Question:

I was discussing my upcoming week of leave with my boss. They asked whether I was going away, and I found myself pouring my heart out. I admitted that I thought I’d got through COVID OK, but on reflection the lockdowns had caused me anxiety and a kind of claustrophobia. I said I needed to get away from civilisation. I won’t go into all the details, but I said I needed to camp as far away from people as possible.

They only asked one question: “Will you be on email during that time?” It wasn’t a joke.

What in the heck were they talking about?

Answer:

First, I’m so sorry to hear that the restrictions imposed because of the pandemic led you to feel so frighteningly confined. That would be an awful feeling.

Over the years, I’ve received a lot of emails about inconsiderate, mean-spirited, rude and outright disgraceful comments from colleagues and managers. There’s no common denominator, but it’s hard to ignore that a lot seem to come from a remarkable narrowness of thinking. This narrowness manifests in all sorts of ways: in the inability to consider other perspectives, in the idea that there is only one correct way to solve a problem, in the maintenance of strict and unnecessary hierarchies and, as with your case, in the misconception that the world of work is all-encompassing and all-important.

There’s nothing wrong with taking your job seriously, of course. And when your work materially affects the lives of people every day – say, in health, education or, dare I say it, politics – it’s pretty important that you do. But there’s a very significant difference between diligence and obsession. Even the most demanding and technically difficult jobs don’t require fealty to the workplace.

And I use the word fealty advisedly here because what you’re describing seems to me almost feudal in its backwardness and rigidity. Although, even in medieval times, vassals had plenty of leisure time. Even peasants did. In fact, some historians suggest the average member of the 14th century lower class worked significantly fewer hours per year than the average Westerner today.