It isn’t uncommon in my business to work from 8a-12mid 7 days a week. I once did this for 25 days straight in Philadelphia.
I have also worked more than 24 hours in one “day” many times. Just a year or so ago, I went to work one Monday at 7am and didn’t leave until Tuesday evening at 8pm.
Thankfully, I earn OT after 8 hours and DT after 12 (and under some contracts I think I still earn 3T after 18 hours), so I’m pretty well compensated for the hassle.
When I was younger, I once worked 112 hours in 7 days, and had a gig the next day. I didn’t get home until 4am, and when the alarm went off at 7am, I was barely able to call my steward and tell him I just was not capable of coming in. Luckily I had worked for him a couple of days already that week, and he knew what my schedule was like. He cut me some much needed slack, and I went to back to sleep until about 6pm when my GF got home from work and woke me to have dinner. Then I went back to bed until 7am the next morning. Felt great after all that sleep.
I’m older now, and the body doesn’t really like the strain of long hours as much as it used to, so I try to keep that type of thing to a minimum.
I think I’ll stop complaining about my job now. I’m an administrative assistant, and I’m 9 to 5. Sure, sometimes I’ll come in early, but it’s easier to stay late (coming in early just means that early start is eaten up by the heavier traffic between 6:30 am and 8:30 am). I’ve both come in for a few hours on the weekend to catch up and I’ve taken work home when it’s really busy, but nothing compared to the stories here.
The property managers in our office typically work a lot more hours, and on weekends, too (move in and move out inspections with tenants and such). I do not want to be a property manager or be managerial.
It’s not that I don’t have ambitions, but I value my personal time way too much–as it is, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that I want to do.
There was a period of time while I was working auto and property/casualty claims that I worked 80-90 hour weeks for about 6 weeks. It was during a major hurricane season and we were offered unlimited double and 1/2 overtime.
Usually my week would start on sunday around 3pm. I would go in and work all night, then go clean up a bit in the restroom before the day crew arrived, then work until 5. Minus lunch breaks about 24 hours. Then I’d do 10pm-5pm (sometimes I’d leave a bit earlier) the rest of the week, so about 17 hour days after breaks. By the time that 6ish weeks were over I was having hallucinations, so I cut back to about 60 for a few weeks and then back to my regular 40 when the OT was cancelled.
50 hour weeks now wouldn’t be that hard, I’d work 7-6 5 days a week with an hour lunch break. I’m salaried now, so there wouldn’t be a point to working more hours than I had to.
In my current job I have routinely worked 80 to over 100 hours a week, but I get six days off after 15 work days. But during my work period it’s quite simple: Am awake? If so, I’m working.
When I worked as a retail manager, I worked Monday-Saturday, 6am-10pm with no lunch break taken. Though I’d usually cheat on Saturdays and get out around 6pm.
I clocked 92 hours/week for 5 months before I didn’t have to anymore.
I’ve almost always worked more than 45 hours a week. I don’t have to “go to the office” much of the time, but when I’m working, I’m not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring or whatever.
Today I worked from 8:00-10:00 (ate breakfast while grading), 11:00-6:30 (ate lunch while working, multi-tasked between phone, computer, presentations, no breaks except to walk from one building to the other), 7:00-10:00 (ate while posting materials and writing tomorrow’s lecture). That’s 12.5 hours. Tomorrow I’ll run from 8:00-9:30 or 10:00 with a short break to eat birthday dinner with a friend, so call it 12 hours again.
Well, I sharemilked 240 cows for 10 years, 7 of them on my own with help just over calving. Busy time of the was calving, and 12 to 14 hour days were usual, but I’d also get up at 1am to check the springers. This was over a 6 week period.
The rest of the year wasn’t too bad, between milkings I could take the rest of the day off a couple of times a week.
When my main job is slow, I work with ag contractors. During silage season (now), 6am to 11pm is usual, with the odd all nighter (like tonight for 2 operators). Last Monday was wet so sleep was caught up on, as well as maintenance. They were doing 20 hour days, but the guys were having to stop for afternoon naps. Precision tractor driving is very tiring. A couple of summers ago, a moments inattenation cost $45k as the machine had to be scrapped and a new one bought to replace it.
My normal workday starts at 630 am, and I’m done at 3. No one else gets in before 8 am, and our office closes at 7 pm. So I could easily stay on for a couple of extra hours a day, still be out at 5 pm, and work 50 hours.
Unfortunately, most of my overtime is earned in 12-16 hour days. I have to be in early in the mornings to help the MDs run their computers and imaging equipment as they do their case reviews. And whenever the hospital has some kind of special event, almost always in the evening, I have to be there to set up public address systems or some kind of video displays or the like. Fortunately this is not too often, maybe once or twice a month. A couple of years ago I earned more than 5 grand in overtime, this year it will be only about 2 grand.
In the summers when my restaurant is open I work 16-17 hrs a day 7 days a week for over 100 days straight. Well on Sundays I only work about 10 hours. I call it my day off.
