I’m British guy who’s been working in company finance in LA for the last few months.
Some people seem to work way too hard - my manager normally works from 8am to 9pm! Our contracted hours are 8-5, but most people do 8-6:30pm.
There are guys in my office, who are married with young kids, who work regularly until 9pm. What the hell’s wrong with these guys? When do they ever see their families?
Am I alone in thinking that some people need to chill the fuck out at work? Their job isn’t their life in my opinion…
My manager asked me to see him at 6:30 today, I politely said no cos I had made other plans and couldn’t change at the last minute. Given that I’m supposed to work until 5, who the fuck does he think he is asking me attend a 6:30pm meeting?
What do you guys think? Any people out there who spent way too many hours at work during their kids childhood and now regret it?
As somebody that has done it, yes, you can work too much. Completely discounting kids and family and all that crap.
As a business owner, I’ve proven it to myself over and over again. 7 days a week 16-18 hours a day, after a few week of doing that, you’re there, but you aren’t doing shit. Pushing yourself as hard as you can, and still you’re not doing nothing(woops double neg). Take two days off, tell yourself that you will do 5 10’s and take the next weekend off. I’ll get more done in those 5 10’s or 8’s than in the previous 7 16’s.
Downtime is very important. I’ll bet my left nut (that’s my favorite nut) that the guys working 8-5 are actually getting more done than the ones working 8-9, and the guys working 8-9 are trying to catch up due to their lack of productivity, you just get flat out fuckin’ burnt out.
Yes the long hours are needed sometimes, but when the job/task/project is done, take the appropriate downtime to recharge. Everybody will benefit.
was going to bring that up myself. Japanese people work WAY too hard, often in excess of 12 hours a day (my girlfriend, for instance, works usually 8am to anywhere from 9-11pm monday through friday, and usually goes in for 5 hours on the weekends). Recently teh Japanese have decided that doing all this work in a boiling hot summer while in a suit and tie led to more karoshi and have loosened up a bit during the summer, btu they still work way too much. I work 8 to 4:30 and I’m always the last one to get to school and the first one to leave.
In America if my boss ever asked me to stay late I was usually ok with it, but I made sure he understood that asking me to have a meeting with him at 6:30 meant his ass was paying me overtime from the very minute I was supposed to be off the clock till I actually clocked out.
We don’t get paid overtime - there is an understanding that if you work a few hours extra, you can occasionally go home “early”, which is 5pm - the time we’re supposed to fucking stop working anyway…
I work 12 to 14 hours a day, week in and week out. It’s starting to take it’s toll after 18 months of this pace. Yes, I think you can work too much, but I’m not quite to that point yet.
It usually comes down to the culture of the company. I’ve known people who worked 12-14 hours a day not necessarily because they had to but because they wanted people to know that they worked 12-14 hours a day. For them, it was an image thing. I’ve known certain companies where it’s UNHEARD OF to leave at 5 even though that’s the “official” time to leave. Then I’ve known companies where people watch the clock and hit the bricks at the exact moment the second hand hits 5.
About two years ago, my department got a new VP and he sat down with the managers in my department. He asked them “on an average week, how many hours do you work?” One of them said “At least 60.” He replied “Then you’re doing it wrong.” Depending on circumstances, I agree. If it’s not the employee doing it wrong, then it’s the company for relying on one person too much. There are always exceptions, but if a company demands you work 12 hours a day then in my opinion they’re probably not allocating enough resources to the right places.
Absolutely you can work too hard. My previous company had a culture where most employees were expected to be there from 8 or 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., then take their laptops home with them, usually logging on by 8 or 9 p.m. I was told that I should send e-mails to key individuals at 10 or 11 p.m. to “manage perceptions.” It was an unwritten rule that promotions were not available to those who didn’t do this. Business trips were worse - we usually started at 6 a.m. and went until 1 or 2 a.m. the following morning. Then again, the company was known as the industry sweatshop. I had my son while employed there and had to practically beg to be able to work 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. so I could manage to get him from daycare on time. This was predicated on the assumption that I’d be working for a couple of hours at home each night I had to leave early, plus the standard weekend hours we all worked, usually Sunday afternoons. The whole situation made me feel guilty for not paying enough attention to my family, guilty if I wasn’t working at all times and, once I decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore, was one of the things that prevented me from getting promoted. There was absolutely NO respect for me or my family.
Of course, things are NOT sunshine and roses where I am now. I have a busybody neighbor who is not my supervisor but who reports to my boss when I’m 15 minutes late getting in or even if I fail to turn off my monitor at night and a boss who, while very intelligent, feels obligated to listen to her. On the up side, though, employees, executives included, rarely work more than 50 hours a week. Plus, apparently on business trips, the work usually ends around 6 or 7 at night and doesn’t resume until 8 or 9 the following morning.
It’s my understanding from a few articles I’ve read in the Harvard Business Journal that working too much makes people less productive because your energy and ability to focus on what you’re doing is sapped by overwork. It certainly dampens your creativity. The article that stands out most in my mind is the one about managing your energy and knowing when you’re most productive, for how long, and taking advantage of it. Of course, most of us don’t really have the autonomy to tell our bosses, “Hey, my energy is on the wane. I know it’s 2 p.m., but can I go home?” However, the article did recommend doing harder tasks when you know you’re at your freshest and doing the more mundane stuff like filing and paperwork when you’re experiencing a trough. I wish I could find the cite right now, but I keep getting offers to increase my productivity when I attempt to google it.
Well I telecommute, and am not salaried but hourly.
I NEVER worked overtime unless forced before I started telecommuting. I am diabetic and on other meds for other things which have a fairly specific schedule of what gets taken when, and before during or after eating. I told them flat out that I was not going to bring in a $250 autoinject syringe and leave it in the fridge at work and I was NOT going to go off my food and med schedule. I live 50 miles away from my office, and working any amount of overtime would have totally prevented me from keeping on my food/med schedule. My health trumps any work need.
