I’ll get this out of the way, the picture is not related to these words. But I took the shot this week, when I was thinking. And, owls are fucking cool.

So here’s the thing. Virginia Woolf had a notion of a room of one’s own, and that notion is in my head. But mine is all about time not money and space. Either way, it’s about agency, liberation, freedom. It’s about having something of your own.

When I first started at my last job, I didn’t have to count my hours. For two jobs before that, I didn’t have to count my hours. I, in fact , managed people who did have to count their hours. I also paid contracts at all of the jobs to consultants who had to count their hours, and each hour was more than I could imagine making.

Once upon a time, I even had to help make sure that people on government grants complied with the letter of the law to be paid hourly. I read the Fair Labor Standard Acts regulations. I enforced the FLSA standards. I wrote or interpreted company policy on this shiznit.

So years into my last gig, after years of not worrying, one day I day I was told that I had to count my hours. The new HR director decided on the most conservative letter of the law. And so it goes.

So, I started counting my hours. It was me, and we, a bunch of administrative types, who had never done time cards, suddenly asked to do time cards. We acquiesced, and there was training.

The payroll woman (who incidentally sucked, and caused me to lose money on my disability when I got my bum hip fixed) trained me and others on this fabulous new process. She said, basically, it just doesn’t matter. She said, put in 4 hours, put in an hour for lunch and put in another 4 hours. The new HR director, she said, it’s still the same, don’t worry, just put down 8 hours.

The other manager in HR, she said, we were lucky for all of the great things the company offered, and she watched your hours and would keep you in line. You got paid 8 hours, unless there was a dramatic reason for more. There was seldom a dramatic reason for more.

So I did what they said. For years. I got paid for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. No more than that.

Then new people came. They weren’t trained the same way. They counted all of their hours. They put in overtime.

Then, I got a new director. She said, I want to know if you need to work more. But, really I don’t think you do, so put in 8 hours.

And so it went. I got paid for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. No more than that.

Some weeks, I would lie in my own favor, because god knows I wasn’t counting the times I built social and political currency in the hallways. Although in guilt I’d worry for not holding my nose to the grindstone. God knows, I didn’t count YouTube videos or reading long articles interesting for the context of my work, but outside of its scope. I figured I was ahead.

Some weeks, I would lie in favor of the work. I stayed late, because I knew something was important. I stayed late, because I had a bad day and felt behind. I stayed late, because I wanted to get ahead for the next day. I stayed late, because I felt guilty. I stayed late, because the traffic report said don’t even bother to try to get home. I figured it was worth it.

Meanwhile.

Meanwhile, my director, my boss, the person who had to review and approve these time cards, she told me not to stay late. She told me to hew to the letter of the policy. She told me that I should not work overtime. She questioned me anytime I worked over.

Still, she wanted things done.

Still, she’d hold me to a high standard. Still, she’d work weekends, and email floodgates would open on Sundays.

Still, I would come in to a chipper email at the end of a pay period, “hey, I signed your time card, but I noticed that extra half hour (reflected in my calendar, because someone called a meeting during lunch), and you didn’t ask me.”

Still, I knew, because many people told me things, in hall way conversations or other moments, they told me they put in extra hours all of the time. Or they said, they told their direct reports to put in extra hours, and they’d sign the time card.

Their bosses, they never said don’t, so they did.

I knew people were balancing out what they considered a low wage with extra time, because they told me. One woman told me she was the highest paid in my position, because she claimed so many hours.

Sure, in the end, it caught up with her. But, her bank account was none the wiser.

I knew there was inequity, because people told me. I knew there was inequity, because I helped research it. And, in the end, I betrayed my own pocket book. I helped management figure out the new policy.

I helped write new HR policies to make it clearer when to put in hours and when not to do so. I helped clarify that overtime wasn’t the baseline expectation. When, I helped clarify all of that, I said others should stay in the same box as me.

My boss, knowing I not only knew the letter of the rules but helped write them, she made sure I didn’t waver and followed it all. She grumbled when one week I had overtime, it was overtime that I needed to not just because of all of the work that still needed to get done, which had never stopped, but because I needed more time to spend time helping to define overtime. Begrudgingly, I felt, she OK’d my time.

