How to Be Late for Dinner

In observation of Labor Day 2008, we share the following essay by New York writer Vicki Wilson. It’s an honest and incisive glimpse at the the unspoken pressures of being on the clock, and it touches gracefully on the soul’s need for balance in work and life. Enjoy.

• Overtime by Vicki Wilson •

It’s 6:00 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. I’m straightening pens on my desk, placing stray paperclips in the magnetic paperclip holder, and piling folders on top of each other. It’s now 6:03. I check my e-mail one more time, pick up my phone and put it back down. I count the tiles on the ceiling from my desk to the door. I look out the window at the company parking lot. It’s 6:05 The lot is still full of cars.

The thing is, I’m completely done with the work I have to do today. And it’s too late to get started on some other big project — if I do that, I’ll be here for hours. But if I leave before now — now being approximately 6:07 p.m. — I will be labeled The Woman Who Goes Home Almost on Time. There’s nothing worse you can be in an office. It’s something akin to being The Girl Who Picks Her Nose in the second grade. If you are a serious worker, dedicated to your career and loyal to your company, you will work late every day. It’s the unwritten rule, or so it seems.

Ever since my first office job, I’ve heard people whispering reverently to each other in lunch rooms and around the coffee pot, “Do you know Janet (or Sally or Sue)? Yeah, well she works all the time. She’s even here on Sundays.” Never mind that Janet and Sally and Sue have husbands, houses, children, dogs and/or hobbies — they were the real workers, the employees who were big deals, because they gave up their lives to put in the hours. I once worked with a woman who came in two hours early and left much later than I did every single day. The bosses loved her, despite the facts that she made more mistakes than anyone in the office and had a bad attitude. She wasn’t perfect, maybe, but she sure as heck was there a lot. That meant something.

What exactly it meant, though, I haven’t been able to figure out. Sure, there are times when I need to work late or on weekends to get the job done. Everyone has to sometimes. But on other days, say on a normal Tuesday like today, I am caught up on my work and I just want to go home. But I have to worry: how does this reflect on me? If I leave on time and actually get a chance to eat my dinner at the table with my husband before dark, what kind of message am I sending to my co-workers and my supervisor? Will they think I’m a slacker? When it comes time for a raise will my evaluation read “Good worker, but she leaves on time a lot,” denying me my yearly three percent increase? Shouldn’t it be enough that I do a good job? Or is it really quantity and not quality that matters?

I don’t know the answers to my own questions. What I do know, however, is that it’s now 6:15 p.m. I’ve heard the secretary down the hall, AKA The Woman Who Always Leaves First, shut the door behind her as she exits the office through the side door. I shut down my computer and turn off my lights. If I walk really slowly, it will be almost 6:20 when I officially leave — more than a whole extra hour of overtime for me, The Woman Who’s Late Again for Dinner.

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