Stayed After Work, But This Time It's OK

I stayed late both Thursday and Friday in My Favorite Department.  It's OK because overtime was offered for the week -- well, for outside in my Main Department, but frankly, I've stayed late when I've been back there and my boss hasn't said anything.  Anyway, I forgot why I stayed after on Thursday.  But on Friday, I had to do this thing, namely put in order forms that are waiting for answers because they are incomplete.  

Ever since the start of the fall we have had a bevy of forms that are incomplete, and that will last, according to one co-worker, until New Year's Eve.  With so many, and so many that we will have to match up once the answers come in, I could not just leave this folder that came in Friday afternoon all catawampus.  I saw that I had about ten minutes left before my shift was over, but I just had to do it.  My OCD was kicking in, and if I put those in order now, the person doing my position the next day will have a much easier time matching them up with the answers -- dozens of which, by the way, came in in the afternoon, and I could have stayed and done them myself, but at some point you just have to call it.

There were some other things I had to do, including cleaning up the workstation I was working at the past two days.  Once it was all over, I had clocked out 40 minutes after I should have.  That is about the same amount of time I stayed after my last day working at The Fourth Department just a couple weeks ago, and I complained like hell about it here on WAF.  But this past Friday?  No worries, unless my boss starts asking why I stayed so late.

So, what's the difference?  Why is being late 40 minutes one day a huge problem and 40 minutes another day no problem at all?  Well, the nature of the job I am doing when staying late has something to do with it.  But also, and frankly, it's will.  In short, I wanted to stay after on Friday because I really, really had to do this thing before I left.  However, my life in The Fourth Department was slowly ebbing from my body, and all the crap that I had to do before I left was making me pissed off in a slow boil kind of way.  Contrast that to working in My Favorite Department, where I wanted ... well, again, it was my OCD talking, but I did not feel hemmed in and prevented from leaving.  This was something I wanted to do of my own volition, even though this was not really a passion project per se.

Moral of the story, I guess: Time at work after you should have left work is a matter of perspective.