One thing

This week, for the first time in a while, work was like a regular full time job... 9-to-5ish, home for dinner every night, no evening or (fingers crossed) weekend work. I actually billed the number of hours I'm supposed to bill on my reduced schedule. Life seems pretty easy right now. Meanwhile, over the last few weeks when I was up late working, I signed up for job alerts and polished up my resume. These swings from "I can't do this anymore," to "Everything is AOK," are what I was hoping to avoid when I went part-time. As I suspected, they're inevitable in this job. When everyone else is 100% available and you work with them closely, your special arrangement has to go out the window sometimes. I guess it's a question of how often that happens, how much control I have over it, and how much I'm willing to accept it.

I once read an interview with Marissa Mayer, back in her Google days, where she said she kept her employees happy by identifying the one thing that was really important to each person on her team, and making sure they got it. For instance, if it was really important to someone to be at their kid's soccer game every Thursday, she would make that a priority and schedule around it. She said that was the key to keeping people happy -- everyone has to be flexible, but everyone has that one thing that they need and the workplace should respect that. During a recent conversation about retaining associates, a senior partner here cited that "one thing" philosophy. Here's mine: 90% of the time, I want to be home for dinner and not bring work home. Does that count as "one thing?" And why do I only get to have "one thing" anyway? Why can't work get "one thing" -- my time during a normal workday, and maybe a late night once every week or two -- and I keep the rest?

During this same conversation, someone suggested that associates need clearer expectations so they don't impose unrealistic burdens on themselves. Fair enough. But clearer expectations scare me too. If nobody says to me outright, "We need you to check your email at least twice an hour 24x7 except between midnight and 6 a.m., and we need you to be here every day from 8:30-7, and we need you to be available every night and weekend or to let someone know in advance if you're going to be unavailable," then I can just do what I think is reasonable and not worry too much. But once that's written down or explicitly said, my reaction is that I'm not willing to do that. Then they get into being "flexible" and being allowed to have a reduced schedule... but at some point, there is some baseline of expectations beyond which the firm is not willing to be "flexible." And frankly I'm happier sticking my head in the sand and just doing what I feel I can do, without knowing precisely what that baseline is.