I get there at 10 am. My crew has already started and has the place ready.
I work nonstop usually not even a break of any kind. I stand the whole time in almost one place. Cooking/prepping/cleaning nonstop.
At 9pm or after the guests leave I make a meal for the remaining crew and we usually eat together then finish up. I am often forced to sit down.
Then at around 10 pm or so I start baking. I have a pro pastry chef. I wanted the best one in town but in order to afford her I have to work late in the night and help her out. She prefers late night rather than mornings. So I stay usually till 2 or 3 am. I help her bake cakes and whatnot for our wholesale accounts. I will stay on a busy night till 5 am or so.
I don’t really know how many hours that is but I consider it 80 plus. I do it for about 100 days straight with at most 2 days off total.
Right after I finished the season this year I went on a boat in the Bering Sea Pukuk and worked another 30 days working 7 am till about 10 pm every day acting in an indi film and cooking for the cast and crew. I did have an opportunity for a few more breaks in that job though.
Now I sit doing my home based business and looking for a new winter job for a bit of stimulation.
I have had jobs in which my hours sometimes exceeded 100. I remember not going home at all for a few days at a time. But I was in my 20s then; I could never do that now.
I agree it depends on the nature of the work. A lot of jobs let you spend a decent amount of time sitting around doing nothing. For example, it’s not uncommon for security guards to work 80 hours per week if their employer is willing to pay the overtime. Much of that time might be spent sitting at a desk in an empty room.
Even among professionals, there is often a lot of down time. For example, a lawyer who spends 2 hours in court might actually spend 1 hour and 45 minutes waiting for his or her case to be called while shooting the breeze with other lawyers. Not to mention the hour which was spent going to and coming from the courthouse.
But I agree it’s difficult to mentally or physically exert oneself for a full 60 hours in a week.
50 hrs/week is just 10 extra hours. What’s so hard to comprehend about that? That’s just two extra hrs per day. I could come in half hr early, leave a half hr late, and work through my lunch. So, 50hrs+ is just a bit over that…no big stretch of the imagination.
50hrs+ is very common, and I’ve done 80+ at crrunch times. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t get paid for it (being salaried, it is expected). But, one boss sprung for pizza one night…the most thanks I’ve ever seen for going the extra mile.
The longest working week I’ve had I’ve just calculated would be 52hrs but that would be a rarity. Right now with study + work I’m not entirely sure how many hours I do per week but it varies from very few to alot from week to week.
My normal workday begins at 10am and ends sometime around between 8-10pm. Technically, our hours are 10-6, but that never happens. Sometimes, when there are several projects nearing completion at the same time, or something is going to final print the next day, it’s not uncommon to still be at the office at 1-2am, and all-nighters are far from unheard-of.
So my average week is 50-60 hours, and longer ones are frequent. On the plus side, it’s relatively low-stress once you get used to it, the content varies a great deal (my current projects involve writing about printers, 4WD trucks, and the history of Asian cuisine), and the pay is good. I’m also free to physically assault some of our clients with impunity (I haven’t availed myself of that perk yet, but my boss has once or twice).
ETA: Oh, and I’m a writer for an ad agency. It’s a very small firm that specializes in a particular type of service. We’ve gotten good enough at it that all the major agencies come to us for help, and don’t flinch at what we charge them.
I work from 4:30am to (usually) 5pm, Monday through Friday. This is a vast improvement over the 70 to 80 hours I worked until about March or April of this year. Sometimes I worked a little on Saturday and Sunday, as well. My current 60 hour week is almost like being on vacation.
I’ve done over 50 hours in a week more than I care to remember. But the most I ever worked was in my early 20’s, when I was a cable splicer. We had a couple of hot construction projects come along while I was in that job. On one of the projects, I worked 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week for about 4 months. The other seemed a bit worse at the time; it was only about 3 months, but we were working 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. And it was winter, so we started in the dark and finished in the dark. When we weren’t setting up or breaking down the jobsite, we’d be inside a concrete box buried in the ground. I made a point of climbing out of the hole at noon one day, because I realized I hadn’t seen the sun in three weeks.
The overtime I made from those jobs paid for about a third of my college edumacation.
When I first got my Mail Boxes Etc (later The UPS Store), I was there every hour the store was open plus a bit earlier and a bit later for a whooping total of 66 hours every week. I managed to sit down for short stretches doing the accounting or fighting suppliers and customers over the phone, but it was mostly on my feet behind the counter, packing, loading/unloading merchandise, cleaning the place, etc.
It was grueling. I only did it because it was my own business, I don’t think I would ever do it as an employee.
Also, as a FEMA inspector, we easily did 100+ hours a week (4:00 am to 8 pm, 6-7 days a week). This driving around, inspecting homes, doing paperwork, and went for 2-3 months at a time. After a deployment ended, it was normally 2 weeks in a semi-comatose state where only food and sleep mattered (try that with small children at home).
