Part III - The Total Bullshit of Work/Life Balance
This is part three of the three part story about me fighting for my rights to have some sleep and weekends on a stressful and abusive project.
Part I - Dealing with 500 pages on one weekend
Part II - Crushed by office politics
Now, here is part III:
During meetings round 2, I sat down with the operational manager for 3 hours trying to convince him that there were ways to arrange the schedules more effectively so people could have at least 2 weekends off before they needed to work another weekend. I showed him my proposal, sample schedules to prove my point. But the guy just wouldn’t get it. My team lead even stepped in to express his support of my ideas. After 3 hours, there was still no agreement. I had to drop the ball and told him that I was not going to work more than 2 weekends in any given month. Period!
I went up another level in the food chain with my proposal the next day. Finally, the guy agreed to part of my proposal and made some modifications. I find that if you want to convince managers to change something, complaining won’t get you anywhere. Always have a Plan A or Plan B to suggest to the managers. If they like what they see, you get what you want. Most of the time they would like to show off their authority by adding or deleting a bit from your original plan. But that’s not a big deal. You still get most of what you want. The point is that always have a solution before you negotiate.
I finally got the Aug on-call schedule a week later. Guess what, I was only scheduled to work on two weekends and 4 nights. In July, I was on call every weekend and had to work on 15 night shifts in addition to the regular daytime job. I didn’t know if it was because of the big loud noise I made in July or they just simply didn’’t want to deal with me anymore. I got myself off the hook from the heavy duty oncall crap.
Want a work/life balance? You have to fight it yourself because when the employers tell you they can help, they are just doing it to beautify the HR newsletter.
Oh, one more thing: you also have to make damn sure that you are indeed in demand by your employer. If they have been thinking about cutting you loose, perhaps the best strategy is to lay low if you still want the job…
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5 opinions for Part III - The Total Bullshit of Work/Life Balance
ME Strauss
Nov 28, 2005 at 6:05 am
You’ve got a point there Christine, about making sure that they really need you. Because they sure will use that for an excuse to say good-bye and to keep the others in line. You did the right thing though, you showed thme how it was in THEIR benefit to do what you want. That’s the key to business everywhere.
Just fabulouse!
Liz
Christine(Yuna)
Nov 28, 2005 at 9:15 am
That’s it! “Show them how it was in THEIR benefit to do what you want”… People are all worried about their own performances and their own benefits on the job. If we can create a “win-win” situation where everybody can benefit from it, then the negotiation could be much easier. I didn’t think of that… I just figured that if I made a plan, it’d save the manager’s time …
Great point Liz!
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Kim
Mar 13, 2006 at 10:30 am
Christine, you are my hero! the work/life balancing act…in my professional life, I used to be a total push-over, yes woman…and then I learned an important lesson from a woman who would stop her work every week to go and get a manicure. She didn’t ask…she just did! Same thing with time off and any other personal detail that needed tending to…
Treat yourself as you would treat a guest!
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