I propose work-life compartmentalization as a case study. “Work-life balance” is how we rationalize that separation. It’s OK, we think, to put up with some unpleasantness from 9 to 5, as long as we can look forward to getting home, kicking our shoes off and relaxing, alone or among family or friends. And perhaps that’s reasonable enough.
But this logic leads many people to tolerate: stress, taking orders, doing work that we think is meaningless, filling out paperwork that will never actually be read, pouring our energy into projects we’re certain are failure-bound but never speaking up about that to avoid being branded “not a team player”, being bored in endless meetings which are thinly disguised status games, feeling unproductive and stupid but grinding on anyway because it’s “office hours” and that’s when we are supposed to work, and so on.
And those are only the milder symptoms. Workplace bullying, crunch mode, dodgy workplace ethics are worryingly prevalent. (There are large variations in this type of workplace toxicity; some of us are lucky enough to never catch but a whiff of it, some of us unfortunately are exposed to a high degree. That these are real and widespread phenomena is evidenced by the success of TV shows showing office life as its darkest; humor is a defense mechanism.)
Things snapped into focus for me one day when a manager asked me to lie to a client about my education record in order to get a contract. I refused, expecting to be fired; that didn’t happen. Had I really been at risk? The incident anyway fueled a resolve to try and apply at work the same standards that I do in life – when I think rationally.
via Less Wrong: The fallacy of work-life compartmentalization.
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