I’ve just finished my first experience of working in the weekend. What once was a personal taboo of mine is no more. I’ve worked through the very late evening on Thursday to avoid bringing work home but still couldn’t avoid some required finishing work.
Working in the weekends is not as devilish as I thought it would be. I always thought working in weekends interrupts with the very necessary stress and pressure relief from the already over packed weekdays. I have no intention of letting this become a regular habit but I don’t consider it the ultimate evil also.
The fear of a slippery slope has definitely come to my mind, especially since my boss might get used to weekend deliveries. There’s a fine line to maintain here.
Weekend surprisingly hold a lot of free time. That’s usually what they’re about but still, squeezing in a couple of hours more work doesn’t really injure it beyond repair. I may be trying to console myself as I currently don’t have a choice in the matter but I’m almost certain It won’t bother me should I be forced to put in another extra hours occasionally. Getting paid extra for my weekend hours is a sweetener helping to swallow the pill but it’s not really about that.
The modern workplace is a demanding one. Often compared to modern sweatshops the work environment of “free professions” has never been more enslaving.
Technology proved to be a powerful means of bondage enabling companies to increase the availability of their workforce over distance and time. Logging on to emails and the company’s servers from home, blackberries, laptops and more are all tools of “enslavement” of the modern office employee.
I still believe we have it better than the blue collar workers often romanticized by my fellow colleagues. With as little experience as I have in manual labor I still recall sore hands and backs after what appeared like endless days in fields and manufacturing floors.
We do have a choice of whether to participate in the game or not but if you’re ambitious you can’t really be any less available than any of your colleagues. We’re digging our own holes with our mobiles.
This blog I fight to maintain can easily be regarded as weekend work. Posting isn’t easy and maintaining quality (which I lack recently, in my opinion) is even harder. Still, it is enjoyable and serves as time off from regular work which is no less important.
Working weekends is a great competitive advantage, however cruel to yourself, your family and friends. I fear many have realized this as email activity on weekends has risen dramatically. Eventually many regret sacrificing their best years on some job but that’s usually done from a senior executive position making the regret a bit easier.
An interesting point of view on working weekends can be read here. There’s no real alternative according to this article. Judge for yourselves.
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- Actively Manage Your Career to Stay On Top of Your Game
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