Leaving Work At Work — The Two Minute Rule

Stefani Vader
3 min readJan 23, 2019
Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels

Let’s say you had a really bad day at work. Everything that could go wrong, did. The boss was being a douche bag. Your coworkers were lazy and didn’t do what they needed to do. The customers sucked ass and were rude.

You go home, and you are still stewing. The more you think about it, the anger inside you grows and festers. Your spouse or partner get home and there you are.

At a boiling point.

Anything they say wrong will cause you to explode.

Ever happen to you?

I found a game changer for me and my family.

https://pixabay.com/en/users/Clker-Free-Vector-Images-3736/

A couple of years ago, I came home just like this. I was pissed. I hated my job, hated my boss, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. My husband sensed that I was in a bad mood and steered clear. Finally, I strode over to him where he sat playing a video game.

“I need five minutes of your time.”

He paused the game and looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll give you two.”

At first I was even more pissed. How dare he limit the time I needed to vent.

“Fine!” And I let it spew.

I think the word ‘Fuck’ was thrown in between every other word, but within two minutes, I spit out every single thing that had pissed me off or went wrong that day.

The relief was immediate.

When I was done, he said, “My turn.”

And for two minutes, he did the same thing.

So, less than five minutes out of our day, we had vented and ranted and spewed out the anger that we each held inside. My mood instantly lifted. I went back into the kitchen to finish making dinner.

About a week later, my husband came home and said, “I need two minutes.”

It became a thing.

At the end of each day, when the last of us gets home, we take those few precious moments to get out any anger and irritability that we are carrying inside. Then, work does not invade our house.

We no longer walk around, wondering what had happened throughout the day to piss the other person off, because we already know.

Now, in certain situations, we may discuss different options or solutions to each other’s problems, but not during those two minutes.

Those two minutes are purely to spew out venom.

Photo by Alejandro Alvarez on Unsplash

If you find yourself in this situation where you’re at home, stewing over things that happened at work, I urge you to try this. It sure helped me and my family.

Hope you had a wonderful day!

Stefani Vader

Lover of reading and writing. Hater of retail work. Small fish in a big pond, learning as I go.