I'm the only one in my team who can't work 24/7. What's wrong with me?

September 5, 2011 4:17 PM

I'm ambitious, driven, and have a lot to say. But I think my work ethic sucks.

Hivemind, I recently had a shitty weekend at work and it has me questioning myself, my worth and the direction I'm going in. I need a smack upside the head.

I'm currently working in a team of interns at a large advertising agency. This weekend we collectively busted our ass to get ready for a presentation on Monday. Well, I tried to bust my ass. I feel like I'm on a very different wavelength to the rest of my team - I'm very emotional (which is to say I vacillate wildly between anger and, uhm, not anger), chatty, and very negative. In a previous life I was a humanities researcher (I have a PhD); now I'm trying to be an advertising copywriter. The other guys are very alpha; sure of themselves, cool, very, VERY silent. Oh, I'm also the only woman, and older, and in a relationship, while the guys are single. To be blunt, I find their solutions and thinking a bit boring much of the time, and the silence and seriousness makes me feel excluded. I feel like I have no one to talk to, joke around with, or confide in with my team. I feel like an outsider.

This came to a head recently in a big group argument, which ended with one of the guys shouting in my face that I was very rude. There's a conflict in the group where I'm on the outer, and my way of dealing with this has been to seek as many friends and mentors in our industry as I can outside the group.

So here's the problem: I feel disconnected from this team and alienated from the work. I feel sick with anxiety whenever I show up to work, anticipating the next battle. Our creative director is very, very optimistic, upbeat and energetic. I fear he sees me as a lethargic, negative drain on the team.

This is the context for the weekend. On sunday, our director told us we had to completely rework our presentation for Monday. Cue panic. We split into teams; I developed a few more ideas, but my team wanted to go with their previous idea. I was in the agency until 3.30am rewriting their previous presentation. When I'd gone through three drafts of the preso I decided to leave my team to finish Maccing it up. I mostly wanted to leave because it was my partner's birthday and I hadn't seen him at all that day. I came back at 9. The team spent the night there.

Here's my problem: I honestly feel burnt out, exhausted and on the outer, and I feel like it's my fault because at some level I just can't bring myself to spend an entire night working on something with a conflict-ridden team. I feel like, if I had a better work ethic, I could just put this aside and stay there and be tough and positive and all those things I should be. Today our creative director was enthusing about the value of all-nighters and drama; meanwhile, I was thinking I could never survive the adrenal fatigue. We've had two, maybe three weekends in three months, and I miss my life. However, my team members are happy to be at the office 24/7. This makes me feel like my work ethic sucks.

FWIW, the presentation went fine. Our creative director was jubilant. He was carrying on about the value of the all nighter. But I felt guilty; I hadn't spent an all nighter there, I've yet to, and the guys must surely see me as lazy.

Hive mind, what is WRONG with me?? How can I become less whiny, less resentful, less negative, and just start being a team player? I feel like I could be a great copywriter, but I'm just sick with worry over the bad impression I feel I'm making in this six month contract. OTOH, the mood in the team is really combative and unpleasant, and it's tough for me to motivate myself to put in the kind of hours the other guys do. At the moment I'm at work from 10 to 9-10 every night, including weekends, but the other guys are there longer. How do I get over myself to do the work I was hired to do?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (13 answers total)

There's nothing wrong with you. It sounds like this team or this company, or possibly this field, just isn't a good fit.

Some folks really thrive on the ego and romanticism involved in working crazy hours to meet deadlines. That's not everybody.
posted by colin_l at 4:30 PM on September 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Well, you have different priorities than the rest of the group. Work isn't the top of your list. You made it your partner that day. That's fine, you can make that decision, but when you do, work will suffer.

You were good enough to get hired. Why did they hire you? Clearly they thought you could add to their team.

How are you showing people that you don't agree with their ideas? How do you present it? Is it negatively "I don't like this idea?" or is it positive "I like this idea...but do you think it might be better if we add this..."

