Work Life Balance??? Hmph. Not in the promised land mate.

I remember thinking before I made aliyah how Israel is consistently 10 years behind on pretty much everything. I still think that, except, perhaps, some extremely important medical discoveries and the odd bit of technology, which is totally useless because it never filters down to the average israelis life, but I digress… still they say you can spot the year an olah has made aliyah by what she is wearing. The fashions here are usually so behind or so overpriced that nobody buys clothes here for years.
Whilst this 10 year rule may not apply to absolutely everything, it definitely applies to workplace attitudes. Or so Husband reports. Its a but like school. The feeling seems to be “Give ’em an inch, they’ll take a mile.” So they don’t give any inches. You have to work for every bit of trust, every day off, and every minute is timed to the clock. No matter that all research points to this sort of attitude leading to a demoralised culture of nobody working for the greater good [much like schoolkids who are so micromanaged they start to hate school] and no matter how companies like Google are proving that a respectful attitude provides the most efficient staff, and psychologists report that employees who have more autonomy suffer less stress, the message just has not gone through. Its bizarre.

The sick leave system is from the dark ages. You basically dont get paid unless you are unwell for days [so people basically turn up to work with flu and make everyone else ill]. Husband is forced to take off all erev chagim [great for me in terms of chagim preparations but it take away a lot of holiday entitlement]. You earn your holiday leave VERY slowly. Israelis seem to think its normal to never take a holiday. Presumably the idea is to encourage people to remain loyal to a company. We worked out you would have to work in the average israeli firm for OVER TWENTY YEARS to get the basic holiday days you would get in england!!

All in all it all seems very untrusting and disciplined, with no rest for the wicked, no downtime [this approach to life seems to start for israelis at Gan, and goes thru school, to the army and right through to the workplace] and I would personally find the lack of trust and respect very demoralising. They assume you are out to take what you can get, and this fosters a culture of take take take and not working for the greater good. Apparently the hi-tech companies have a much fairer more modern approach [hence the rush to all olim to work in hi-tech] but otherwise israelis seem resigned to this lifestyle. People often say that making aliyah is difficult, and that living here is even more difficult, but so far I have found this work-work-work attitude to be the hardest adjustment. There are always people for whom work is their life, I have had jobs which I have happily worked round the clock for, believing passionately in the cause. But working 24/7 doing something totally unrewarding because Thats Just What Everyone Does is completely different IMO. A 6 day week with all holidays being chagim preparation is not a life of freedom no matter how you spin it.

Israel may have achieved a HUGE amount in its short existence but one of the casualties has been the constant rat-race of survival filtering down through the generations as pressure to work, perform and be the best. Apparently the 6 day school week is soon to be phased out, which for us is good news, as when my neighbours told me what their week consists of, what with school bnei akiva and other volunteering commitments I felt a bit like Fraulein Maria in The sound of Music;

“Er, excuse me Captain but when do they play?”