Ellis Dee wrote
Ah, then it looks like I owe you an apology. I took your comment (“But [those who love to work] would do well to keep snide comments regarding other people’s hours to themselves.”) to mean that I shouldn’t be posting here with my “snide remarks”. Sorry about that.
msmith537 wrote
Cry me a river. You chose to be there; you choose to be there now. Tomorrow as you sit there seething, you’ll do it by choice. Your choice. Don’t bitch at me about your choices.
“fuck me” because you’re dissatisfied with the sad little choices you’ve made for yourself? You sad little man. Hope you make things better. In the mean-time, don’t disgust those of us who make wiser choices and enjoy life.
No worries. Upon re-reading, my post was ambiguous; I blame the late hour. I meant the OP’s coworkers, not you.
Snide comment on a MB are welcome. When you are trying to leave the office – not so much. 
I was not refering to you specificly when I said “fuck you”. I’m refering to people in general who feel that the world revolves around their compulsive obsession with mundane office work. These are the people who send you an email at 10 pm and then berate you the next morning because you didn’t respond to it. I’m talking about managers that have you sit idle all day and then wait until 6:00 pm to give you some task that HAS to get done that night. It’s not so much that I mind working late when required to. It’s that I can’t stand managers who have their head up their ass.
I’m curious as to what it is that you are doing that makes your career choice so “wise”. Are you actually doing something you enjoy or are you simply working a job that isn’t very taxing? Just because I don’t care for writing database queries into the wee hours of the morning (it’s really the tasks of my job that I hate more so than the hours) does not mean I want a job staring out the window for 6 hours a day doing nothing. IMHO, having nothing to do for 8 hours is almost as bad if not worse than working crazy hours. By the same token, just because I want a job with more pay and better career advancement than working in Blockbusters, that does not mean I want to cut everything else out of my life so that the TPS reports are on time.
If you don’t want to hear bitching, I suggest you go take yourself to Great Debates or Cafe Society.
Very true Bill.
But this can also be very bad if after 20 years of doing what you love it is snatched away from you due to budget cuts & staff reduction. Emotionally it’s almost like being hit with a divorce, not to mention losing your “work family”.
I don’t think I’ve ever truly appreciated my work group before now. I have 4 coworkers and a boss in my direct group.
Me: I work 25 hours a week, from home 9 days out of 10. Rarely am I primary on-call, and even more rarely do I get called as secondary on-call. I’ve never complained about the occasional work I’ve had to do at 3:00 in the morning (except that I think the night shift crew are sadists who love waking us up; they’re so damn cheerful).
Coworker 1: Her day-to-day schedule varies because she’s in school. On non-school days, she usually leaves at 2:30 (arriving around 6, I think). She’s never on call, so she never has to worry about late night phone calls for work.
Coworker 2: Arrives anywhere from 7:45 to 9:30 in the morning. Leaves after I do, so I don’t know how many hours she works, but I doubt it’s more than 40. Shares on-call work with coworker #4.
Coworker 3: Works 40-50 hours a week. He used to be my boss and put in 50 hours more than 40, but he’s nearing retirement now and has slowed down to match the rest of the office. Thinks it strange that people stopped working on Saturdays (years before I arrived). Doesn’t understand taking vacation days and just staying at home. Primary on-call (between me and him), so he occasionally has to work after business hours.
Coworker 4: I actually have no clue about his schedule. He keeps to himself mostly, but I think he leaves early some days since I believe he’s in graduate school.
Boss: Is probably in the office for 10-12 hours a day, but only during the week, but I know he doesn’t work all of that. Works out every day at least an hour. Last time I was in the office, he was out of the office from about 10:30 in the morning till about 2 either at the gym or out to eat (saw him leaving with his gym bag). Fortunately, he’s not the kind of boss that thinks we should all be slaves to the company while he slacks off. He gets his work done, we get our work done, and all is cool. My estimate is that he’s in the office about 60 hours a week.
While I still don’t understand the long work hours for jobs that aren’t lifesaving, I don’t really care what you do so long as you don’t expect me to do it, too. I’ll work my 40 hours (or whatever I agreed on at hiring time, but I can’t imagine that would ever be more than 40) and then I go home. 40 hours is almost 25% of a week. Assuming I get 56 hours a week of sleeping, that leaves only 72 hours a week to eat, shower, run errands, clean house, spend time with my husband, and have fun with my hobbies. I can’t imagine any company would be worth switching the 40 hours of work/72 hours of fun to 40 hours of fun/72 hours of work (well, if you count grocery shopping and dish washing as fun).
msmith537 wrote
What I do is very taxing and in truth involves a good deal of stress, yet I love it. I love it because I do something I enjoy doing, and because at the end of the day, something exists that didn’t exist that morning. I’m in high-tech, and I enjoy building technologies, but ultimately the thing I build isn’t really the product, but the company itself. For me, it’s a wonderful feeling seeing companies that are living long after I started them, built them and left them.
