Reply to post: Re: Not office hours? No contact

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

logicalextreme

Re: Not office hours? No contact

Aye, I hate training people but I've spent a hell of a lot of time getting people to stand up for themselves. Young people especially, in their first job or first office job, don't tend to have much of a reference point other than school, so they're under the impression that they have to do everything that's asked of them, which naturally leads to either intentional or unintentional abuse by the people delegating (I also advise people to pull a couple of sickies a year if they haven't been off sick, as I don't often get ill and have experienced incredulity from workplaces when I've genuinely been too ill to work after a long time on the job).

But I've experienced it with some people in their thirties and even their forties too — they've just been putting up with shit for years. It can be a lot harder to give them the confidence to push back when they've got a family as they're obviously extra-terrified of the threat of sacking, even if it doesn't exist. And usually people that have been used to working that way for so long don't even have the confidence in themselves to believe that they could walk into any other job they liked if they did lose their job.

I've heard stuff along the lines of "work to live, don't live to work" for my entire working life so I know it's not some dazzling new concept.

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