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My girlfriend has a terrible work life balance. Is this normal?
So my girlfriend is a social media assistant. Today shes had to be at a company event and film content up until around 10pm. Got home 10:45pm and gets a text from her boss that the content must be edited and posted to tiktok that night!? Keep in mind she left for work at 8 in the morning and doesn’t really get a lunch break.
Currently she’s asleep after freaking out and confessing to her boss that she couldn’t do it that night.
My question to you guys is whether this is normal, acceptable, or allowed.
It has only been a few months since she started and she’s unhappy and reconsidering careers now.
Any advice would be really appreciated as I don’t want to steer her in the wrong direction with my bias.
Thanks all.
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1 Reply
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Is this a freelance position? She needs to set boundaries. this is absolutely not normal.
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For social media? Unfortunately, it’s kind of normal. I worked in politics and it was like this, but it is very much an environment with terrible work-life balance.
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She should start looking immediately if she hasn’t already been looking.
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My first social media job was like this—sometimes with things like this, it can be helpful to ask other people in the company that might have longer hours due to the event (event coordinator, for example) how they manage work life balance around events. My coworkers came in the next day a couple hours later than usual so I suggested to my supervisor that I’d be doing the same.
Event coverage can be super helpful in a social media portfolio because it’s not a skill that every social media manager has to learn. Tell her to keep that in mind when she’s ready to start applying for something new.
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Unfortunately, this is very normal. Expectations should be set that if she has a night like this, she takes tomorrow off.
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Walk away. Social media is a cesspool.
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Social is very time sensitive so this isn’t unheard of. From my experience, brand account manager for 4 years, social coverage for events tends to be an outlier to the day to day account management. Now that I manage the team, I make sure anyone who works extra hours or days(weekends) is given comp PTO time to use to offset their hard work during events.
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Former HR person here…they always ask the young and new to the workplace people to do more. They also count on peer pressure to make you comply. She needs to stand her ground without offending. It’s a skill, research, research and research, then do practice sessions with her.
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When you’re on a marketing team that produces events, this is just part of the gig. I’ve never managed an event that wasn’t a ballbusting all-day and night affair. It’s the nature of the beast.
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She needs to get out. Not every company in that field is like that but overworking is way too common in SM.
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Hi. I’m a full-time Creative Director, social media content creator and brand design expert with several clients for over a decade.
Listen to me carefully. The employer is taking advantage of her. This is unacceptable, and is probably violating your jurisdiction’s employment laws. Here in Ontario, you MUST take a 30-minute break during an 8 hour shift. She has the right to refuse work. Again: she has _the right_ to refuse work.
Is she tracking her hours? Is she getting paid overtime accordingly? Is her employer providing _reasonable accommodation_ when working a 10+ hour day? There are so many questions and so much wrong with what this employer is asking for.
As long as she communicates her ‘no’ to the employer regularly with respect and no attitude, you’re fine. You just set boundaries. It is a must.
If things get out of hand, or even get nasty, or her job is threatened, straight up tell this employer you’re reporting them to your local Labor Ministry.
If this employer wants an edit after a 14+ hour shift, tell them to take their phone and stick it up their ass. Pro video editors charge $1,400 for something like what you described
Good luck.
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She should work the hours she’s paid to work, no more. You might think the extra time put in will be noticed by management and rewarded, but it’s a lie; managers who ask for free labour just want free labour.
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If she has just started her career (1-2 years in) unfortunately her schedule will be erratic. I used to work in a global PR and Digital agency in the social media team and it’s brutal. It doesn’t get any better until you become a manager and delegate work, focus on strategy rather than doing the grunt work.
That being said, not every company is like this. There are social media agencies that have a good work life balance, but they are usually smaller and work with SMBs than national brands.
Please make sure she’s resting when she can, drinking water and eating food. I lost 8-10 kgs in a couple of months because I was constantly stressed out and working non-stop when I initially started in the field.
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I have been in social for around 14 years and now run a global social team and can say that events are a different beast (that hopefully only happen a few times a year) and social tends to get the short end of the stick with content deadlines.
As a manager, setting clear expectations for the employee should have been established ahead of time. Sounds like she didn’t realize these expectations before hand which is bad on the manager.
A lot of events my company attends tend to be on weekends so I make sure they get those days back.
Social can be awesome but also shitty. Hope she comes through this and doesn’t give up on social. A good manager makes a huge difference.
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Hi – 10+ years experience in the industry, a lot of event specific experience as well.
First, while the in person filming with really long hours back to back is not unheard of, what’s ridiculous is the expectation of editing AND THEN POSTING in the same night. 1. Your editor is going to do a bad job (even when SUPER experienced) in that amount of time crunch AND under those conditions. 2. It shows a real lack of planning, execution/tactics, and strategy (not her fault on any accounts). There’s a way to get the “live”/“in-person” stuff hot, live and topical ON TOP OF the edited version/content without it cannibalizing other content/itself/eachother. This is a lack of foresight, knowledge, management imo (again not her fault if she’s in any kind of junior position).
She better be getting paid a VERY pretty penny for that turnaround time (I’m not going to ask, I know she’s not).
Honestly, whole thing is bad management and leadership. Anyone who agrees or is trying to normalize this kinda shit deserves a kick in the shin, stub their two, so that they consider what they are actually bringing to the industry (if I sound like I’m ready to die on this hill. I am).
I don’t know her full situation, I will say this, if she wants to stay in the industry, she should expect ridiculous hours sometimes. However, having a backbone and setting up boundaries is necessary. If this is her first job in social, tell her to get the experience but start thinking about her next move.
If y’all live in Canada, she has all kinds of rights which vary from province to province. Tell her to start a detailed paper trail and get everything IN AN EMAIL. Look up what her rights are and what’s in her contract. Remember, HR is NOT your friend, they are there to serve the company.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox.
If she wants advice tell her she’s welcomed to message me. I’ve worked in corporate and own my own business now.
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