I used to think that those stories of associates hiding out in their offices late at night bawling their eyes out, not because of vicious bosses but because the stress of their jobs was getting to them, was mere hyperbole. I mean, c'mon, crying? Seriously? Over contracts/briefs/memos?
But no more. I billed (that's billed, not worked, which was at least another 20% on top) almost 140 hours over the last week and a half. That's inhuman. No, it's more than inhuman, it's sadistic. Part of it is my own goddamn fault. I was joking with some folks about the slowdown in the past two months, cheering on the bad economy, and clearly, this was my karmic retribution. But it wasn't just the hours that got to me, it was some of the coincident circumstances. First, last week was K-peas birthday, which, well, I missed. I missed my baby daughter's first birthday. I could kill myself. I did what everyone tells you to do - I warned my partner, and my senior associate that K-peas birthday was that day in advance, and kept warning them as the date drew closer. But on the day of, the client was relentless, sending us a constant stream of work that had to be done the next day. And, unfortunately, the partner was elbow deep in the work too, so she felt entirely justified in demanding my presence (ok, *bitch*, whew, got that out of my system). Under other circumstances, I would have worked from home, but there are certain kinds of work (and this case was one) where it is just not practical to work from home (most of them involving documents that are several hundreds of pages long).
Second, I've been on and off sick for the past month. Part of it is readjusting to the NE climate. Particularly in this transition season when tempertures are as mercurial as the stock market (yeah, f*&^ thou Bernanke). So finally, after not sleeping for several days, my body has had it. Right in the middle of the day, I start getting chest pains, I have a hard time breathing, I'm feverish and achy. I'm thinking, where's the nearest hospital, while my colleagues are doing their very best to pretend that I'm not various unsightly shades of green while trying desperately to catch my breath. When I suggest that I should probably go to the doctor, I'm very curtly informed that it's not going to happen, because the client needs this done now.
I probably should have just thrown in the towel at that moment. But I don't. I just keep working. For two more solid 14-16 hour days. Because I'm a friggin' trooper.
Anyways, so I have pneumonia. Something called walking pneumonia.... yupity yup yup. And the doctor said that it would have been mere bronchitis had I just given it some attention a week ago...
Wow. Gives new meaning to the phrase - "Check yourself before you wreck yourself". Hope you're better soon! :)
Posted by: Kate | September 22, 2007 at 02:56 PM