It is a common for someone to claim that they work 50+ hours a week or maybe much more with 80+ not being unheard of. I have never heard the definition of this defined. Right now, my work laptop is running some critical, mega-corp level processes and yet I am here asking this question without being bothered much at all. My boss just called to tell me to take time off for compensation for the past few days but I mainly just make some high-level decisions every half hour to 2 hours and go back to what I was doing like laundry or house cleaning.
When I was a teenager, I worked in a supermarket and I signed up for every possible shift one Thanksgiving week at the grand, standard-rate of $3.35 an hour (time and a half after 40 ;))They let me have it and I hit 73 hours that week and it nearly killed me. That is why I am cynical. Work time started when you clocked in and stopped when you clocked out. With a one-hour mandatory lunch, that was over 13 hours a day unloading trucks, moving boxes, being a cashier, and a customer service person for 7 days in a row almost 100% of the time I was clocked in. Few people can sustain that.
By my definition, a claim that you work 60+ hours a week means that you have to be in your workplace working by 7 am and leaving well past 7 pm every single workday or the equivalent and getting home even later. That doesn’t seem to be within the life capabilities of many people.
I am not saying that no one ever works that much. The real question is what is your definition of a 50+ hour work week?
I would agree with your definition for the most part. That being said, I know plenty of my coworkers do this. One come to work at 6 am and leaves at around 8:30 or 9.
I am at my place of work at 7ish and I leave around 4:30ish. Nowhere near as much as he does, but I like to take my work home with me. I’m usually doing something work-related until 6 or 7ish before I eat dinner and and goof off the rest of the evening. Do you consider those few hours of work-at-home work? My workplace obviously doesn’t, not that they would pay me for them if they did, but I certainly consider it work as opposed to play.
In order for me to work 50+ hours a week, I have to get in at 6:30 and leave after 5:30 every day Monday through Friday. Or come in at 6:30 and stay to quarter to 7 one day and work till 4:30 the other 4 days. Or from 6:30 to 4:30 Monday through Friday and 5 hours on Saturday.
All of which I’ve done. The 6:30 to 7 was excruciating. My daughter, who interned at my office this summer, would come in at 6:30 and be driven home at midnight, but never 2 days in a row. My son tried it but left the second day with me at 4:30 and didn’t make it in the next day. It was a mad, crazy year this year.
For informational use only: I work in an accounting firm.
When I work 50+ hour weeks, it means I am in my office about 13 hours per day. I get in between 11am and noon, have a break to retrieve lunch and maybe a secondhand-smoke break with a friend, and stay until 1am or later. In all, there’s maybe an hour’s worth of time I’m not being productive.
And before you ask, if I came in earlier, I would wind up leaving the same time. I’ve tried to come in early in hopes of leaving early, but it never, ever pans out. So I enjoy my late morning start.
My dad worked 12-13 hour-days for years. He’d get started around 6am, wrapped up around 6pm, then went home, made and ate dinner, and then was in bed by 10pm. My mom would start work around 8am, and not finish until 6 or 7pm. They’re getting older, and aren’t certifiable workaholics anymore, but this was their routine for my entire childhood.
None of us has a job where you can sit around and let a computer do the work, or only have to think every half hour. My dad is a tradesman, my mom is in accounting, and I’m in scheduling/admin.
Our health and our lives outside of work suffered as a result the long hours. All I can say to that is that it can take a long time to reach the end of your rope.
Working construction for a busy company in the peak season: 7:00 - 5:00 every weekday and a half day on Saturday. Working 6 days a week isn’t that bad… going back to work after a one day “weekend” was miserable.
my normal week is probably 60. I work 6 days a week and its far from unknow for me to be on a jobsite or in the shop from 9am-7-8pm. Right now I am babysitting a couple virus scans. I just go bump things along or run the next program every 30-40 min. I guess “work” is a strong word, mostly I do it to speed up the turnaround on some of the jobs. Sometimes I am doing bookkeeping and other tasks after hours as well.
I had a past boss who would be in his office by 7am and almost always be there well past that. Yes, he had no life. He’d work weekends too, for god knows what reason.
He once pulled each of us into his office one at a time to ask us to work 50 hours a week “just to show our dedication”. Didn’t like it much when I said “25% more hours, 25% more pay”.
He once called each member of our team in the wee morning hours while he was out of town on a training thing and left each of us a 5-10 minute status report on where he thought we should be on our projects. Silly me, I always thought it was WE who gave HIM the status reports. That was just creepy odd, and proved what a no-life-having-jackass he was. My call was at 2:10am local time, or 3:10am where he was at.
