Beyond overtime and the need to be available for planning special functions outside of work, a double-standard exists for single employees.

“I have a team of about five people who work under me,” explains 36-year-old Marni Wedin, a producer with CityTV in Vancouver and a voluntarily single person. Wedin says she doesn’t ask people to work overtime because she knows they’re single, but when situations arise where she does ask for overtime help from an unentangled staffer and they turn her down, it can make her blood boil. “If I ask a single person with no kids to do overtime and they say no or that they can’t, I’m fine with that…but deep down inside, I’m seething. I don’t mean to do it, but I do,” Wedin says.

Another problem that plagues single workers occurs during office parties and events. Since you’re unmarried, many offices will assume that you’ll be coming to these fetes alone. But that doesn’t mean you have to put up with it.

“I had a situation once with a Christmas party where everyone was invited to bring a ‘significant other.’ The assumption was that I wouldn’t bring someone, so it wasn’t included in the final head count,” Gugeler says.