SubscribeHavi has had me thinking about personal sovereignty over the last few weeks — it’s an important topic, because it combines control with self-confidence and responsibility.
If I own my own sovereignty, then I also own my own actions, choices, and the results thereof. And while acknowledging that other people’s choices affect me, I am still responsible for those I make in response.
I’ve been working at the same corporate job for almost nine years now. This is a long time, and something I didn’t think I’d ever do. As corporate jobs go, it’s a good one — well-paid, office with a door instead of a cubicle, good team of people that I genuinely like to work with.
But after 9 and some years on the same project, there are struggles — maintaining interest, management changes – every one has a different vision for where we are going — keeping from feeling like an indentured servant with no control over 9 hours of my day – yes, I included lunch hours in that, because it is becoming more an more common for corporation teams to expect you to spend it with the team. That’s hard for a Myers-Briggs introvert like me — I NEED that hour in the middle of the day to myself and my own thoughts.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not singling out my employer for any of these issues, really. I’ve had them all crop up at other work places. In fact, I think it’s a testament to how good it is here that it has taken so long for me to start to feel thesee issues.
Wrapping my head around my own personal sovereignty helps – and yet… there are several ways that corporations in the US try to squash the sovereignity of their employess, whether conciously or just as a byproduct of the system as it tries to increase productivity exponentially:
- Reminding you that you can’t quit without another job because you may have a pre-existing health condition that precludes getting health care (affordable or not) on your own.
- Reminding you that in one way or another, they own you. I had one employer attempt to tell me that anything I created, even on my OWN time belonged to them… Artwork, needlework designs, anything that could be construed as intellectual property, whether or not it related to their business.
- Policies requiring that if you DO manage to take a leave of absence you are not allowed to work on anything work-related, especially moonlighting projects that have nothing to do with the corporation you are on leave from.
I’m sure I could come up with more, but these are the main issues I’ve seen my friends and I hit over the last 20 years in the work force. All three of them undercut attempts to maintain personal sovereignity by repeatedly telling you that the company owns you and your so-called “free-time”. At one place where I interviewed, the HR rep specifically told me that if, after hours I had a dinner party planned and the team wanted to go out or work late, I would be expected to cancel my plans and go with the team – my family was expected to come second to the company and my existing friends replaced by my company team. They were surprised when I didn’t take the job. And later I met three others in my field who had also turned them down, surprise, surprise! (But at least they were up front about their expectations – which I was supposed to accept for under $35,000 a year in a high cost of living city!) They expressed surprise when I turned them down, and apparently were just as surprised when my colleagues also turned them down.
Maybe my mindset is changing, but I’m becoming less and less willing as I get older to sell my entire life and soul for the company salary. So what am I doing about it?
- I remind myself that I am me, and the company is not me, or my feudal lord, for that matter.
- I use the Healthy Boundaries spray that Havi recommended at her retreat to ritually separate work from home.
- I have forced myself to take control of my projects and not only make suggestions & proposals, but also decisions before management does, consciously making the decision not to care if making these decisions gets me in trouble or costs me my job. Which some of them might.
- I do my own thing “off the clock” and usually enforce those boundaries (going out for lunch or drinks with the team once in a while, but don’t let it jeopardize your other social relationships).
- I make sure I maintain social relationships OUTSIDE of work – if something does happen to the job: layoffs, company closing, both these in fast succession, deciding to quit, what have you – those outside ties become even more important.
Well. That has been a long ramble about life theory! Interesting what comes out of my brain when I let it…
Just trying to work my way through my life.
Thank you for your wonderful post. It’s a relief to know I’m not the only person struggling with issues of personal sovereignty in the workplace. Lately I’ve been losing heart, wondering if liberalism and personal sovereignty weren’t just temporary footnotes that were going to cave-way to the struggle between corporate titans as rights often cave to the struggles between states. Knowing I’m not alone in my frustrations helps me have faith that maybe things can get better.