When someone is constantly invading your free time, do you have the right to shut them down? What if they're your boss?
Some jobs have a slippery relationship with work-life balance. Some jobs require so much of you and don't respect your boundaries. Some jobs feel like you're making a huge sacrifice to something that you didn't expect to or want to. Other jobs require only what you're willing to put in. But we can all have standards for ourselves when it comes to what we're willing to put up with and not put up with at our jobs. Some bosses act like everything is an emergency, and expect everything to be treated with the same amount of urgency. This doesn't mean that everything is urgent, though. If everything is urgent, then nothing is. Priorities exist for a reason, and it's okay to ask them to be defined for you.
This employee was tired of constantly dealing with work when he wasn't at work. We all need weekends. We all need rest. But that can feel impossible to ask for at work sometimes. Sometimes you might feel pressured to take as little time off as possible. A survey by Solitaired reported that 47% of Americans didn't use all of their PTO in 2024. We're leaving days on the table, as a sacrifice to some greater idea of work-life balance that someone else has put out. It's not a bad thing to rest, and it makes you better at your job if you have time away from it. This employee, though, wasn't getting that from their boss. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and the employee was getting really frustrated by it. It's a tough job market, and you likely want to hold onto a position if you can. But at what cost?