Winding Down

I work in a group with people who are located in every time zone in the United States and a couple international ones as well. This has its pros and cons. As I write this, I can’t think of any pros, but I am sure some must exist. I just happen to be at a loss at this moment. 

There are a lot of cons to this setup; One of them is the time zones differences (wait, this might actually be the biggest con!). People in India are hard to get a hold of almost any time I am online. People in other Asia Pacific countries need to be accommodated almost entirely outside of my 9-5 schedule. People in Europe are mostly reachable during my morning time. If I miss them by noon, I know I’ll have to catch them the next day. This often results in a waste day when it comes to communicating with them. Grrr!

I have a few colleagues in the Central time zone. I often have to wait until 10 am to be able to even reach them. Getting in touch with people is really difficult on this global model. Because the team covers the globe, there are a lot of meetings scheduled to try to get everyone ‘in the same place, at the same time’ (and no need to tell me how ridiculous this phrase is!). It becomes an exercise in futility but I’m preaching to my own choir

This component is also frustrating because when the clock is getting close to or is at 5 in my time zone, there’s still time left in my Central Time Zone colleagues’ day. But that doesn’t mean I want to hear from them as I am about to shut my computer down! And I definitely don’t want to have a call from 4 to 5 during my day even if it is 3 to 4 in their day. I want time to get work done and finish up before calling it a day. 

And why? Why? Do people often instant message me when I am about to log off for the day. Is there some kind of cosmic wave that goes out in the universe and says “ooooh Angie is logging off, let’s ask her a really complicated question even thought it’s past 5 in her time zone.” 

I have been in the workforce for quite a while. This aspect of it is beginning to really get my goat. I am not sure how to rectify this except by perhaps looking for another job where I don’t have to be on a 24 hour clock. In the meantime I’ll just block my calendar from 4-5 in hopes that I don’t get called into any late day meetings.