It’s 2:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and I’m at my favorite café. I’m sipping on an iced coffee, slowly eating my way through an almond pastry and reading A Girl is A Body of Water (which, by the way, is fantastic). Occasionally, my reading is interrupted by barking dogs, or the barista sitting down at my table to tell me about the latest town gossip. We talk about our weeks and I laugh at an outrageous joke I did not see coming. Familiar faces walk by. A lady with grocery bags so bulky I wonder how she’s even carrying them. Neighborhood children running up and down the street play catch. Older ladies draped in yellow and fuschia saris come back from an afternoon prayer. They bring back prasad from the mandir and put some on my table. I accept their blessings. It’s 2:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and I’m free.
At the end of 2019, I decided to take Friday afternoons off. After a yearlong sabbatical - during which I lived at my own pace and had the emotional bandwidth to nurture my dreams - working 40 hours a week felt unnatural. I’d come out of an intense work experience a few years prior, completely burned out, and wanted to save myself the back pain, the acid reflux, the sleep deprivation. And so, because Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour workweek was nowhere near catching on, I took a bit of a pay cut and gave myself the gift of a two-and-a-half-day weekend.
A year later, it seems like a no-brainer but at the time, I had to wrestle with myself to even put in the request. It seems this arrangement is relatively rare for people in the workforce. As a corrective measure, sure, but a preventive one? That’s weird. If you’re in school, unwell or old, it’s understandable to want to work fewer hours. A healthy-ish woman in her twenties with no kids and no chronic disease though? Why aren’t you aching to up your contribution to the economy? I fear being judged. One of my colleagues recently asked me if a second job was the reason I don’t work “full-time”. As if an afternoon off is time enough to have an entire other job. I sometimes feel like I need to make something up to justify this choice. As if my time was theirs for me to borrow from and not the other way around.
Over the past few months, as I transitioned into a new role, I’ve found it hard to set this boundary and keep at it. Many of my colleagues do work outside of working hours. By design, there seems to be many a complementary task to fulfill on your down time. Ordinary requests tagged as ‘urgent’ are expected to be treated with urgency. Other people’s messes are yours to clean up because that’s just the way it is. Last-minute, long-winded meetings take precedence over freedom. Pushing back against this corporate machine is tireless, because I always feel like I’m the only one doing it. Most people I know are open to bending their lives to fit business needs. Why?
In Mauritius, growing up in a society mired in neocolonial and patriarchal constructs, we learn to defer to, and fear authority. The public school system operates arbitrarily and sows the seed of subservience early on. At my high school for instance, you’re taught to stand up whenever a teacher enters the class. Why? Dunno. You abide by a strict dress code or risk being punished. Why? No clue. If you disagree with your teacher’s interpretation of Camus’ L’Étranger, you best be ready to be put back in your place. You stand in line during assembly and pray to a God you don’t know you believe in. You stand still for the national anthem on March 12, even as kids around you faint from the heat. You ask for a bathroom break and you’re told to hold it in. Your uniform is measured and you’re sanctioned if it’s an inch too short. You get in trouble for wearing black instead of white socks. You’re told off for painting your nails. You’re told off for wearing kohl. You’re told off for sipping on a juice box a little too loud. Why?
Your creative instincts are crushed. You fear consequences at every turn. You’re trained to accept, never question. On the flip side, there’s no accountability for teachers not showing up to class, barely being equipped to teach, or being bullies. You grow up in this system and you learn to keep your head down. Until the end of the day, until freedom.
And then you enter the workforce, and it’s lather, rinse, repeat. Your path is already cut out for you. You enter the corporate world at the bottom of the food chain. You earn a decent wage - if you’re lucky - and if not, you learn to accept your fate. This learned helplessness informs your conversations with your friends, your family, your peers even, but rarely ever your boss or theirs. Your schooling scared you shitless and you know better than to raise your voice. Instead, you’ll compete with your peers to outperform, out-exhaust them, to make it to the proverbial top. What you won’t do is ask yourself why we aren’t all all treated more equitably, why someone else gets to reap the juicy fruits of our surplus labor.
You don’t know how to set boundaries. You don’t even know what boundaries you’re ‘allowed’ to set. You might recognize the injustice in your treatment but won’t say anything because you’re scared. We’re all scared. Scared we’ll anger our bosses, lose our jobs, be replaced. We’re often made to feel like we’re replaceable. We should be happy we even have a job! In the early stages we say yes to everything thinking it’ll pay off. It seldom does. La carotte au bout du baton isn’t out of reach, it isn’t real.
No matter how well you do, you always feel like you have something to prove. It’s not on you; the system was built this way. The system very intentionally glosses over a job being a two-way relationship. Bearing this in mind, I want to seek to revise this inveterate narrative and ask that they also prove themselves to us. Are they worthy of our labor?
May this serve as a manifestation for whomsoever wishes it. May you no longer have to live on borrowed time. May you find balance. May you lose the fear, the guilt, and the anxiety. May you feel strong enough to ask for what you want. May you learn to say no. May you get to choose. May you set those boundaries. Exhaustion is not the default. May you live more of your life for you.
May we all be a little more free.
+1 on the manifestations Nas. Thank you for a thought-provoking piece as usual. I really appreciate your writing and work! <3