Jobs & Benefits

Before I had my son I was working in Project Management in a Telecom company and looking after the sales reporting for a region. I was based in Pakistan and my boss was located in France. I used to connect with my boss and the other project managers of the region via conference calls. I was doing really well and getting huge bonuses and increments. I also would often fly to Egypt for meetings with all expenses covered by the company and any training I needed would be done in France.

I was a real hot shot.

And then along comes little Mr. Nadir and all my priorities changed. My company wrote a work from home policy (since they didn’t have one at the time) to facilitate my staying with them. I tried a month of it but I couldn’t concentrate on my work. How can you if your son is crying for you. I decided that if I couldn’t do well at my job there was no point in doing it at all. For me the motivation in doing something is if I can do it to the best of my ability. Financially we could do with my husband’s salary.

I quit my job.

I quickly came to the conclusion that raising a child was more difficult than any job I had done. There were no fixed timings, no coffee breaks, no sick leave and no salary benefits. And more than the work itself it is the consequences of what you do that are so daunting. The way you raise a child will largely affect the type of person he/she grows up to be. He/she will affect so many other people in his/her life and so on and so forth. The work you do in an office seems so trivial in comparison.

Now it’s been 4 years since I quit and I don’t miss my job as such but I do miss earning my own money. If I was to have an ideal job it would be one which just required me to work half day (in the morning) when my son would be at school. Obviously I would never have that seniority again as when I left but I wouldn’t mind any kind of work as long as I was there to pick up my son from school and for the rest of the day.

After all getting a hug from him and hearing his stories is more gratifying than any amount of money.

Daily Prompt: Money for Nothing