At another place where I was offered a Managerial job that I turned down, I was told;
“You are required to be on-site from 6am to 6pm Monday through Friday, wearing a suit and tie at all times. All of this time will be taken up with meetings, which means that any time required for you to manage your team will be above and beyond that. Therefore you can expect to add at least another 15-20 hours a week, sometimes more, to those base 50 hours per week.”
Any questions?
My father worked about twelve hours a day, six days a week for thirty-six years. He had his own grocery, produce, feed and seed store with usually one other person to help him. I never heard him complain about the work. He took pride in his business and in being able to provide a living for someone else. He did take an hour for lunch at home.
He worked in the yard when he came home in the summer and had a beautiful flower garden.
There were a few times when he had to be in the hospital and someone had to help out his assistant in the store.
He didn’t have air-conditioning in his store either and it was in the very humid South. He was one tough man.
As a teacher, I normally worked at least fifty hours a week. The time spent in the classroom was a minor part of the work day. Class preparation, faculty meetings, school programs, professional programs, and grading papers demanded still more time.
Yeah, but it looks like you were doing a huge amount of physical work. Sure, it’s draining to sit at work all day, be on the phone, computing or whatever, but it’s a lot easier for your body to take than what you’re talking about. For at least six months I was working the equivalent of two shifts at one place of work because I was doing work for a separate project at night. I would leave the house at 7:30 and get home around1:30 am the next day. That sucked a lot, but it’s definitely doable. Minus time for meals, that’s about a 16 hour day x 5 = 80.
Another time, I was a nanny from 8 to 5 and then headed over to Arthur Andersen to supervise a bunch of temps inputting data on the second shift. Same basic hours. Again, it was grueling, but just for a few months at a time.
I have my own business AND work at home so I am well accustomed to the 50+ hour work week. I do it about 2 or 3 times a year (for a week to a month).
When we first started the business I would go to my partner’s house sometime in the AM, work until Nick at Nite started showing infomercials, sleep on a futon mat in the basement for a coupla hours, then be back upstairs around 7 or 8 AM. We’d do this for weeks at a time because a project had to get done.
Now, 6 or 7 years later, when I have a crunch week (or month) I’ll get up at 9 and work the “regular job” of doing support and piddly customer shit until 5, then from 5 PM to 3 AM would bash out code for the big money project with a deadline.
Being single with no kids, and working from my home office - thus no driving and a kitchen in arm’s length - makes this possible. We stopped working like this so often when my partner got married and had a kid. I’m still up for it sometimes, though.
No way I could have worked like this when I worked in a restaurant or construction or even in a grocery store. I know plenty of chefs who can, tho.
Today I arrived at the office at 7:30AM and left about ten past 8PM, but I don’t do that very often.
Most weeks I’m in about 7:30 or 8, and go on to about 6PM, so that’s about fifty hours right there (I choose to count my lunch time in the total but not the commute, which would add about 1.5 hours per day), plus many weekends I’ll end up doing something work-related anywhere from 3-7 hours. So 50+ isn’t all that much of a stretch. I do get tired of it.
Does having to answer all the stupid shit that shows up on one’s Blackberry at all hours count as work? I spent at least an hour or two outside of my supposed ‘work time’ every week dealing with that crap.
That’s all a piece of cake, however, compared to when I worked in the field. People who work on drilling rigs (as I once did) normally work 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, for 28 days at a stretch. Moreover, roughnecks and roustabouts (which I was not) are mostly doing hard labor during that time.
Nevertheless, I think Americans do have a rather misplaced notion of the nobility of work. Believe me, if I thought I could make anywhere near my current level of income with 10-15 fewer hours a week, I’d be all over that shit.
I used to work 7-4 five days a week and 6-Noon on Sundays. Lunch was at my desk. No comp time or overtime (we were “exempt”) That’s over 50 hours every week, and if someone was sick, anyone who was off would have to cover the shift.
When my wife was a teacher she spent 6 1/2 hours a day in front of students and a good four hours (either at school or home) grading papers, working on lesson plans, filling out forms and doing other stuff she couldn’t do with a room full of kids.
Granted, it’s not as physical as working at a supermarket (or a loading dock, factory, road crew, etc.) but it was sure as hell work.
I just did my timesheet for November earlier today (I am in a salaried position, and we only do our sheets once a month). I averaged 55 hours a week throughout the month, which is pretty typical for the holiday season. December will probably be worse.
