Is there a Doctor in the house?
Every once in awhile, I come across something I just can’t google. Not successfully, anyway. This is one of those things, and I’ll be damned if I can’t seem to get it out of my mind. I feel like doctors might have some insights.
Let’s say you’re THE Guy*. You’re the one person everyone else is counting on to save the day. You go to work, handle your shit, handle a bunch of other people’s shit, too, and then go home. But because you’re THE Guy, you’re the one called the minute anything goes sideways.
There’s nobody else. It’s just you. On-call. All the time. And there’s no backup.
You miss hours of your own parties because work calls. Your phone goes off in the middle of the night. You have to plan your social life around your ability to respond to work matters. Duty calls.
I know it’s bullshit. It’s a repulsive failure of leadership.
But you’re THE Guy—not The MAN. You can’t just say, “Sorry I missed your call, please grow the funk up and figure it out for yourself.” Well, you can, but you probably worked really damn hard to get where you are and would like to find a solution that doesn’t result in career suicide—because if YOU don’t answer, The MAN is the next person called.
I could see it being a thing doctors deal with more than most people—many literally deal with life and death situations—but Corporate America isn’t the life and death situation they often make their needs out to be.
What I’m trying to figure out is, how do you retain a semblance of sanity when faced with a choice between likely career suicide and martyrdom—while you’re waiting to jump ship?
Asking for a friend.
*Note: Or Gal. I don’t discriminate, and recognize my privilege. As father of a fierce little six-year old girl yet to be disenfranchised by the realities of our often shitty, archaic, and ignorant society, I am a steadfast believer in equality and merely used these terms as a means of illustrating stereotypical authority and power structures.
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