Give it your all, but don't give up your life.
In general, I put work as my highest priority. At the end of the day, if I don't have a job, I am not going to have much of a life. When a company pays me for my services, I feel a sense of loyalty to them. Years ago when I owned a restaurant, I would often hear an employee complaining about some task, and they would say something like "I don't get paid enough to do ...". I told my son at the time that when you agree to take a job, you agree on the amount of money you are going to be paid, and you should always do your best no matter what your income is. Every job you have, you are interviewing for your next opportunity. I have found that people who complain about not being paid enough to do a certain task, are never paid enough and will always complain about working.
Being loyal to a company is positive, but that doesn't mean you always agree to do everything that is asked of you. You have to know when to say no. I have always struggled with this, and knowing when to say no can be really difficult. Obviously, you wouldn't want to turn down working extra hours if it meant the Company would collapse or lose significant amounts of money, but what about a project missing a deadline? Would an extra day or two make a difference?
I had a situation like that many years ago. I think my son was about 6 or 7, and we had made plans to take our boat and spend the weekend at an Island in Lake Erie for father's day weekend. I was going to leave work early on Friday, pick him up and go straight to the boat. Unfortunately, the company I was working for at the time was implementing a part pricing system, and the vendor was struggling with getting their application to work with the database server. Being that I was the SQL DBA as well as a web programmer, they asked for my help. They had a deadline they were trying to meet and had to have the application running that weekend. I ended up helping them, but we couldn't figure it out during regular business hours. I picked my son up and went home to continue working on the problem. I told my son we would go to the boat as soon as I got my work done. He sat on the couch all ready to go and waited. The day turned into evening and he fell asleep on the couch waiting for me. I was on the phone with the vendor until late in the evening, but we couldn't figure out the issue.
Saturday was a repeat of Friday. My son sat on the couch all day just waiting for me to get done working. I would walk by and check on him, and he would just be sitting there. He didn't complain at all, but the expression on his face told me how disappointed he was. I ended up working with the vendor all day until finally, late in the evening, we got everything working. It was too late to go to the boat, so our weekend adventure didn't happen. We did spend the day on the boat on Sunday and had a decent fathers day, but nothing like it was supposed to be. To this day, when I look back on all the things I did with my son when he was young, that fathers day weekend sticks in my mind. Those are days I can never get back.
The thing about this particular situation is that it really wouldn't have had any effect on the company I was working for if the project had been a couple of days late. The vendor that was supplying the software may have struggled with their reputation a bit, but I didn't work for them. They also didn't have any loyalty to me. When the project ended, they had celebratory lunches that I wasn't invited to, and when the holidays came, they bought gift baskets for everyone in the IT department except for me. I was just a contractor after all. I gave up so much for them, and in the end, I was completely ignored.
This is an example of a time that I should have said no. I can complain about missing the weekend with my son, but it is my own fault. The reason this memory sticks so deeply in my mind is that I feel tremendous guilt for putting this third party vendor as a higher priority than my son. As with any negative experience, I learned a lot from this one. Prior to this event, I had never taken off more than a long weekend, and I worked most holidays because that was when you could update systems. After this event, I started taking longer vacations. My son and I would spend a couple of weeks on the boat at the end of the summer, and we built a lot of memories. I still worked incredibly hard for the company, but when I scheduled time off, they had to work around that.
No one sits on their deathbed wishing they had worked more. I was lucky enough to get that push early enough in my career to have some really enjoyable experiences with my son before he became an adult. I believe in working hard and being loyal to the people who sign your checks, but I learned that taking time for myself and my family wasn't being disloyal or being a bad employee. Companies can survive without me for a week or two. They do it before you get there and they will do it after you are gone. The experiences you miss out on are the memories you can never get back.
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