There’s no perfect work life balance. There’s always going to be a time you want more minutes with your family, friends or dog. And, there’s always going to be occasions when you need just one more hour to finish that work project.
If you Google “work life balance,” you’ll find a bajillion articles telling you how to improve yours, employers that are the best, etc. I didn’t find one online publication that simply said: do the best you can and deal with it.
Working from home or being your own boss? Good luck with that. Sure, you can take a long lunch at anytime during the day or go to your granddaughter’s school program. But when there is “X” amount of work to be done that takes “X” amount of time to do, it doesn’t shake out to be a fairy tale. You do the best you can and deal with it.
But the work from home scenario — and about every other job on the planet — does win over retail management during the holiday season. I’m feeling bad for poor ole’ Perry during the Thanksgiving holiday, you guys.
Wal-mart’s management is provided time on Thanksgiving for a family meal. I’m sure on the corporate level they will even brag about it. The statistics will look great! But the clear picture from the inside is totally different…
Walmart management (at least at Perry’s store) regularly work five 10-hour days with two days off per week. During the week of Thanksgiving (and Black Friday), they take away one day off and split-shift Thanksgiving Day. While that might be ok if you live in the town where you work, that split can still mean arriving at 5:00 AM and not being finished with your day’s work until midnight!
With Perry’s schedule — if all he does while home is sleep (NO TURKEY FOR YOU, PERRY!) — he will log 11 hours of rest from Wednesday morning through Friday night to carry him through 33 hours of work-time PLUS 12-hours of drive time to get there and back.
I can see the headlines now on Forbes and Business Insider: Walmart gives employees time off with their families on Thanksgiving!! Perry’s Thanksgiving holiday will be more of a work coffee balance… no life allowed.