It could be them. It could be you. It's probably a little of both. Do you even want to be there? Do you like the work? Consider this when the time comes to make the next move career-wise.
posted by inturnaround at 4:38 PM on September 5, 2011

I don't work in advertising but in media production and have for many years. You will get many people who will tell you that you're worth 10x what those dumb frat boys are, and I'll tell you that you need to work on retraining your attitude if this is to be your career. Do you watch Mad Men? If not, start. Peggy is your patron saint.

Production like this is a group assignment and anyone who wants to succeed has to both develop a thick skin, a strong sense of self, and the ability to think about the end product and the team effort at the same time. Being the cynic in the back of the class who snipes at everything and shoots down ideas will make you unpopular, no matter how brilliant your ideas are. Being right is not the same as being employed.

Men bond by shared activity, not by sharing emotional truths about themselves. If you want to fit in, you have to work the hours and be seen as sharing the load. Many women choose to adapt the mom role--bringing snacks, offering to make more coffee, etc. I don't think this is wrong, but it's usually more successful in an assistant than in a creative.

You're not there to joke around or bond. You're there to produce. If they're silent--maybe they're IMing? You can find ways to meld into the team without shooting the shit.

But more than any of this--you have to lose the negativity. It's not productive. You cannot succeed in this sort of work if you're seen as the person who points out flaws, or how bad ideas are or whatever. In this case--you've got the proof--the boss liked the presentation.

I don't think the hours are that important--you're older, have a life outside of work, and these guys go home to their Wii or whatever. But the time you do spend has to be golden--you are on your game, you're ready for whatever is tossed your way, and you've got your sleeves rolled up. Be enthusiastic, be proactive, and get your head in the game. (In this specific case--I think you should have stayed all night.) I doubt that you'll have to do these hours on a regular basis, but interns are competitive.

This is a business of who you know--no matter how great your book is--you have to have people who are enthusiastic about you. Do you have a mentor? I'd start shopping for one, if I were you.
posted by Ideefixe at 4:42 PM on September 5, 2011 [6 favorites]

There's nothing wrong with you, a workplace which demands 24/7 engagement is a workplace which is dehumanising and demeaning.

Today our creative director was enthusing about the value of all-nighters and drama

I used to work in politics. In my experience all-nighters and drama have a direct, causal relationship with very bad decisions getting made. To me, that's a sentence that shows it's not just a bad workplace for you, it's a bad workplace for anyone with a sense of judgement.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:44 PM on September 5, 2011 [12 favorites]

There's nothing wrong with you - it's just that this is not the job for you. Go find a job that is right for you.
posted by mleigh at 4:49 PM on September 5, 2011

I can't say much about your field, but I would venture that if you have already completed a PhD and have the motivation to try to transition to a completely new field, it's almost impossible that your work ethic sucks. Also, I can't think of many careers that should require regular all-nighters, especially all-nighters where you are forced to stay away from home (i.e. you can't do the work at home). I'm not saying that people don't have to do all-nighters, just that with the exception of treating emergency medical conditions, I can't think of many projects that require an all-nighter when proper planning is in place. Along the lines of Fiasco de Gama, all-nighters just don't make for good work. Anything you got done at 4 in the morning would have been done better, faster or been rightly skipped if it was performed in daylight....

I have been the crazy person that did the all-nighter while someone else went home and regularly worked normal hours. As long as they got their work done, I don't think they were blatantly penalized for completing the work they were hired to do and going home at the time they had been told upon hiring that the day ended (this was in a science field, so again, may be completely irrelevant to your field). I can't say for sure how this all ultimately affected their career, but I know that I am definitely not reaping the rewards of having done those all-nighters.

Is your work always going to be in teams like this? Is it possible that you will move on to a situation where others have partners, families and/or lives outside of work?

