Working 9-5
God bless the Gen Z sticking their noses up and traditional working, thank you, young ones for leading the way.
You can call it idealism, I call it having standards.
Why? Because bosses too often think they have the power if life and death in the UK. They treat you as replaceable and dehumanise you thinking that God’s punishment is strictly reserved for paedophiles and murderers. Got news for you. God’s judgement is for all and you just be careful how you treat his creation.
Like it or not, Karma is a thing.
So lets take back control. We spend a third of our life asleep and we spend another 3rd almost at work or thinking about work or planning for work.
Life shouldn’t be so. I remember when my dad died, not a single former colleague went to his funeral.
The people who did turn up were his friends, people who actually loved him. His family especially.
Meanwhile Bosses act like they own you. I’ve been guilty of this, checking emails at midnight to see if the crazies had been up howling at the moon (this is across jobs not just my current one) calling people at ungodly hours because they are online. I remember fondly working in a place were I got a teams call at 10:30pm at night to tell me about a midnight deadline. I was having an dance having released myself from my work at 10:25pm and then some hatchet case calls me and tells me she’s got a midnight deadline and she needs my help. We’d been talking then entire day and she’d not said a word.
Then there was a time when my boss rang me at 7:30pm really cross because I’d had the audacity to wash my hair after work and therefore miss his call (which was meant to be at 4:30pm)
I have called colleagues in a panic at 8pm the last 2 weeks. That for me has been a sign that I am deeply mentally unwell and completely irrational.
I have tried the “just work your hours” and nothing else. But ultimately I want freedom, freedom to decide if I want to deal with your BS today. Freedom to recognise toxic people and not be wholly reliant on them to pay bills.
Freedom to choose when I work, freedom to choose how often I work. I am naturally a morning person, so a 9-5 doesn’t actually suit me. My best hours are between 6am and 9am. I get 3 times the amount of work done then as I do any other time.
Something TMS stated that I felt rang true to me, everyone wants to be a boss. But are you ready to be your own employee?
I know I am not and that is the level of self awareness you need if you are to start a business. You need to be ready to not be idle, be proactive and to forward. These are traits I used to pride myself in. I know that there is a version of me that exists that is ready, and I am not sitting in that “energy” yet.
But I don’t just like the idea, I am in love with the idea. With my business idea discernment is key and you can’t be a people pleaser. That’s what attracts me. Freedom attracts me. The ability to develop the skills of saying no in order to survive, clear communication as well as being able to set my own price.
Prostitutes know their hourly rate. Why don’t I?
Some people call this soft life, its not a soft life at all. It’s a different kind of hard, but it’s a hard where I hold more power than my current working relationships.
I find it cruel the way the establishment has been so quick to judge my Gen Z friends, for me that is thinly veiled jealousy. You are mad because you didn’t think of it yourself, instead you have been a wage slave for up to 40 years of your life, been thoroughly indoctrinated as to what life is and are essentially…bitter. You wish you’d done it sooner. And I get it, I wish I’d done it sooner too. But you don’t see me bitching. Celebrate others life choices and if they are mistakes, people will quickly learn. But it looks beautiful and if they have the self confidence to pull it off, more power to them. If self employed people have to consume less to cut their clothes to their size, then that is their choice,
There is more to life than paying bills. Remember British Gas is not going to your funeral to say “She always paid her direct debit, she was a valued customer” when you die they’ll close your account and hound your relatives for the unpaid amount or withhold your overpaid amount in the name of “estate administration” (currently living that hell)
So please, pay your bills on time, work your hours, but give no man any more power over you than that. You never go to your grave wishing you were more involved in the workplace penny-dramas to destroy people. In fact in 6 months you will not remember the penny dramas that your bosses had you stay late for. Maximum you will live that trauma is 3 months. But I promise you, 3 months of good living will heal you right up. And if it doesn’t, call the police, what they did must be criminal.
Its time we had a grown up conversation about work, working the best 40 years of your life to make someone else rich is neither sensible nor desirable. But when these people separate you from your family for more than is necessary, it doesn’t matter if it is mentally or physically then they are enemies to a pure life. Life isn’t meant to be easy since the bible and the garden of Eden we’ve all understood the need to toil the fields, however with big corporations such as Amazon not paying people for toilet breaks and forcing people to pee into bottles to make delivery times, we don’t have to think hard to say something has gone fundamentally wrong. All whilst their owner is in the top 5 richest human beings in the world. A world where others work just as hard and earn $2 per day.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.