This Week's Opening Thought: September 24, 2024

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This week's opening thought: Here's your reminder to maintain your peace by maintaining your boundaries. Boundaries are healthy.

The folx who always have something to say about you having boundaries are not.

A case in point is Shark Tank investor and long-time unhealthy person of pallor Kevin O'Leary, who has too much money on his hands made off the backs of others and too many "opinions" about respecting people's peace and boundaries.

Australia recently joined the ranks of countries like France, Spain, and Belgium by passing a “right to disconnect” law enacted on August 26. This legislation allows employees to step away from work-related communications outside their official working hours, ensuring that personal time remains personal. O'Leary's take on this? Quote:

"This kind of stuff just makes me crazy. It’s so dumb. Who dreams this crap up is my question. And why would anybody propose such a stupid idea? What happens if you have an event in the office and it’s closed? Or you have an emergency somewhere, and you have to get a hold of them at two in the morning because it affects the job they’re working on?”

He then said that he doesn't hesitate to fire people if he can't reach them at any time of day.

Not answering your phone at some random time of day or night when you're not scheduled to work is a healthy boundary.

Calling people with "urgent" matters at random times of the night because you're up, so everybody should be up and working, and if they're not, they are somehow "less than"? That is an indicator of an unhealthy person.

Do you think Kevin is a healthy person?

Just sayin'.

Gon' 'head and cut that phone off when your shift is over.

Be healthy.

On Job Duties, Burnout, and Being "Grateful for the Opportunity"

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Workplaces pay people $15 or less per hour and expect the equivalent of a $40 per hour employee's work rate and workload in return with no "guff" from those employees.

Workplaces pay people $40 per hour and expect people to give them the equivalent of absolute subservience while being willing to have no boundaries around separating their work from their life and needs with no backtalk or asking for a lighter load.

Neither situation is equitable.

No position should ever feel so overwhelming that people are in a constant state of burnout.

No position should ever be set up in a way that makes employees feel like if they speak up about how their role overwhelms them, they'll lose their job or face retaliation.

No one should be made to feel they should be "grateful for an opportunity," so they should "earn their pay" and overwork when companies could take the time to distribute job duties among multiple positions to mitigate burnout.

Companies need to quit actin' as if they own us when we agree to work for them and have the right to drain us.

Companies need to build more equitable job descriptions that factor in what a legitimately reasonable workload looks like for a position.

And that has nothing to do with whether you're paying someone $15 or $40 an hour.