Salary begets drones

11:16 PM Posted In Edit This 2 Comments »
Maybe it's just me. But at a certain point as the evening progresses, I stop doing actual productive work and switch over to non-productive, time-wasting, not-getting-paid-for-it work. Like google, wikipedia, grad school applications. Okay, no, maybe the latter can't be classified as work, but you get the point. I could choose to do more work, but after 7pm it's just not allowed. I have morals, people! Sometimes the draw is magnetic, but...
Okay, I'm being very vague. Here's what got me on this. It's 11:00pm, later than I usually go to bed. I'm done with any work allowed for the day (I finished at 8:59pm, so 2 hours later than previously specified) and I'm blog-stalking. Meaning, I'm sitting in front of my computer, too exhausted from yoga to walk up the two steps to my bedroom to sleep, reading all of the blogs that are listed on the side of my page, and some of the ones that are listed on the side of, say, my brother's page. Blog-stalk, silly, agreed. SO... that's what I'm doing. It's not work-related, it's a diversion. I considered posting earlier tonight, but I didn't have a good topic to rant on. Shopping? I made a trip today, looking for pants with a 25% off coupon to the GAP. I came home with pliers. So I was content to blog-stalk and get ready to hit the sack.
When suddenly, at 11:08pm, I get an email from work. "I haven't received _____, please email me ____ as soon as possible." Girlfriend, don't you sleep? (Just so you don't think I'm a slacker, I didn't know I was supposed to email it to her. I emailed it to someone else.) So then here's the question: I'm at my computer doing nothing productive, and I got that email when it was sent. Should I feel like "busted! I'd better email that off tonight!" or should I feel like "okay, as soon as possible will be within 24 hours, because I don't work past 8:59pm tonight, I loaf." I'm going to go with the second option, because I don't like doing administrative junk like billable hours (my dad groans with me on that one. But he has the flexibility to BS it, because he's important. I'm not.) I like the nitty-gritty with the kids. So, I go to sleep. Just because you're on salary... don't work all night! Do something fun, like looking up "esotericism" on wikipedia!

(PS, if you're someone from work, and you're reading this, DON'T FIRE ME. I'm not saying anything negative about the company or the people in it. Just mentioning how I value a little unstructured free time.)

2 comments:

Chrissie said...

Unstructured free time is totally legit (so is a no-work-past-8:59 policy).

Melissa said...

haha you should be fired!!!