Twelve years ago, I was thrilled when a former colleague called to see if I’d be interested in a part-time position at a huge company. When I interviewed, I was told my schedule would be three consecutive ten-hour days per week. I was eight months pregnant and thought it would be perfect. The offer letter stated a monthly salary, which I assumed was for the thirty-hour workweek I had agreed to (don’t even say it…yes, “assume” really did make an ass of me. I had worked in staffing for two different companies and we never used monthly calculations for offers). Despite several voice mails, I hadn’t heard back from the recruiter until a week before my start date. By this time, I was a little frantic (not to mention sleep-deprived and hormonally imbalanced due to my seven-week-old baby). The recruiter said she hadn’t received my paperwork (which I had sent in a few weeks earlier) but that she would stop by my house so I could fill out a new set. This struck me as a bit odd, and filled me with panic, as anyone with children can understand. At no time in your baby’s first year are you prepared -– house-wise or hygiene-wise -- for spontaneous guests, especially those affiliated with your new employer.
To make a long story short, I never did clarify that the monthly salary was for thirty hours. As you might have guessed from my bitter tone, it was based on a FORTY hour work week. I had given up a full time job with fantastic benefits and normal hours for a job paying the exact same hourly rate with absolutely no benefits. No paid vacation. No holidays. No healthcare. To top it all off, the whole three ten-hour days schedule rarely, if ever, happened. It consisted of randomly scheduled 12 to 14 hour days, anywhere from two to five days a week, starting at 6:30 a.m. and involving near-constant motion.
This went on for almost a year, until a new director arrived in our department. She had radical changes in mind and a blank-check budget to make them happen. Soon things took a turn for the worse. Her British accent and Veruca Salt foot-stamping soon reduced almost everyone to sniveling, shivering baby rabbits. We began developing a cutting-edge web-based tracking system -- truly the frontier at the time. Her vision was to roll it out globally and sell it to other companies. Concurrently, we started putting on huge events once or twice a month, which required almost the entire 100-plus-person department to work around the clock. People were literally wearing the same clothes for three days. She got them hotel rooms at the venue so they didn’t have to leave. She hired babysitters at the hotel so that a lack of childcare on a Sunday morning was no excuse not to be there.
I worked 16 hours straight with no food one Saturday. (We put on an event in a building with no food service. Meals were brought in for the guests, but none were allocated for us.) I finally snapped a couple of months later after working 26 hours straight. I had stayed all night long with four or five others cranking out schedules manually for the several hundred invitees arriving the next day. Two ridiculously pompous managers breathed down our necks and strode around like prison guards all night. I drove home at 9 a.m. the next day, nearly delirious. The others had actually stayed to work the event that day, but I was done. I said I wasn’t planning to be there and hadn’t scheduled a sitter. Besides that, I had had it. Sucked dry. Depleted and defeated. And I had a beautiful and energetic little 13-month-old waiting for me.
It was so commonplace to work insane hours that there was no pat on the back or thanks for that all-nighter. In fact, the director hosted a huge luncheon at one of the most expensive hotels in the area to thank our recruiters. The staff was invited as well, perhaps to quell any simmering mutiny with white tablecloths and shrimp. She got up to speak, dressed in one of her signature Easter-egg-colored sheaths and long jackets, and said, “I am pleased with the outcome of this conference, but I have to give our team a C for effort.” Rage flooded me until I just about went blind. C??? What would it take to get an A? Staying up for an entire week straight? Disowning our families and forgoing our paychecks for the cause?
That was the event that made me take a huge step back. I refused to be part of the madness. I rightly assumed she didn’t even know my name, and went back to my relatively cushy twelve-hour days. No more Saturday nights bleeding into Sunday mornings. Fire me, please. As it turns out, she was too busy making her direct reports’ lives hell to pay much attention to my under-the-radar rebellion. From calling “emergency” meetings at her house on Mothers’ Day, to phoning a manager at his father-in-law’s funeral, she scorched the earth in every direction she breathed. When a colleague from the UK got in a fender-bender and had to go to the emergency room to get checked out, she moved the meeting to the emergency room waiting area, PowerPoint and all, so as not to lose any time. She had her administrative assistants go to her house to clean for a holiday party. In response to complaints about work/life balance and never seeing our families, she suggested we make contracts with our children and schedule time with them – for instance, she contracted to wake her ten-year-old daughter before she left for work for a chat. At 6:00 a.m. I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure you can imagine the endless affronts to humanity she managed to squeeze into her two year reign.
It’s funny that despite the many, many changes in leadership in the years since her tenure, I never felt that devalued and degraded again. Until now. I've spent the last eighteen months killing myself, missing dinner with my family, softball games, community meetings, and canceling doctors' appointments and get-togethers with friends. I cranked out an enormous amount of work, including some huge deliverables, for no recognition. Zero thanks. Not one "good job" outside of my supervisor. I'm not looking for endless pats on the head, but flat-out disrespect is not OK. Unfortunately, it seems like a perfect circle. That’s how I know it’s time to leave.