Your descriptions of the feeling 'outer' with respect to your team and the way you worry about what your director thinks of me leads me to think that you feel guilty about your choices, but that you are unwilling to change them. As I've already explained, I can't think of why you should ever have to spend overnight at the office. So I would recommend recognizing that you have made a choice (not to spend overnight), that it is the right choice for you, that you are still a hardworker despite the fact that you need sleep (you are probably a better worker for it) and that's that. Maybe if you can get past that, it will be easier for you to make real progress towards the suggestions that ideefixe mentions... I can imagine it would be really hard to be less negative if you are constantly feeling bad about not staying all night....
posted by Tandem Affinity at 4:51 PM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

It sounds like this team or this company, or possibly this field, just isn't a good fit.

quoted for truth...
posted by k8t at 4:56 PM on September 5, 2011

In America, there is this notion that "hard work" = good product and "hard work" = "long hours." For those of us who work quickly in intense flashes and need down time to do the processing to make that happen or simply don't prefer to do pretend work once we've finished the real work, we can appear "lazy" or "not on the team."

There is also this idea among bosses who are not that bright that the person who stays in the office longest is the best and most productive worker.

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a correlation between effort and achievement. But some people's best efforts take 10 minutes to achieve excellence while others take 10 hours. Smart bosses know this and allow their workers freedom to work as much or as little as they like, provided the targets are met. However, if you aren't blessed with a work place that recognizes this, you can be in the hell you seem to be in.

My advice is set boundaries, find mentors and be prepared to seek work elsewhere, ideally freelance work where no one cares how long you spend working, only about the product they get from you.
posted by Maias at 5:30 PM on September 5, 2011 [3 favorites]

Your work ethic isn't the problem. You're working hours that most people would find obscene. Sure, people work overtime to meet deadlines, but what you're describing goes way beyond that.

It is incomprehensible to me how any organisation can think that their team are going to come up with great ideas at 3.30am on a Sunday night, especially if they've been working 12 hour days for the last week. Any ideas that come up at that time are not going to be good ones. And in my experience, something that takes 3 hours to do with no sleep can be done far better in 30 minutes the next morning after a good nights sleep.

Sleep is an essential component of the creative process. As is time away from work (that's the time that ideas "simmer" in the background).

Stay true to yourself. Try and avoid the negativity, but keep networking and seeking mentors. Good luck.
posted by finding.perdita at 5:51 PM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

You're not there to joke around or bond. You're there to produce. If they're silent--maybe they're IMing? You can find ways to meld into the team without shooting the shit.

Disagree, disagree, disagree.

Now I'm by no means a social butterfly, but people that have this sort of attitude towards work are not only missing out on getting to know more about people who obviously have at least one core common interest, but in a creative industry, meshing with your co-workers is pretty much a must if you honestly want to produce any good work. There's a reason why ropes courses, team-building classes and leadership training is so huge. You need to work with and for your team. You need to drive each others' passion for the goal when one of them gets fatigued.

My current team was very silent, didn't seem to mesh well when I first got there. I, too, was the lone female. I took the lack of communication personally. For some reason I assumed they'd been fully capable of having conversations without me. Like you, I'm pretty vocal. I've been doing this gig long enough to know what I'm talking about. After a few months they finally came to. There were four of us at the time (five now), and one of them liked to butt heads with me a little bit -- definitely not to the point of telling me I was rude -- but skirting devil's advocate either to irk me or see how I reacted. Our fifth (another male) came along and really closed the gaps our team had with his friendliness and willingness to learn not only about the work we do, but about us.

Another thing -- because we're a development team, we're sitting at our desks most of the day. Ever since instating a team chatroom, we've been more productive and had a lot more fun. If this is something you can use to your advantage to keep conversation flowing throughout the day without interrupting people, go for it.

I've done a lot of copywriting throughout all of my jobs (be it agency or in-house creative teams). Writing is hard, and it is very draining. Writing with other people is hard. Doing any sort of creative work with people who don't see eye to eye with you or have no personal interest in you is nigh impossible sometimes. The best and most productive teams are the ones that care about each other as well as care about their product/project/etc.