Irony, you literary, Alanis-Morrisette-loving bitch. Irony, you complete me.

Check it out and let’s be clear — I held paper to pen, or keyboard to digital records, I helped my company write policies. The president knew I was helping. The general counsel knew I was helping. The HR director knew I was helping.

HELL. They all asked me to help.

But, going back to the Fair Labor laws AND California labor laws, they all somehow thought it was fair and cool and fine and just and all sort of regulatory right, that I should be punching a clock and filling out a time card and was not worthy of a salaried position. Because even while helping write the rules, I was not responsible.

They said I was not responsible, because they paid me like a secretary who held no responsibilities. But, they sure as fuck held me responsible.

For anyone playing the home game — I exceeded the FLSA guidelines for contributing to the work and should have been salaried, paid higher, and, as the lingo goes, exempt from overtime.

And, even in California, where the fair labor shit is a motherfucker, my duties should have made me salaried. There’s a “white color job” standard. Check. Then, there’s this paragraph:

Examples of duties that relate to management or general business operations include responsibility for marketing, research, budgeting, finance, accounting, purchasing, quality control, human resources, labor or government relations, regulatory compliance, and database administration.

– Source: https://wrklyrs.com/Exempt#p54

Every single damn day at that job, those things fell into place. For example, the whole company trained and trained and made everyone with my title experts on regulatory compliance of grant making more than anyone in the damn building.

So, why am I writing this shit down?

How the hell do I know?

But, I will say, this week I woke up and realized how much this stuff all bothered me.

Call it PTSD. I’m getting saltier than the sea right outside of Jordan. I’m getting so salty, the FDA is gonna say I cause hypertension. Today, I’m looking back at about two months ago, when I submitted my resignation. A couple of months when I accepted a similar job. A job still in California, making many, many more ducats an hour, and no one is expecting me to count those hours. I am salaried, and a much better salary it is.

Back to Virginia Woolf. I feel freedom.

The emotional toll of even the nicest most generous system (which I didn’t have) is still pretty fucking high when you are a grown ass woman, and someone outside of you looks over how you spend a day.

A humongous weight is lifted. I show up to work when the subway brings me to the neighborhood, and no one watches. I leave when it feels like things are done enough, and no one watches. I check my email or I don’t. I read Slack or I don’t. I do what needs to get done, and I go home.

For years. I got paid for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. No more than that. No extras for caring, reading, reading supplementary stuff, getting criticized for things I didn’t do. Getting criticized for reading emails, answering calls, sent outside of those 40 hours.

Now, I am not in a fortress of 40 hours. It’s not clear what a day is, and there’s no time card to lie on and pretend we agree on a work day. When I arrive, no one knows or cares. They, the bosses, the company, the job, they are not watching me by hours. The work gets done the best that I know how to do it. And that’s enough.

I get more money. I worry less. People are nicer about it.

The kicker is, the pockets where I work now have so much less money in them than the last place. They MUST worry about money, because the company’s existence depends on revenue and wisely managing what they have.

At my last place, they gave money away. That was the business. Their pockets were deep, their endowment solid, their worth in the billions with a b. And, that’s where they used to watch my time. That’s where they not only watched my hours, they stopped giving me cost of living increases, because my pay was the highest it could be at the job. They have billions in the bank, I made 5 figures.

I know their scale is wrong. I know my position should have been salaried. I know because when I decided to leave and get exactly the same type of job — both non-profit and profit — they offered me more and with a salary. (I will, surely perish from this earth not comprehending the riddle of why ALL other jobs I chased were willing to pay me more and how in god’s fucking name the old job sets “competitive” wages.)

I get to contribute on my own terms. And, today’s shallow pocketed company may very well become deep. Who knows.

How absurd that I spent so many years justifying time. How absurd I was even asked. And how crazy the ending of this story should be if I end up with successful corporate shares enough to create my own philanthropic world that will be better than the one I left. But, even without that thought, my life is measurably improved by walking away.

Time is on my side.