Now that I telecommute, I will frequently work the hour before and after that I would have been driving, and will randomly log on and work because I can now adjust my work, meals and meds perfectly. I have been known to work the 60 and 70 hour weeks … but I am also doing the work of 2 people … but my boss agrees I have the work load of 2 people but we cant hire anybody else right now because of a hiring freeze.
Places like this are toxic work environments, and unfortunately they do exist. I’ve worked in them before. I don’t understand why people do it. In my experience, people have been salaried, they don’t get any benefits by working so much, and they screw up their home life & health. Sure, there’s a chance you’ll get promoted, but is a little extra cash really worth living like that?
I wouldn’t go back to that environment unless I was making such big bucks that I could do it for a couple years and have a few hundred thousand in the bank to show for it.
My current gig is 100% telecommute and I typically charge by the hour. I never mind working extra hours because 1) I get to decide if I want to and 2) I’m paid for it.
I can speak as a child of one of those parents who work too hard.
When I was very little, my dad worked long hours because we were poor and that’s what he had to do to put a roof over our heads. He worked two low paying jobs to make ends meet.
Later, when he got promoted and finances loosened up, he continued to put in those long hours, only it wasn’t always work. He would volunteer for the church, or for a friend, etc. And don’t get me wrong - helping others is great! Volunteer work is great! But not at the expense of ever seeing your family. He’d put in sixty hours of work per week, and another 10-20 volunteering, and us kids never saw him much. And his marriage suffered. And finally my mother put her foot down and said that if all he was going to do was eat dinner and sleep a few hours a night at home, she wasn’t sticking around for it.
I’m happy to say he woke up and life in our house was totally different after that. My mom went back to school at night, which forced my dad to stay home some evenings and get to know my brother and me. Mom got a job, Dad still got to volunteer sometimes, and we all lived happily ever after. And I understand the importance of work/life balance.
My last job though, I was working here at home, on the PC helping to run a towing company. I worked close to 7 months solid without one day off and I was working between 12-17 per day. It was multi-tasking hell, to say the least. I can’t believe I managed doing that for so long. Sometimes I wouldn’t even sleep and work 2 days non-stop (request more time giving others a break). Once my boss started taking advantage of me though (my paycheck, Silly) I had to stop. With all of the stress from being on a phone sometimes NON-STOP in excess of 12 hours (makes it difficult to use the restroom) and the excess background noises I had to call it quits. I feel like I can actually breath again. As if, I were holding my breath that entire time.
I do think people can overwork. Especially someone with a family they have to support… Especially if they are living paycheck to paycheck and don’t have a savings. For some people a job IS there life because they’ve brought that responsibility onto themselves… For some of us, we can relax though, sometimes. My background mostly reflects sales so I’m a pretty hard worker in general because I’m so used to working for my paycheck, and not just putting in time like many jobs. I’m not saying sales is HARD … it’s the mindset that I’d literally write my own paycheck so if I busted my ass I got paid for that. Getting promoted can take ages and may not even happen, so I never really on that.
oh man, that kills me. I’ve been paid to watch a movie before (was working on The Godfather game at the time, so the company paid us to all watch the movie). The my next job my boss would actually ASK ME to stay until 5 sometimes (if he had work he needed me to do) cause I’d usually be out the damn door at 4:45 to beat traffic. I told him straight up after my first couple weeks there that I finished all my work by 4 or sometimes 4:30 and was just sitting around, so I may as well beat traffic and save a half hour of driving. I hate wasting my time and I’m always straight with my bosses about it, but if they want me staying HOURS after work then I’m getting something out of the deal, simple as that.
That said, now I’m a teacher, and I often have to work extra hours, but I use it as an excuse to take long breaks if I don’t have class (and my lessons are planned) or leave early on other days. Of course, I also enjoy this job a lot more than any of my previous ones, and I’m not so much helping a company out as I am helping out my students when I stay extra, which I feel is completely different
Here in California they passed a law to protect all those dotcom nerds who were working 16 hour days and sleeping under their desks, for weeks at a time (of course, it came after the dotcom bust so a lot of them weren’t helped at all). If you are classified as a “computer professional” you have to be paid (at straight time) for all of the hours you work.
Anyway, I’ve been lucky not to have ever been in the sort of environment you are describing, but I know lots of our sales managers seem to work very long hours. Times are tough in our business and those who aren’t producing can get shown the door, so they at least appear to be working lots of extra hours.
When I was a child, my father went to law school for four years at night, while working a full time job. I never saw him, but I didn’t miss him that much; on the other hand it was only four years, we had plenty of other times together.
Roddy
I have a friend who often gets stuck working as a paralegal until almost midnight and sometimes even that late on a weekend, when she’s not usually in the firm, because the attorneys take on big cases and then decide to add a bunch of stuff to them before the court filing deadline.
I don’t get it either, especially if it’s not absolutely necessary just to put food on the table. Life exists now, and I’m going to make damn sure I enjoy it. I worked for a company this year (for 3 1/2 months) that had many employees on a mandatory 50-hour work week (7 - 5:30 with a 30 minute lunch). As I was working on their clock-in system, I saw a lot of people’s timesheets each week. 55-60 was very common for those employees. Everyone was paid hourly, though most were exempt from overtime pay, so it’s not that they weren’t getting paid for it (although I’m fairly certain there was some illegal stuff going on with how they handled clock-in times).
As for me, I was on a 40-hour schedule, and that’s exactly what I worked, despite my boss’s hints that I could work as much overtime as I wanted. More pay isn’t worth not seeing my husband. I *like *my husband.