I wholeheartedly agree with the occasional all-nighter, but three weekends in a month, even on a busy month, is quite a bit. Your partner's birthday is a big deal, and I'm glad you went home. Your health is a big deal, and I'm glad you've gone home each weekend they've stayed there.

Ignore the people insinuating if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. This kitchen sounds like a hellhole that hires assholes. Not every agency or copywriting gig is going to be the same. It can be rough and relentless at times, but not all of the time. If it is, something isn't right.

Now that I've said all that; get out while you can. Don't let this job or these jerks drain you; they inevitably will. If you're at a place that you really feel you can grow from, talk to someone above you about planning a group outing or some such personal development-oriented shindig. If they see no benefit to this, you know what to do.
posted by june made him a gemini at 5:55 PM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Has the company dangled any permanent jobs at the interns? Might explain the lack of camraderie.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:12 PM on September 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a correlation between effort and achievement.

Yes, but it's not always positive.

I'll say something slightly different from what others have said. It's not clear to me this is the wrong job for you. It might be the wrong group for you; it seems you have good evidence that the group dynamics aren't working. On the other hand, you have a sense that your ideas are better than those of the other group members. Consider the possibility that you might be right about this, and that your creative director might be aware of this, and that the other group members might be aware of it too and be a bit peeved that you can do better work in an afternoon than they can do all night.

Good managers praise people for being themselves. It sounds like your team, by and large, is an "all-nighter + drama" type of team, and so your CD is praising them for being that. Good managers don't expect people over 30 to live that way. And nothing you've said suggests that your CD actually expects that of you. I think you should stop beating yourself up for not being a team player and start the process, with your CD, of finding the right team for you to play on. If he's a good manager, this process has already started without your knowledge.
posted by escabeche at 6:22 PM on September 5, 2011

Mod note: From the OP:

Hi there, guys. First, I'd like to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses. I posted this when I was literally crying with fatigue and not making very much sense. I'm trying to learn from these responses, because I need to accept responsibility for this situation (Ideefixe's answer was particularly helpful). The fact is I'm not accustomed to working in a team, and it's much harder than I anticipated.

By 'negative' I don't necessarily mean I respond negatively to other's ideas - I really try to be mindful of the need to make space for everyone, and years of teaching, seminars and conferences has shown me the importance of giving sensitive feedback. What I really mean is I'm quite pessimistic. I've had problems with depression and anxiety my whole life, and to an extent I've used that itchy sense of unease to fuel my academic and creative work. The culture here is very much everything is great and there's nothing to complain about.

I think I need to decide what my future career is. At the most basic, I want work that is creative and engaging, where I make things I can be proud of, but I want to be able to maintain my relationships, exercise, do laundry etc. I still think I want to pursue copywriting because of my experiences and connections in the broader agency, not just in the group. We had a week break recently, and I took that opportunity to work with one of the art directors on a project, and that was just wonderful. I felt energized, relaxed and inspired. I've also been fortunate that another art director, who I really respect and admire, has taken an interest in me, and we've had a couple of great conversations about creative work. He's away right now, but I'll definitely talk to him when he gets back.

The creative director of the team has told me flat out that he sees me as a strategist or planner, which really disappointed me. That said, I get along quite well with the planning team, and (I could be wrong), it seems like a less emotionally loaded kind of work.

My other option is to work as a researcher again, which I'd kind of... love. A postdoc has recently become available in a great area, and I do plan on applying for it just to see how things go. My reservations are largely financial; I'm (understandbly) concerned about job security in the academic sector, and financial security has become a major priority for me after living on grants and scholarships through my early 20s.

At the core, I'm just incredibly tired and stressed right now. My health is suffering, and my emotional reserves are depleted. Really, I just need to survive the next three months. I also need to decide what happens after - whether I'm good enough to stay in this industry, or if I'm just not cut out for it.

posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:36 AM on September 6, 2011