility of the founder is to develop an exit strategy with planning a successor based on suitability for the future and in the present actually check before you give a leadership role to someone who is your child, niece or cousin. That is if you really care about your business.
Today I had corporate training. Usually i get the notification that I have scheduled training I cringe, I hate training sessions, they are usually long, not efficient and not effective. I really do not enjoy them partially because they are on zoom and I need to be in front of the computer for way too long for my cup of tea. However, today was a first for me.
I attended the training, complaining in my mind about it and then I was pleasantly surprised. Training was good and interesting and I actually enjoyed it, which brought me to think how was this training better? Especially since this was technical IT training that usually burns my brain to a crisp.
The difference was that this session was concise, effective and to the point with real tech examples and know-how. The trainer was not going on and on just to hear her own voice like some people I know. I left the training feeling that I gained knowledge and not wasted my time on another mandated session.
So why was this online training better, for starters it started on time and there was no wait for all the late attendees. Presentation was good and showed real examples that we encountered and solutions and not some theoretical mambo jambo that does not connect to us.The session was short, effective and efficient and I personally felt that the trainer valued my time and was not doing this training just to fulfill some corporate mandate. And lastly this trainer knew how to use the technology, in this case it was Zoom. I attended a training session last week with a trainer that wasted 20 minutes of our time not knowing how to share screens or look at the chat and frankly after the last 3 years of life in zoom if you have not mastered it yet get a moderator to help you. So all in all a good start for my work day!
I was asked recently why I am starting a blog, there are many reasons. One of my friends mother passed away recently and when they organized the house later they found notebooks filled with stories and poems that the mom never showed anyone and they decided to publish them after her death, I don’t want my kids to read my notebooks after I’m dead, I want them to see them now, I want the world to see them now,
The other reason was the pandemic, in a way the pandemic made me think about my priorities and what I would like to do in the remaining years that I have. I lost my hearing during the pandemic and that added to my introspection time, I started listening to podcasts while walking the dog and discovered Mike Rowe’s podcast (yes. The Dirty Jobs guy), on several episodes he had his mother Peggy Rowe, Peggy spoke about her road to becoming on the national bestseller list and how she fulfilled her dream and all the ups and downs that led to that and that inspired me to no end.
The other reason that might seem mundane is just a simple quote from Farrah Gray “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” that was posted on Linkedin. This post made me stop for a second and think hard as it touched a nerve. I have worked for other people all my life, not always were my capabilities appreciated and when they were I was expected to do more for the same pay while someone else reaped the rewards. Mind you I quit from that company after I saw that my hard work was not appreciated but that belongs to a different post about toxic management.
All of these reasons plus several others that I did not mention made me think and think hard about how I would like my future to look like, i do not want to miss opportunities or reflect in years to come on how I missed them. I know many of us have the same feelings, especially after the last 3 years we had, at this point in my life I am choosing to forge ahead with a new view – I will not stop myself anymore, I will believe in my capabilities and if ever my bucket list if full I will simply get a new bucket!
We all have that dreaded back to work day, for some it’s monday, for others it’s going back to work after a vacation or a long weekend. For others it’s every day. There really is no wonder that many songs were written about Mondays and none of them positive, The Bangles have their Manic Monday , the Carpenters have Rainy days and Mondays (always make me cry – continuing lyrics) and i’m not even going to talk about the Boomtown rats – I don’t like Mondays, which is a very dark song. Does Monday morning blues have to be a Monday, probably not. By coincidence today is my day, not because it is a Monday, I work on Sundays so technically my Monday is a Sunday, instead I have meetings that I am being forced to attend with people I do not value and meetings that just drag on and on as some people just like hearing the sound of their own voice. You go to bed the night before with that terrible feeling of dreading tomorrow and wake up to the same pit feeling in your stomach.
So what do we do to make us less anxious about our “monday”? Suffer in quiet, look for a new job or be a Pollyanna and try to find the positive in this. Frankly I don’t want to be positive today, really not in the mood! But what I did instead was to find a course that looked interesting on Coursera about entrepreneurship and freelancing. Will see how my day ends.
We constantly hear about pros and cons of working from home, but all of this is coming from the point of view of either the employer or the employee. No point of view from the other people who share the same home.
My husband had a period of working from home many years ago when our children were small, we had 3 kids in elementary school and a dog. House was semi quiet from kid noise in the mornings, however as I was a stay at home mom at that point, this was my prime homework time – vacuuming, cleaning, cooking and such. My experience of working from home as the other person in the house was terrible. His office space was the kitchen, this meant stopping the dishwasher as it was too noisy during his meetings and forgetting to turn it on again, no vacuuming as he had phone calls, using the kitchen was impossible. I hated it! I was very happy when he switched jobs and worked back from the office full time.
And then the pandemic started and we all worked from home and had to navigate space, phone calls and everything else. Granted this time around our kids are adults, but with everyone returning home for a while we managed, in the begining with one dog and then with two.
This year the house started to empty again as workers returned to the office, however my husband still works from home.His company does not seem keen on returning back to the office for whatever corporate reason they have. How does that affect me, you ask? We work opposite hours, i have been relegated to the downstairs in the mornings. Our dog is not allowed to bark as it interrupts meetings , i am not allowed to sing in the shower and not because i am off key. Vacuuming is still not allowed during zoom calls, using the blender is not allowed, singing in the kitchen is not allowed and I’m not even talking about listening to music, at least in this aspect I am lucky as my hearing aids have bluetooth and it streams straight to my ears. But my home balance is off, i am a guest who is too afraid to interrupt during the day.
My point of view is if you do not let your employees back in the office then you must endure barking dogs and human activity in the house. Be reasonable as an employer about what the expectation is for working from home if you refuse to give a work from the office alternative. Not all of us have big houses with dedicated office space, most of us have normal size houses and live in a suburban town with shared spaces, with neighborhood kids screaming outside, our own dogs barking and the other humans in the house living. I know some work from home is great, but have you ever stopped to ask how the others in the shared space feel about this? Sage (our dog) and i just want to bark at the amazon, ups, fedex drivers, i really don’t want to vacuum but i don’t want to be forced to have 5 minutes break between zoom class to clean a space and really i do want to sing out loud and not only in the shower!
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