I answered work calls at my moms funeral: no one works harder than me.
There’s a woman at my office whose position is office manager, but she’s more of a glorified secretary. She answers phones, schedules flights, and ships and receives packages.
As if she doesn’t have enough to do, she’s always just walking the halls and essentially being in everyone’s business. We call her the hall monitor. She’ll send an email, then walk to your desk a minute later saying “did you get that email I just sent you?” Everything she sends, she expects to be seen as top priority. She overuses the important exclamation button on her emails, so it’s hard to tell what’s important now or what can wait.
One time on a Friday when it was time to leave for the weekend, she stopped me on the way out and asked if I had received an email she had just sent. I said no, but I would check it on Monday. Opened my screen when I got home, not to work but to see when she sent it.
1 MINUTE!!! She sent it one minute prior to me leaving on a Friday and actually expected me to stay behind and work on that task. Found out later that the task wasn’t as important as she believed. As I said I would check on it Monday, she rambles that people need to take work more seriously and admitted that she even took work calls at her mom’s funeral.
Ma’am!!! That’s not a flex!!! That doesn’t deserve the praise you think it does. It’s a badge of burnout and lack of boundaries. Maybe in her generation (she’s in her late 50s or early 60s) it was taught or expected, but one thing I can be proud of is that we don’t drink the corporate kool aid and prioritize work-life balances.
Always take your PTO, take lots of vacations when you’re able, and never take work home with you, even mentally. You won’t catch me taking work calls at my mom’s funeral that’s for sure.