Two people got promotions at work yesterday. I’m so happy for them. But honestly? I’m a little envious. I’ll fill you in the background of my job and coworkers, but not too much, because, you know….blogging about ones job usually does not bode well.
My coworkers and I are very close. In my past jobs, I had deliberately stayed distant from people I work with, because I am generally an intensely private person. People would ask me to hang out on the weekends and I would come up with some bumbling excuse. I just wasn’t comfortable with the thought of choosing to be around the people I had to be around during the week. I didn’t want the lines between coworker and friend to blur.
But this (current) job seemed different from the get-go. I feel like I am working with my family, and the girls I work with are my sisters. We fight like sisters, gossip like sisters, share clothes, food and stories. We eat lunch together every day. Oh, and we also get some work done once in a while. All of the girls have been on a relatively similar job path, meaning a dead end. My department is such that it is impossible very difficult to get a promotion because of the way the hierarchy is structured. But as of late, our business has been thriving and finally, some changes were implemented.
So now two of the girls have been promoted to new jobs with a big new title and even bigger salaries. The rest of us are hourly. And I can feel the tension boiling. Some people feel like they got overlooked. Some people feel shafted. I guess I just feel jealous. Jealous because I chose to put myself in a position where a promotion wasn’t an option. It is no one’s fault but my own. Right now, I choose to work part time, I choose my family over an corporate agenda or glory. I am happy with my current situation, the fact that I pretty much make my own schedule and that I am still needed and respected where I work. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a twinge of green when I see people, childless and unattached, move up the ladder. People who don’t have to struggle with this decision.
Yes, I know I can do the same thing, that I don’t have to let having two children get in the way of getting a different job or a promotion elsewhere. On the way home last night, I thought long and hard about what I was feeling. Part of me wanted to start working even harder, to get the recognition these two girls got from work. To start working five days a week instead of three. I wanted more money, a better title, more prestige.
Then I got home and saw my kids. I heard my daughter yell HI MOMMY from somewhere upstairs. I saw my boy eating solids with peas smeared all over his face. It was a defining moment for me. This. They. are why I have chosen the path I’m on. I don’t want to define my life by my career. It is already defined. By what I have at home.
This doesn’t mean I don’t believe that working mothers can’t be successful in their jobs. I know plenty of women who are wonderful mothers who also have made a very impressive name for themselves in the industry. But for me, I know that this is the best situation . I am in the perfect position that affords me the opportunity to schedule my job around my life. And for that, I should be happy.
Ah, how the struggle of the working mom continues.
