Not sure if this is truly anti-work but I’m going to share here regardless. Let me set the stage. My dad has been in the hospital due to a sudden, onset, scary medical condition. Thankfully he should make a full recovery, but I was at the hospital until 8pm last night.
For work, I’m based on the west coast of the United States at a large engineering company. I was working with a colleague in Dubai on an issue literally 3 full months ago, and I thought nothing would come of it. Yesterday (Tuesday) my colleague emails me back saying the customer wants to talk more, and asks if Thursday morning at 6am would be okay to chat. I agreed, I knew it had to be early because of the time difference. At 8pm last night when I was exhausted leaving the hospital, he apparently set up the call for 5am today (Wednesday). I didn’t see the email and obviously missed it. When I logged in at 7am today, he had sent an email to me and CC’d 5 senior managers saying “I guess my meeting notice didn’t match your bedtime schedule.”
I didn’t expect him to magically know I’m dealing with personal problems. Maybe I should be more on top of my emails. But I’m hurt, demoralized, and embarrassed. It fucking sucks. Plus he said the meeting would be Thursday morning my time, not Wednesday, so it wasn’t on my radar whatsoever. For more context I’m in my late 20’s so the “bedtime” comment strikes a nerve as a young engineer.
I don’t know why I’m running myself dry at work. I should be with my family right now. I can’t even concentrate, and now I don’t even care. Why is work culture so intense and unrealistic. This is the shit that causes burnout.
Good news: his email made me realize I shouldn’t “tough it out” and I put in for partial-PTO + virtual the rest of the week. But why did it have to get to this point… ugh.