Ideas & Debate

Work can wait, family comes first when the chips are down

computer

A relaxed work atmosphere, a keyboard to protect your finger muscles or a padded back cushion on your chair may not be important in the end. You and your employer are two unrelated parties to a job contract. Photo/FILE

A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large company.

The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes.

“Open one of these if you run up against a problem you don’t think you can solve,” he said.

Things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, profits took a downturn and the CEO was really catching a lot of heat.

Almost at his wits end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read: “Blame your predecessor.”

The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO.

Satisfied with his comments, the press — and the NSE— responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.

About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems.

Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope.

The message read, “Reorganise.” This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.

After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times.

The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope. The message said, “Prepare three envelopes.”

Life as we know it doesn’t give you three envelopes of choice when your day of career reckoning comes.

That day of reckoning may take the form of an involuntary resignation, outright sacking, early retirement or in the absolute worst case, death.

Since we are never given a chance to come back and correct our mistakes, we have no choice other than to ensure we get it right in this lifetime.

If you think about it, your working life revolves around an average of 16 wakeful hours and eight hours spent sleeping five days of a week.

Of those 16 wakeful hours, you give on average a minimum of nine hours and a maximum range of anywhere from 12 to 14 hours to your employer for five days of the week or 260 days in the year.

Assuming you can get away with at least 14 days of vacation time annually, working a minimum of nine hours a day, you give your employer 246 days or 2,214 wakeful hours of your life per year.

Since you only have your wakeful hours to make a difference in your own life and the lives of your loved ones (if any) around you, it makes sense that those hours should add value to your personal balance sheet and be jealously guarded.

If your employer is taking up a minimum of 60 per cent of your wakeful hours, with the balance 40 per cent unevenly split between wolfing down breakfast (if you’re lucky), fighting morning rush hour to get to work, fighting evening rush hour to get home in the evening, dinner with your family and then preparing for bed, your employer then has to provide an enabling environment to make it worth your while to spend the most valuable time in your day to the organisation. Right? Wrong!

The average employer views the contract of employment between the organisation and the employee as a treaty based on the equitable principles of quid pro quo.

The employee scratches the employer’s back by performing his or her job in accordance with their job description and the employer reciprocates by paying for the employee’s performance at the end of every month.

Whether you have a relaxed work atmosphere, ergonomic keyboard to protect your finger muscles from possible atrophy or a padded back cushion on your chair to give that extra support to your rapidly curving lower back is neither here nor there; you and your employer are two unrelated parties to a job contract.

But that contract is not a lifetime commitment in spite of your appointment letter’s supposed reference to your position as a “permanent and pensionable”.

On the contrary, the contract is a thirty day pact which expires on pay day and a new contract starts immediately thereafter.

If the role was permanent, you would never have the dreaded “downsising” that is now par for the course in corporate Kenya.

Your position would never be advertised in the event of your retirement or your death; instead your position would be retired for posterity just like a player’s jersey in the American National Basketball Association (NBA).

But would it make missing your child’s sports day or skipping a critical doctor’s appointment or failing to attend a friend’s wedding or funeral ,all because you had to be at work worthwhile?

When you are sick in your hospital bed, are you surrounded by your family or is that your boss sitting to your right propping up your pillows and gently wiping the spittle drooling from your dry scaling lips?

If the truth be told, your boss may just have finished a team meeting redistributing your work to other team members, asking his secretary to make sure she sends a card and flowers to you on his behalf and asking the HR manager to get a list of potential internal candidates that can take the position in case you die.

We must have food, shelter and clothing therefore we must give unto Caesar what it Caesar’s from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

But as we give unto Caesar, we must recall that our social contracts with family must be fulfilled in our few remaining wakeful hours.

After all, Caesar, as we all know , has no qualms using envelope number two: “reorganise” when it best suits him. Family, on the other hand, is in it for the long haul.

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