Can’t wait.
After hearing such dreadful news, what’s better than a happy hour? Who’d want to let it sink in and start thinking about all the ramifications? You need a break from it all. In fact, you decided to take off an hour early. Just a little personal payback.
Shaving off a few minutes arriving at the office in the morning, long lunches, early days off, “unidentified” client meetings (well, friends have to work somewhere, right?) and routine “sick leave” are all little paybacks, small compensations most people attempt to get even with their companies. Of course the more senior you are, the easier it is to get away with it. These are the “real” perks you get as a management guy yourself. You’ve earned it. You have some freedom. No one really checks on you—not everyday, anyway.
Of course, you believe you know all the tricks as well. If you decided you want to sleep in, you would avoid coming in at 9:20—it’s a tell-tale sign. So you come in at around 10ish—the right time that suggests to others that you just had a breakfast meeting with a client before coming in. Perception is the most important asset one needs to control and maintain in a big company.
Another great trick if you’re going to call in sick (when you are not really sick) is to call your mysterious ailment “food poisoning.”
You have the ideal reason why you need to stay home (and for being unable to reach the doctor and get the required medical certificate for the day of absence);
You can turn up to work the next day looking completely normal (just make sure you don’t go to the beach and get tanned); and
Most importantly, nobody would ask anything about it—it’s just too much information.
Of course, you always go to work when you actually are sick—that’s the best way to show your dedication to your boss.
Anyway, why does it feel so important that you need to find all these little ways to get even? More importantly, do you really know all the tricks? If you know all the tricks, why did you just get asked to leave (not directly but you get the idea). Let’s leave it for another day. And let’s get the first beer. It’s happy hour time!
But why is it called happy hour? Does that imply the rest of your day is not supposed to be happy? If you’re already happy throughout the day, it does seem a bit odd you would call this particular time ‘happy hour’.
“Is this why everyone likes to talk about ‘work-life balance’?”
As a logical person, you always thought that work by definition was really a subset of life, unless ‘life’ is taken to only mean leisure. But if that’s the case, why would you even compare the two? Comparing work with leisure? Are you serious? Isn’t this a classic case of comparing apples to oranges? But still, everyone talks about it.
“It’s probably smarter to ask, can you balance what you put into work and what you get out of it?”
And the same goes for life.
Wow, alcohol does make you smarter. Temporarily, anyway.
Well, back to the happy hour. Sometimes you have to go to happy hour with your boss, and sometimes you go with your clients—especially the ones you need to build relationships with. The ones you barely know or have been putting off. But for today’s happy hour, you go to your favourite bar with your colleague, who’s more a friend really.
A colleague is a really strange relationship, when you look at it. It’s the first time in your life that you have to deal with people you don’t necessarily like nor have a chance to pick from—yet with whom you need to coexist. It’s kind of like your kids, except you don’t have the blood tie. But you’re lucky. You have a few colleagues that you’d consider friends. No, friend is a bit much. You consider them comrades in the battlefield of the workplace. You’d expect your comrades might take a bullet for you one day—and maybe vice versa.
By the speed you’re drinking, your colleague Keith is able to pick up that something wasn’t right about that counselling session you had. He’s perceptive like that. But as a peer, it’s not proper to pry without you initiating it. So time for some nudging.
“Tomorrow is my counselling session. Geez, I don’t look forward to these things,” Keith said.
“Nice one” you think to yourself. It’s a pretty well-played nudge to let you start opening up. You’re impressed. Because after all, you were the one who brought Keith all the way up here. He used to be your subordinate, but now he’s one of your peers (and at the same time, you hate the idea that he could even become your boss one day). But you’re proud. You taught him a lot of things, including the art of astute nudges.
But at the same time, it’s occurred to you that this is perhaps why you’re stuck in middle level management. High flyers never hang out with their peers or subordinates. They hang out with senior people. Sucking up, as those envious unskilled novices call it. But you know better. It’s beyond sucking up (well, the basic sucking up is nonetheless required); it’s about creating a bigger ‘mind share’ in the heads of the senior people. You have to help these people remember you in positive light when the key situation arises—when they’re lazily deciding whom to pick for promotion or lay off. To put it simply, you help others to help yourself.
“Yeah, I had mine today and it’s just the same old, same old.” No, you are not going to tell anyone what just happened. Not yet anyway.
You’re too proud to tell Keith, of all people, that you need to have a performance improvement plan. The last thing you want to do is to let your colleagues know you could be on your way out, no matter how remote or imminent the chance is. That’s corporate suicide.
“I mean – my team did pretty well. We achieved 90% of the targeted goal, and with this economy, that’s a pretty solid performance.”
Yes, you too have become a macro-economist.
And with that, you turn to other random topics, which is what the spirit of happy hour is all about. You play the macro-economist, you play the politician, you play the scientist, you play the philosopher. These days, it seems like everyone needs to have a view on just about anything in this world anyway. Which political party do you like? (Why is picking one out of only two such a big deal?) Do you support animal rights? Same sex marriages? Is it not possible you simply don’t have a view? But you just do it—so the conversation can continue, happy hour or not. And all of a sudden, you and Keith seem to have all the answers to every question in this world.
In fact, it’s OK to talk about anything except work—the only thing you don’t seem to have an answer for. Sure, there are people who can’t stop talking about work at happy hours, but that’s mostly just moaning about their bosses. But you know better. Negativity won’t get you anywhere. A second beer might. And a third.
This is the time to relax. At least you try to anyway.
You are feeling better. Having a good time with a friend—acomrade—cracking a few jokes and trotting out your world-weary views on life, politics, and everything in between. Everything always become simpler as the pints go down.
This is great. But why can’t this be “life” all the time? Obvious. You need “work” to earn money to pay the bills and bar tabs.
“So: This is about doing something I don’t enjoy, and in return, making money so I can spend it on other things I actually enjoy? That’s why it’s called work-life balance? Making enough money to spoil (or tranquilize) myself so I can stand all the nonsense I face at work?
And what sort of things do I buy to spoil myself?”
Buying an apartment, and a mortgage you can barely afford just so you can show off your status in society. Buying things you don’t really need because, really, there are only so many things you can use, wear, or enjoy with after work. Spending on so much food that you then need to pay for a gym membership to lose that weight. And as you know all too well, the key is buying the membership, not so much the turning up part.
But can you make work a bit less painful? Why does everyone hate Monday, call Wednesday the hump day, and love long weekends? If you like what you do, no one should be paying you, right? A football player may enjoy the playing the game, but no one would enjoy all that conditioning and all the time-consuming exercises that come along with that, time that could otherwise be used for partying and enjoying their early twenties?
“But I like what I do!” you try to convince yourself. “Well, I don’tlike what I do, but at least I like the situation I am in at this stage of my life!” And you’re right, at least up to the point before the counselling session. You have a good job on paper, and you’re envied by most of your friends. You have a young and happy family. You have a lot of good friends. You have money to buy all that life-affirming unnecessary stuff. You don’t need to worry about shouting a bill and regretting it the next morning. You don’t need to check your account balance every time you withdraw money. You start to forget the exact amount you earn because the number is getting big enough that the last few digits don’t really matter. And you love school reunions.
But these could all very well be gone. Soon.
Happy hour isn’t exactly the time for soul-searching. But deep down, try as you might, you can’t shake the feeling that something’s still not right.
Maybe happy hour is not always happy after all.
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