Dear Abby

This morning Dear Abby posted responses to a letter from a previous writer about working hard versus hardly working.

The original writer was a supervisor who felt there was a lack of effort in the work place, that her employees were spending too much time away from work attending school/family functions and beauty-related appointments. "Abby" wrote back to let her know that as long as people were using their allotted personal time to take care of personal matters, she didn't see a problem. [It's personal time, and quite frankly, the supervisor should mind her own business about how they're using that time.]

Many people wrote to defend the employees as well, but others agreed with the supervisor--that there was a lack of effort in the workforce today.

Only one person brought up the fact that most work places have different generations working together, and that their ideas about integrating work life and personal life are also different.

This reminded me of two of my previous coworkers - "S" (a secretary in her 50s) and "R" (a designer in her 20s). S came in every single day at 8:30am and never stopped working for a minute. If there was nothing to do in terms of office work, she would clean or organize. She was always on top of every project, very rarely had a doctor's appointment, and the office could not function without her. She would stay until at least 6pm even if there was nothing left for her to do, and she didn't get paid overtime. She was overworked and stressed.

R possessed all the same qualities, except she arrived at the office at 7am, stepped out for a coffee break or appointment about 11, and went for an hour-long run in the afternoon. She worked quickly and would leave promptly at 5 or stay later when needed. She was one of our strongest employees who worked as much if not more overtime than S, without overtime pay. She was available for the clients all day, adapted to their schedule, but also integrated her personal time into her work day. She was physically and emotionally healthy too.

The supervisor (a woman in her 50s) constantly compared R and the other designers to S, saying that none of them worked as hard as S did. It was also expected that we would put in overtime "even if there really wasn't anything to do..." because it "looked better to the boss."

A friend was told the exact same thing almost word-for-word at the company where she worked: "Just stay until 6:00 each night, even if you don't have anything to do. It looks like you're busy." And, "Try to be up and moving around in the afternoon, looking busy."

Her response, "I'm too busy to get up, walk around the office, and pretend to be busy." Also, "pretending to be busy" seems much less important than starting an hour commute to get home and spend time with family.

The older generation literally wanted us to create the illusion of being busy. That was more important than spending time with family or in some cases actually getting the work done!

I know that a few design magazines have addressed the issue of different generations in the workplace. I even gave one of the articles to my previous supervisor who must have been "too busy" to read it. I can only hope that eventually more people will become aware of this problem. And I'm proud of our generation for knowing how important it is to balance work and family time.

As I write this, one of our employees is playing a sound clip on their computer of someone whistling--a casual little tune rising above the "cube-farm". It seems fitting.