Worker feels guilty for not checking Slack at work, snaps out of it and realizes they've been conditioned

Do you feel like you're on the clock even when you're not?

It's not a good feeling to feel like you're on the hook for something. You want to feel like you're free to do what you need to do when you can do it. And you want to be able to put it all away when you need to. Your free time is your free time, and you would hate to feel like it's being co-opted by someone else. You know the feeling. You're with your friends, but you're thinking about something else. Maybe it's a work problem, maybe it's something your boss said, or maybe it's the fear that you'll be hounded for something past your working hours. 

When you start a job, you probably want to at least appear flexible. You decide on regular working hours, but you try to do your best to be available when you need them. But this is a slippery slope. You don't want to be on call all the time, or else they'll get used to it and it will never end. And then before you know it, you've spent months without mental rest because you're always waiting for the next task. It can start innocently and spiral way out of control. That's what happened here, where one worker had a moment of clarity at a dinner with their friends. They quickly realized that something needed to change.