The right to disconnect

#30—What does it say about our work culture when we need to state the obvious?

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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In the early morning of a past life, I was standing in the kitchen of my inner-city apartment when I was struck by a terrifying epiphany. I don’t remember what I was doing at the time—probably packing my lunch—but I do remember that my chest was so tense it ached and my shoulders were tighter than overwound guitar strings about to snap at the slightest touch. And I remember turning my head ever so slightly to the left, toward the half-drunk bottle of red wine on the benchtop. I looked at that bottle much longer than anyone should at 7.30 in the morning, feeling how a glass would dispense the warm tingling sensation my shoulders needed to relax, loosening the constriction in my chest that trapped my breath. There, pulling me towards it like a crack addict to cocaine, was my remedy.

It was board meeting morning, a weekly meeting that had started to cause me increasing anxiety since having requested in the politest possible way that some of the easy, but very disruptive administrative duties I had been taking care of (that were not in my job description) be handed to the receptionist to allow me to focus on the more strategic elements of the job. It was quite a reasonable request given my role in the company, and one which the board enacted straight away. But there was one board member—an influential owner in the company who didn’t have much interaction with my role—who wasn’t convinced. How could I possibly be overworked? They paid me well. And I didn’t come to work early!

Overtime, water colour sketch by Alia Parker.

I’ve never been a morning person, the type that is up and exercised before dawn, much preferring to ease my way into the day, enjoy a coffee and read the morning news before kicking it up a gear. I’ve always worked best this way, and once I get going, I can ‘switch heads’ and maintain my focus well into the night. And here lay my problem. I turned up to work on time—at 8.30am sharp, not late, not early, but on time. The other half of the problem was I worked overtime, without fail. And I rarely took lunch breaks away from my desk. Everyone at this company worked overtime, especially the youngest employees trying to earn their stripes. It had become so normalised that anything less was frowned upon.

The board member who seemed to question my dedication to the job with increasingly snide remarks was a morning person, always in early, and out early too, hours before me and the many occasions I turned off their lights and locked up their office.

I hadn’t realised how much the uncomfortable chill that now seemed to constantly hover around my shoulders had affected me until I caught myself staring at that bottle of red wine. I’m not a big drinker. In fact, there have been times in my life when I’ve gone years between drinks. And now, the urge to pour myself a glass in the morning light and swig it down as fast as I could was so intense it scared me. I knew it was purely medicinal, but isn’t that how it often starts? A little something to numb the pain.

It’s estimated that Australians work an average of 5.4 hours of unpaid work each week, or 280 hours of unpaid overtime a year—worth more than $100-billion a year in lost wages, data from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work (CFW) shows. I’ve no doubt the real figures would be much higher, especially considering that salaried workers, like I was at the time, are often expected to work overtime as part of their ‘package’. And working overtime isn’t always a problem—I’ve often chosen to work more hours than required to ensure the job was done well. The issue arises when an employer exploits that situation with an expectation that overtime is the norm, or in my case, refuses to acknowledge that you’re even working your arse off at all.

Work creep has become an issue in many professions—some more than others. The lines have been blurred by more employees working from home and a high proportion of part-time employment where employees feel under pressure, whether real or assumed, to answer questions from their colleagues or work associates on their days off.

It’s part of the reason that, on August 26, new laws come into effect giving award-wage workers the ‘right to disconnect’, that is, the right to ignore work-related matters, such as emails and phone calls, outside of work hours. Small businesses will have an extra year to prepare for the change. It says a lot about our culture when it becomes necessary to state the obvious—that you shouldn’t need to work when you’re not ‘working’.

The change will likely help set boundaries in some workplaces, but there will be many others that don’t bat an eyelid. I like to think of it like real estate—it’s either a buyer’s market or a seller’s market; an employer’s market, or a worker’s market. For many workers, it will always be an employer’s market in which employees feel they can’t rock the boat by speaking out and risking the workplace environment becoming uncomfortable. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to change jobs easily, which is about the only option available to salaried workers.

I didn’t drink the glass of red wine for breakfast, but I did quit that job, and I feel fortunate that I was in a position to do so. As it turned out, that was the only medicine I needed.

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Things I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week

• On change—by

  Maggie Mackellar

  Maggie explores what it’s like to leave a house—and a life—behind.

• what i’m doing about alice munro—by

  Brandon
  Taylor

  A considered perspective on the concept of ‘art monster’.

• Midweek Poetry Roundup—by

  Maya C. Popa

  A particularly lovely selection of poems this week.

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Etymology Monday

For those who missed it on Substack Notes, this week’s word is:

clue

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