The Curious Case of the Collapsing Coworkers
I’ve been in three positions - my last three, actually - where either I have gone down or I have seen coworkers go down due to overwork and stress. What I mean is, we collapse on the job or end up in the hospital with chest pains, doctors think it’s a heart attack but get confused since the individuals I’m speaking of, myself included, are in their thirties.
I was 31 when I had to have a heart cath procedure and was told I needed to seriously downsize stress. If you could see me, you wouldn’t believe I had to do this. I am very fit and athletic. I work out at least three times a week, usually four to five. Lots of cardio. I eat well, not much for fast food. The doctors couldn’t understand how I could be in such bad shape.
Stress. I had a psychopath for a wife (check my relationship blog. Not exaggerating, she got diagnosed) and I was working 50-60 hours a week in high pressure IT support where calls at 2am and on every weekend day were not out of the norm.
I left that company. Went to oil and gas. They have issues these days, as you may have heard. When companies have issues, they cut staff. They don’t cut the workload, though. One of my teammates finally collapsed after being hailed a hero for his extensive travel and sixty to seventy hour weeks on a project with a ridiculous deadline. Doctor’s orders? Rest. And can’t work him like that. It’s too much. He was 39. He did the smart thing and took a couple of weeks off (sort of) to rest and recover. Mostly because they said he wasn’t allowed to drive.
You’d think the company would hire some more help. Nope. That costs money, and money eats into profits, and then fat management bonuses shrink. Can’t have that, so they had him working remote against doctor’s orders and in secret from HR after a couple of days off. Business doesn’t stop because we almost killed you. There’s a deadline to meet, you know. Being ahead of schedule, I offered to help On the project. I thought between two of us, the workload would be more manageable and nobody would have to die over it. Of course, I was turned down by the boss.
“His project,” the boss said.
That was the future they wanted for me. So I got the hell out of there. In my own experience, even that minuscule amount of time off wasn’t an option. I was “needed” so as soon as I was released from the hospital, I had to be online working. At the time, I was on one of those “six month contract to hire” gigs that had been changed to “indefinite contract” because of a “hiring freeze,” which to me is nothing more than a breach of contract that I could do nothing about under US law. I’d been elevated to a management position while under this contract, hence the “needed,” which of course brought no salary increase or bonuses for all I’d accomplished there. “Well, you’re just a contractor,” they would say.
That’s a post for another day.
So I had no time off with a shaky plug in my femoral artery that had already come loose and earned me an extra day in the hospital, because I started bleeding out when I stood up to leave. That’s a frightening experience, let me tell you. It’s five minutes to unconscious and eight til you’re dead. Dead. You want to know why I think all this overworking is ridiculous? Look no further than that. No job is worth dying for, but companies don’t care. The expectation seems to be if you can function at all, you should be at work, not taking care of yourself.
My next coworker who went down is a perfect example of that attitude. He’d been telling me for a while about the fourteen hour days, sometimes more, where he would work off the clock because his department (help desk) was understaffed (department of one. Economy’s tough, you know) and there’d be hell to pay if he couldn’t get it all down for the whole company. But don’t work overtime, they said. We don’t want to pay time and a half. How was he to do all the work then? he asked. They told him to find a way. Without overtime. He’d been doing this for fourteen months, and it’s partly on him for not recording his hours, but his job was on the line and I kind of understand. I warned him about the dangers of stress, which he’d compounded in his home life.
I wasn’t surprised when he came to me and said he’d collapsed on the last business trip. Chest pains. Fell unconscious and woke up in a hospital. Had to have a heart cath on the road. Now, you’d think after surgery and a cardiologist warning he worked too much and had too much stress, the company would gladly grant this hard working employee some rest.
Ha ha ha ha…if you thought that you haven’t been reading this blog. He was discharged from the hospital with the same orders I’d had - rest, no lifting of over five pounds, and if your leg starts bleeding seek emergency care immediately, because if that plug comes out you have five minutes of consciousness and then you’re probably dead. I say again, DEAD.
He tells them this. They expect him to finish up the work for the trip, which involved long hours and much lifting of computer hardware. Hey, it’s not like they had anyone else. Times are tough in the industry, you know. I applauded when he said he told them no and rescheduled his flight to come home early and follow doctor’s orders. This was naturally frowned upon - how dare he take care of himself even though it’s a genuine high risk of death if he fails to comply with doctor’s orders? There is WORK to be done, people, and if he drops dead we can get someone else. And probably pay them less.
If you are reading this, you may never have had to stare death in the face because you were worked too hard. But after you see a team of hospital professionals struggling to stop all your life’s blood from pouring out, and knowing if they fail the next few minutes are your last, your paradigm shifts. The last thing I want now is to spend more time than I already do at work. 8-5, and variations thereof, is a nine hour day, standard. Yeah you get a lunch break, but most people can’t go home. So they stay in the office and companies get free hours. If you’re pulling regular OT you should probably add an hour to the totals you have in your mind. 45 hours of my week, plus commuting time, which adds an extra two hours to that nine hours I’m already away, is more than enough time spent on a vocation. When I am on my deathbed, I’m not going to be wishing I’d spent more time at the office - I’ll be wishing I’d spent less. I’m young enough to make a positive change now in this area, and I’m well on my way to achieving my goals of work life balance. But it’s tougher to do than it sounds. Our culture has become a work-a-holic culture, and anything less than nearly killing yourself for your job (who, by the way, will get rid of you without blinking an eye should their bottom line come up in the red) is not acceptable.
And even if you nearly do, don’t expect any sympathy from the company. You’ve got projects due, and there’s a deadline to meet, you know. You can rest when you’re dead. Which, you just might be soon.
Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. We could just hire someone else, but it’s much more cost effective to dump the work on your teammates or another department and save some money on that salary of yours.
I just find that hard...it's hard to find...oh, well. Whatever.
Never mind.