I’m usually at work by 9AM; one day a week I have the liberty of actually leaving on time- 5pm- but that’s only on a really good week, maybe once or twice a month. The other four days range from 9 to 9.5 hours. If there’s a crisis that I unwittingly stumble into, I can easily pull a 10-11 hour day. I take lunch one day a week; the rest of the days are pretty much booked solid and I’m lucky to have enough time to run to the bathroom. So figure I work 45 hours a week on average.
Now, a few years ago I was working full time, going to grad school full time, and doing my internship. So that was ~45 hours at my job plus 25 hours at my internship site plus another 6 hours of class a week (not including homework). I did that for a year; after graduating I took on a few clients and three classes at my internship site, so that was ~45 hours a work, ~20 hours at the teaching job, plus lecture prep, grading, etc. Did that for another year before I realized I was slowly killing myself. Now I’m back to just the ~45 hours at the job.
Final anecdote: I worked crisis assessment before getting my current job. I was doing assessments in the office during the day, then taking shifts at night- each shift was 12 hours, though the office shifts were normally more like 8-10 hours. One week I went over 36 hours straight- shift in the office, night shift, shift in the office, night shift. I caught a few catnaps in my car, but overall was pretty much awake that entire time. By the last client (3AM during that last night shift) I was in such a FOUL mood that I threatened to send him to the most flea-bitten, roach-infested psych hospital I could find if his attitude toward me and my questions didn’t improve immediately. Didn’t take more than one time of that for me to realize that the money was great, but being able to drive home in once piece was better.
I don’t recommend it unless you have the benefit of super-overtime pay.
Not quite sure what you’re asking, but I have two jobs, one a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job, and the other is part-time, 12 hours a week. Neither of them is a sedentary desk job. Both involve physical work.
I regularly get some overtime at the full-time job, sometimes just an hour or two each week, but sometimes I’ve worked as much as eight or nine OT hours. I usually have some prep work for the part-time job that I do on weekends, but it’s fairly mindless work, done while watching TV or something.
On the days when I work both jobs, I’m at work at 8:00 am. I work till noon, and then go to the other job from 1:00 till 9:00 pm. Some days I might not get off till 10:00 or so. I eat lunch in my car between jobs, and grab some dinner on the run while at the full-time job.
As a teacher I typically go in at 7, leave around 4 every weekday. Then I take home about 2 hours or so of work each day. Add in 2-4 hours each weekend and I easily clock in 50-60 hours every week.
As I like to say, yes we get off in the summer and for winter and spring breaks but we sure as hell make up for that time off during the school year!
My boyfriend claimed he worked 80 hours a week when he was climbing up the ladder in investment banking. He still works pretty hard but it’s not like what they do to analysts (and imo, first year law associates).
For example, before the economic slowdown he could call over to an analyst, or even an associate about a pitchbook at 11:30 p.m. say that he wanted it changed for his next day meeting and there would be someone there to a) pick up the phone and b) do it. I used to think he was exaggerating but a couple of my high school classmates worked for him as analysts when he was still a director(he’s scrambled even higher now but that’s because he’s crazy) and they told me he and his best friend were legendary for only sleeping 3 hours a night. For a decade.
I’m going to go back to business school in a year or two and while I am sorely tempted by the salaries in investment banking or private equity I simply cannot see myself handing over a decade of my life to motherfucking goldman sachs!!
What? No farmers around here? During certain times of the year, those guys work a lot.
When I was a kid, I would work cotton. For some reason I can’t remember, the cotton had to be harvested as quickly as possible (maybe because of rain or boll weevils). A truck would pick me up around 5am and we would work until 9 or 10pm every day (about 15-16 hrs a day) for about 10 days if I remember correctly. I got more hours in two weeks than my friends who worked part time got all summer.
One of the partners at my firm usually gets in around 8:30 and then works until 7, so that’s over 50 hours a week right there. It’s certainly not impossible, obviously.
For three months, I worked 70 hours a week - one 30-hour job and one 40-hour job. That was possible because the 40-hour job involved one 20-hour shift on the weekends and two 12-hour shifts (with two hours of “down time”) during the week, and I scheduled the other 30-hour job around that. It’s been more than 15 years, so if I remember correctly:
Mondays - 8 to 6, ate at my desk
Tuesdays - 8 to noonish, 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. (could nap if there were no emergencies, which there were often)
Wednesdays - 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. (ditto Tuesday)
Thursdays - 8 to 6
Fridays - 8 to 6
Saturdays - on at 2 p.m., off at 10 a.m. on Sunday
My then-husband was an alcoholic law school graduate who refused to get a job. So, all I did was work, come home and run errands and do household chores, and sleep. We had no children.
