Early in my career — but not late enough into it where I knew I wanted out of the corporate rat-race — I worked for a Fortune 500 company. I had a young family then, but worked later in the evenings because the commute took two hours at 5:00pm but only one hour at 6:00pm. I also traveled a lot. As a young executive, you were expected to have a certain level of company loyalty. But the official stance of the company was that you were also expected to practice work/life balance.

I didn’t get paid by the hour, which is a fancy way of saying I was always working. My brain was always working through problems, juggling some program and the politics that went along with it. That’s the part of executive life nobody tells you about, especially your family. As a result, you’re never 100% with your family on the weekends, yet, there was always a “Martha Stewart-like” expectation that you were, which apparently made me a horrible husband and father.

And 5:00pm Friday came around every week and flaunted that expectation you knew you could never achieve. What gave others in our office motivation to duck out early gave me dread.

A long time passing, I still hate 5:00pm every Friday.