Sydney Maco

There has traditionally been a separation between work life and family life at home. Employees would go to work perform their duties, then clock-off and rush home to be with the family. The evenings and weekends were typically off-limits for most employers when it comes to encroaching on family life. This is all changing, and for a variety of reasons.
There seems to be a growing trend these days where employers are actively blurring this distinct line of separation. Some examples include the following;
Bring your kids to work day
Drinks after work on Friday
Posters with baby photos of co-workers
International Breakfast days
“Team building” activities such as going to the zoo, bowling, archery, treasure hunt.
Now to most people these would seem like a little bit of harmless fun, but think about it, why would employers go to this trouble if it wasn’t ultimately in their interest. When you bring the social side into work, you inevitably bring the work life back home also. Many office workers today have remote access and a mobile phone, at the beckoning call of their employer.
In a typical office environment you have a mixture of people of all backgrounds and stages of life. Employers are not entirely to blame, there is also a growing number of single people in the workforce in their early to mid 30’s who don’t have a family to go home to. Some still living with their parents, others renting and living with a flat mate, or maybe a de facto partner. For them the opportunity to socialise with work colleagues is seldom declined.
I prefer to see work as totally separate from my family life, in this context I like to refer to employers as either “family friendly” or “family hostile”. Respecting the fact that ultimately my family is of infinitely higher priority than work. Not being frowned upon for choosing to be with my family over drinking with co-workers for hours after work on a Friday.
And there is something inherently wrong with giving a few dollars to prance around with a ribbon or badge showing support for the latest cause. I refuse to buy into this and prefer to make real donations to real charities, without the need for drawing attention. It’s typically these office busy bodies who have nothing better to do than go around and pester people.

Many of us have grown up with memories of our parents going to work in the factories in and around Sydney in the mid 1970s to late 1980s.
There is a false belief that these factories have now disappeared, all production has gone offshore, there is no more work for the lower classes.
This infact cannot be further from the truth, infact what has happened is a shift in the classes in such a way as to instill a false sense of progress.

Our parents had high hopes that we would grow up doing some easier work, less demanding physically, cleaner, and generally a better and easier life, etc. Has this materialised, most people would argue that it has, I’d like to explore where we have infact ended up, and what we can do going forward.

By making people believe that they have gone up the social ladder, when infact the level of dependence has increased through consumerism, people generally feel content without realising what has happened. The quality of life has not increased, infact I’d argue that quality of life has generally declined, particularly when it comes to family.
A false indicator of quality of life is material possessions, when infact it should personal relationships primarily within the family.

My answer to anyone would be family comes first, don’t let money, wealth, or material possessions get ahead of your personal relationships. This is difficult to contemplate in today’s world, we’ve come a long way from the weekend picnics, visiting each other regularly for just a chat, helping each other when in need. The prospect of a flashy new car, or several weeks of indulgence on a cruise ship, a brand new shiny kitchen with stainless steel appliances are just too much to give up in exchange for attention to the people we love.

We are the factory workers of today, we may work inside air conditioned offices, but it’s still a factory when you think about it. We can be factory workers in today’s world and still retain the family values that our parents held, these are not mutually exclusive. The really difficult question that needs to be asked, and most people would go to great lengths to avoid is this; Who do you live for ? When you wake up in the morning do you think, wow, I’ve got a fresh 24 hours in which to live and enrich the lives of people around me. I’ll tell you now, if we did this first as a family, then as a community, we’d all benefit from better relationships.