By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT
Picture this:
You’re feeling tired and crabby with your kids.
You yell at your daughter to hurry up and brush her teeth, and no matter how loudly you shout, or how serious you make that tone, she refuses to do it. When you push her on why she’s ignoring you, the 10-year-old disappears into her room and comes out with a list.
A list of all the events you’ve missed in her life because you’ve been at work.
The ballet recitals, the first day at schools, the play, the tuck-shop duty. Her soccer game, a parent-teacher night and the Halloween dress-up parade.
You feel terrible. You know there was a good reason why you had to be somewhere else, but suddenly you see the mountain of missed moments from your daughter’s perspective, and you feel like crap.
This happened. That list is real. It’s what happened to the male CEO of one of the world’s biggest bond-trading businesses. A man who earned a gajillion dollars a year (okay, I exaggerate, he ‘only’ took home $100 million a year). And do you know what he did?
He quit his job.
The man in question, Mohamed El-Erian, wrote in an essay for Worth:
“The list contained 22 items… I felt awful and got defensive: I had a good excuse for each missed event! Travel, important meetings, an urgent phone call, sudden to-do.
“But it dawned on me that I was missing an infinitely more important point. As much as I could rationalise it — as I had rationalised it — my work-life balance had gotten way out of whack, and the imbalance was hurting my very special relationship with my daughter. I was not making nearly enough time for her.”
It’s strangely reassuring that the endless dilemma of the work-life juggle doesn’t discriminate, whether you’re working two jobs to pay your rent, or are one of the most highly-paid money-men in the world, you’re still missing your kid’s dance recital, and she still doesn’t like it.
Top Comments
Mohamed did an amazing thing. If we are to achieve more work life balance we need more executives promoting it and living it as well, particularly men.
Stop rewarding those who stay back beyond eight hours per day by promoting them. It only makes it harder for those who can't do that.
That's just stupid - I much rather my father made 100 million pa (for me to inherit) than come to my school nonsense. And besides, if someone thinks you're worth that kind of money I'm sure they'd allow you to leave the office to attend the odd school thing.
It's the opposite though - the more you are paid, the more that is expected of you. And it's not just the "odd school thinkg" - I'm sure if he was around a lot, his daughter would barely notice him missing speech night. But if you rarely see your Dad, don't eat meals, don't talk in the car while he's driving you to school, AND he misses your concerts/school events, you do notice and the events are the easy ones to list out for him.
When I was growing up, my parents ran a 7 day a week business by themselves, so for anything during the day only one of them could attend. Generally, this was Mum. But because my Dad was there for so many other things (parent-teacher interviews, night time sporting games, he trained with me before work in the morning, helped me with homework, I worked at the business with him, he was on the P&C) I barely noticed when he wasn't there for sports day or my weekend games.