How I Was Abused As the Single Female Exec at Work…

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How I Was Abused As the Single Female Exec at Work...

Lunch?! Pshaw! I’m-so-busy-and-so-indispensable at my office that there is no time for lunch. That’s how I stay so trim. Did I mention that I never leave before 9:30 p.m.? That’s when the free dinner and car service perks kick in. I have no time for anything, or anyone, but I’m laser-beaming to the next level.

Oh, please. I’m so bored hearing such things from all the undersexed, overworked, underpaid, empty, dark, soul-robbed and joyless female execs in high (and not so high) places in New York City. All in the name of if-I-just-wait-an-itsy-bit-longer promotions that too often never surface; or, if and when they do, are accompanied by meager if any jumps in salary.

First they’ll tell you it’s all in the name of blazing-past-peers career advancement. But here’s the thing: Longer hours do not a promotion promise. In fact, one survey found that less than a quarter of 600 business leaders surveyed saw extra in-office hours as a leading factor to consider when doling out promotions.

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What mattered most to a whopping 97 percent of those senior managers? Ability to get the job done, as in the exact job you were hired to do, based on the exact skills you already had when you first walked in and started the position. Nothing more, and nothing less.

You see, your manager is not your mentor. This person is not interested in your personal career growth and development. Nor is the company, for that matter.

Think about it. When is the last time you heard of an exec going above and beyond the call of duty and then being pleasantly rewarded with a surprise, luscious promotion and fat bonus check?

Been never for me. The more likely work-eat-sleep-on-repeat scenario? Burnout. As in the type of job stress that, as Mayo Clinic describes, leads to physical, mental and emotional exhaustion swirled with doubts about your work’s value (and the point of your doing it at all). Often, this burnout is what finally sends employees seeking a new opportunity, any new opportunity, to escape the dread of spending one more day on what they’ve realized is the road-to-nowhere.

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This sometimes leads to a better job with better pay; it sometimes leads to the same job with way more pay; and, sometimes, it leads to the same job with the same, or even less, pay (but hey, the experience feels new). Unfortunately, when burnout is reached, the outcome is usually timing-based.

So while the workhorses were spending nights laboring away, elbow-to-elbow with others likewise “showing their merit” by staying into the wee, there was no time to take courses and gain flashy, new skills. Nor was there time to take on side projects offering more challenge and reward than the day-to-day. Nor, for that matter, was there time to go to events and, while becoming more dynamic and culturally well-rounded (read interesting), to socialize and more importantly, network, letting everyone know what they were currently doing only to hint at what they were eager and ready to conquer next.

Next they’ll tell you it’s to eventually earn more money. Another sad trap so many educated professionals fall into. As a “happiness” writer, who has been paid to suss out research-study findings highlighting how to achieve this blissful state of contentment, I can tell you, the yellow brick road is not paved in gold. It’s bathed in sunlight (as in that free, warm-feeling, smile-inducing natural resource).

Trust me, I understand. I too spent years working in up-the-ladder jobs. In nearly every office job I ever had, no matter what it was, I ended up working beyond, not satisfied with doing what I already knew how to do over and over again; but wanting to do more, to be challenged, to take risks, to jump into pools and learn how to swim. In short, to go further. Nobody ever forced me to this; it always just happened naturally. Biting off more felt good to me. It’s the way I was, and still am. Often this saved me from layoffs, and kept me employed, and landed me new responsibilities beyond my job description (without new pay). But it did little to move me along on my true path.

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A few years ago, I made about three times my 2012 end-of-year income. I paid off a grad-school loan of nearly $27,000. I paid off two credit cards, totaling double-digit debt. I plunked $10,000 down into a mutual fund. What I can tell you is that while some of these achievements liberated me; none of them changed my day to day; and not one made me happy in my life. The reality was that I often brought work home with me, leaning over papers and keyboards and medical dictionaries well into the after-hours, and sometimes straight-through weekends. I rarely saw close friends (it’s a miracle I didn’t lose them) and ended up in the wrong it’s-not-but-it-is despicably convenient relationship. Eventually, on my lunch breaks, I started sneaking into the business center at the hotel across from my office every day to blog about relationships, the one thing that added life to my big-earning-but-dull days. Money does not buy happiness. It’s cliché, yes; and, it is true. Strong social connections, seeking and finding your purpose in life, relationships and rich experiences do. My tax guy’s certain I’ll rake in more again, at some point. After all, Frank Sinatra did it his way and it all worked out just fine.

As a result, my tolerance for this badge-on-sleeve, trooper-in-the-trenches mentality has waned. I still have these friends, and I still politely listen (though I desperately want to interrupt, “Go home, now, to that hunk of a newlywed hub of yours; make dinner together; drink wine; be saved!”) A 2013 Gallup poll of full-time workers in the U.S. found that a mere 30 percent of American employees feel inspired, or even engaged, at work. That translates to about 70 percent of American workers being asleep at the wheel. Such widespread discontent harms not only performance, but also health, which costs the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

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I now have other friends, who are building their own businesses. They are my kind. When we get together we talk about how to grow, how to market, how to land the next great challenge and how thrilling it was when the last didn’t-think-it-was-possible risk-taking project took flight. Every hour worked is an hour paid.

Another survey by the same company, Regus, of more than 26,000 workers across 90 countries found that workers who ran their own businesses were happiest and maintained a work-life balance right around the index average. Those who administered the study believed this was because owning your own business, and working for yourself, offered more control and fostered more confidence and security in one’s work-life.

I have a lot of female friends in this great city. Once I took the plunge to freelance, and running my own business, where my hours are flexible, and I call the rates, the clients, the projects, pretty much all the shots, my identity changed. These friends never fail to tell me now, with sideways looks, how happy I look. As they do so they glare at me quixotically, in disbelief, wondering what brand of happy pills are stashed in my purse (none are, I can assure you.) I have an adventurous new relationship, have visited family in three different states in the past four months, go to the library and take in all the museum-free days.

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It’s hard for me to see others waiting to be granted access the promised-lands they wish to enter; waiting for others to walk them kindly to their seats at the table. Each of these women will get there eventually; when and if they decide to pull up a chair. Lastly, skipping meals is not, to say the least, an effective weight-loss method.

Columnist Julie D. Andrews is a writer and editor living in New York City. Follow her on Twitter @julieDandrews

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