A female client adviser (28) wrote: My husband works in M&A as an associate. Lots of his colleagues have been fired, so he works every day till midnight and at weekends. In his little time off, he sleeps, watches TV and sees friends for a drink...
He took the job to get rich, but he won't get a bonus this year. He is stressed and nervous, sleeps with his Blackberry and keeps complaining. He wants a new job - but doesn't know what he wants to do. It's too risky for him to quit in current times, but his job is damaging both of us.
He took the job to get rich, but he won't get a bonus this year. He is stressed and nervous, sleeps with his Blackberry and keeps complaining. He wants a new job - but doesn't know what he wants to do. It's too risky for him to quit in current times, but his job is damaging both of us.
Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:
I wonder which part of your predicament bothers you most. Ha ha…so many
Is it that the expected riches have not materialised? Brilliant intro Lucy keep it up…
Is it the way your husband works the whole time? Is it his incessant complaining? Is it the Blackberry by the bed? Is it the way he watches telly, sleeps and sees his friends? Now we are getting somewhere…
Or is it that even though he claims to hate his job, he can't think of anything he'd like better?
I can see that all of these could be annoying - with the possible exception of sleeping, which deserves a little tolerance. Yes unlike your intolerance of this moaning, nag…
If he were my husband, what I would dislike most would be his wanting to leave but being clueless about what to do instead. Preach the word…
If he can't think of alternatives, the endless complaint does not deserve endless sympathy. For now, he is stuck where he is. Unless he has a private fortune - which you imply he hasn't - it would be madness to quit until he has another job or scheme up his sleeve. Amen Lucy!
For you, this means finding a way of being less bothered by it all. As far as the money goes, I assume that will get better if he sticks it out. The hours, however, are not likely to improve much. This sort of work demands a lot of time.
The Blackberry beside the bed strikes me as something you should learn to live with: I've never known why people make quite such a fuss about this. We all have other distracting things by our beds - books and telephones and newspapers - and so long as we sometimes close them and put them away, it isn't the end of the world. Having drinks with friends isn't that bad either: at least he has friends, which is more than many unhappy men do. It’s a point well made.
The only really troubling thing in this picture is that he never seems to make any time for you…. Tuh dah…at last the Holy Grail. If he isn't prepared to be nice to you in his spare time, I fear that a change of job may not make things much better…. Lucy is the new Messiah…
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