Are You Married To Your Job?

We got a call from Debra, who said "I can't keep living this way. My job is my whole life. I do nothing but work."

"How long have you felt that way, Debra?" we asked her.

"I've had this job for six years, but lately my workload has gotten much worse," she said.

"The last year has been awful. My boss Kurt loads me up with work before I go home, and then he call and texts me with more questions and assignments when I'm trying to take a shower or make dinner. He texts me on the weekends, with new ideas for projects he wants on his desk Monday morning."

"What finally got you to call us?" we asked.

"It's terrible," she said. "My husband said this can't go on. He says I have to decide between him or my job. He says I have to stand up to Kurt, but you don't know this guy! It's not so easy."

"Why has your workload gotten worse lately?" we asked.

"I guess Kurt is nervous about a lot of things that I'm responsible for," said Debra.

"We have shareholder meetings and huge customer events. I prepare the presentations and all the communication pieces for the media and our customers. I have a lot of responsibility resting on my shoulders."

"Do you love your job?" asked Molly.

"I used to love it," said Debra. "Now I hate it. It's making me sick and destroying my marriage. I love my husband. I don't know to get out of this trap."

"How did you get into it?" asked Molly.

"Kurt and I had a better relationship a few years ago," she said. "He was more reasonable then. When he asked me to work on a project overnight, it was a special favor. It was based on trust. I didn't mind. He's just gotten more and more demanding, and he isn't the slightest bit grateful when I kill myself to get something done."

"Do you ever tell Kurt 'I'm sorry, I can't do that'?" I asked.

"No way! That's virtually impossible to do."

"What about getting another job?" asked Molly.

"I get paid a lot," said Debra. "Those jobs aren't easy to find."

"Here's the thing," said Molly. "You've trained Kurt to ask you for everything he dreams up. You get it all done somehow, so he figures 'The well of Debra's output has no bottom.'

If you believe that the problem is intractable, it will be. If you stay stuck in the spot where you say 'No, you don't understand Kurt, he's not someone who can be refused and I can't refuse him' and also say 'I can't look for another job' then you've created a very small box for yourself. There's no room to maneuver there.

"One of those ideas has to give. Your two assignments may have helped you see that one of those fixed ideas -- Kurt Must be Obeyed or I Desperately Need This Job - has some wiggle room in it. Maybe both of them do."

"It sounds like you're saying I created this problem myself," said Debra, with a note of hurt in her voice.

"That isn't a criticism," I said. "The more responsibility we can take for the way things are around us, the more powerful we'll be. We train our bosses just as surely as we train the people on our teams. We don't even know we're doing it.

"When you realize that you haven't set boundaries around your personal life, that's a valuable 'Aha!"

"It's empowering to get a realization like that. It might be a sobering realization at first, like a wake-up call, but the benefit is that it tells you where to focus your energy. You can learn to say no!"

"I guess I haven't wanted to say no," said Debra.

We were all silent for a moment.

"I've wanted to be the perfect employee. Kurt is demanding and unreasonable, but at least in my work I know I perform a valuable service. When I work until two in the morning, I feel useful. I don't get that feeling from other things I do."

We gave Debra two assignments before our next call. The first assignment was to learn as much as she could about the talent market for corporate communications chiefs like her -- not just in her city, but across the country.

The second assignment was to pay attention to the times when Kurt gave her last-minute assignments. We were looking for a pattern.

"Wow, I learned a lot completing my assignments!" said Debra on our second call. "I was pleasantly surprised when I started checking Indeed for job openings. There were dozens of job openings that I could apply for if I wanted to."

"That's magnificent!" we said. "Does your research give you confidence that this job is not the only job you could do?"

"Just a tiny bit," said Debra. "My eyes are opening to that concept, millimeter by millimeter."

"What about observing Kurt?" we asked.

"Here's what I noticed," she replied.

"He throws a big, out-of-the-blue project at me whenever he comes out of our CEO's office. Kurt is SVP of Marketing. His boss is the CEO."

"Maybe the CEO needs whatever project Kurt assigned you?" asked Molly.

"No, it isn't that," said Debra. "Kurt's random assignments are never things he needs to show our CEO or the Board. But if our CEO chastised him or got up in his grill behind closed doors, I'm guaranteed to get a big, obnoxious assignment within half an hour."

"Electrical discharge," said Molly. "Kurt picks up extra stress in his meetings with the CEO, and it has to go somewhere. He gets rid of his stress by passing it on to you."

"That makes total sense," said Debra. "I thought a lot about what we talked about last time. I thought about my piece of the puzzle. I did train Kurt to treat me like a doormat. I have a horrible time setting boundaries.

"For a long time my posture was 'There, there, my poor overworked boss, you have stress, let me help you.' I deal with my own stress -- why can't Kurt deal with his? I can understand why my husband feels I don't care about him. I can say no to my husband, but not to my boss."

"That's a big "Aha!" we told Debra. "Can you picture yourself telling Kurt 'Gee, I'd love to get that done tonight, but it's not going to work -- I'll do it tomorrow'?"

"I can picture it," she said wistfully. "I'm practicing every night in front of the mirror. Can you give me the 'impossible' speech one more time?"

"Sure!" we said. "Kurt says 'I need this done by tomorrow morning.' You say 'Tonight's no good, but I can do it tomorrow morning and have it to you by noon.'

"If Kurt asks 'What do you have to do tonight?' you say 'Tonight is impossible, but I can do it tomorrow.' The key word is 'impossible.' Kurt doesn't need to know your personal life. If you have to pay bills or shave your legs, it's all behind the same wall. Tonight is impossible, but tomorrow is perfect.

"You're weaning Kurt off the 'I can have anything I want at any moment' bottle. You're re-training him, and growing new muscles yourself!"

Debra got out of doormat mode and backed Kurt off a little bit at a time. "I owe it to him to set my boundaries gradually rather than abruptly," she said. "I'm the one who trained Kurt to snap his fingers and get whatever he desired on the spot."

"My situation at work is so much better," Debra told us in our last session together. "My husband and I are getting a rescue puppy. Isn't that fantastic?"

We thought it was! "At the same time," she added, "I'm curious about the outside world. What new things am I going to learn sticking around in the same job I've had for years?"

Muscles grow slowly but they get big over time. You'll only grow your muscles by using them. You can grow muscles and set boundaries at work, too. You can begin right now!

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