If it so happens that you share that love with me, you’ll never make it happen in 40 hour work weeks.
Back at the job he had before his current job, my father was actually on the other end of the stick. He routinely got into trouble for staying at the office too late. He was Director of Engineering and interim Personnel Director for a company I won’t name here, and the two jobs together required far more than a 40-hour week. But when he came in early or stayed late to do his job, there were routine complaints to the company president, claiming that his staying late constituted a “threat” to the other people in the office. I suppose what they meant was, if Dad was staying late, that made them feel like they were supposed to stay late, too, even though he was staying late to cover an extra workload that the others didn’t have. The upshot was that eventually Dad was reprimanded for, well, working too hard. He actually had to resort on occasion to sneaking back to the office late at night to finish working on personnel files. Naturally, my mother wasn’t thrilled by this, and he is now working for a saner company.
Earlier in the thread someone suggested that some workers came in late for recognition by bosses. IME not every boss knows about it. If the boss goes home at 6 or whenever, and you stay later, how is he/she to know how late you stayed…unless you tell them yourself, which looks bad? Some months ago at my job here, I was routinely staying late to do database maintenance and uploads (which wasn’t part of my job, but oh well). Nobody seemed to care, or even know about it, because, when I came back to or left the office, I was the only person there. Who was going to report my late hours, other than me?
Bill H., I think you miss one point about “workers staying late.” In your situation, you are the CEO of the company. Extra work you put in has a direct effect on your company’s, and by extension, your profits and income. For most salaried workers, that isn’t the case. Maybe if more companies had profit-sharing programs…
I’ve had many, many meaningless jobs over the years and recently married and had a son realitivly late in life. Well, I’m almost 40 now, and since getting married and having a child, I realize what an incredible waste my time has been up to now. It has dawned on me that life is not what you do to earn money to pay rent, eat, whatever. Time spent advancing someone else’s objectives seems like a waste to me. Every company I have ever worked for has gone on or folded dispite my having ever have been there. Sure, I made contributions while I was there, but they don’t miss me and I don’t miss them. In the long run, it just doesn’t matter.
Half my life is over. Every day I spend away from my wife and son is a day I will regret on my death-bed. I will never get time back, no matter how well I spend it. I could cure AIDS, and the time I spend doing it would be time I don’t get to spend with those I care about. Selfish? You bet. We each get 1 ticket to ride this rollercoaster, then you get kicked out of the park.
My boss, a very cool dude, spends so much time at the office, I’m surprised his kids even recognize him. I don’t know what his motivations are for the hours he puts in. I don’t think its income, because a guy with his skills could earn more doing other things. He obviously gets some satisfaction, or he wouldn’t do it. But 50 years from now, who cares what happened in this company? What memorys will our children have of us?
Me? I cut my hours, and my pay. I only come to town 4 days, from 8-5. I make special efforts (and it is hard, because I really am selfsh and like to do all my own shit) to spend that day I no longer work with my son, which also allows my wife a day to herself or we do things as a family. Its kinda nice.
My biggest fear is that someday my kid will end up in a meaninless job. I will do whatever it takes to prevent this. My wife and I plan to encourage him in other pursuits (her: music, art, theater me: sports, music, entrapaneural endeavors) in hopes that he never has to fill out a “job application” ever. He’s on the right path so far. The house is littered with musical instruments, art supplies, sporting equipment (started skiing at 16 months!) and cars he can drive. He seems very interested in all of them.
I seems to me that “Artists” (this could be writers, actors, painters, musicians, whatever), professional athletes and such are the only ones who really get to do what they enjoy and make a living. I wouldn’t consider them “time wasters”. But the guy who sits behind a desk for 40 years and gets a gold watch? Man, what a waste. 
Eh, what do I know? I’m just an old, lazy, selfish slacker. I could be wrong. I usually am.
Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”
I don’t have much useful to add here, other that anecdotally. I have worked some overtime in my day on projects that required it, and in some industries, it seems the norm. But I get a sense (assuming that a lot of the posters are American) that many, if not most American employers require something like a 50-60 hour workweek as a baseline. I have been fortunate enough to avoid these types of employers, for the most part.
I’m kind of fuzzy on this, but I seem to remember reading about people fighting and dying for the right to tell the boss (after 40 hours) “See Ya!”. Fighting and dying because some fatcats decided to rough up those uppity workers who stood up for themselves. How dare they!
Anyway, I’m probably a weirdo, but I feel that to capitulate to demands for more than 40 hours as a standard is a disservice to those who sacrificed so much.
I have a boss and a fellow engineer, who seem to have been stamped from the same mold as the OPs complaint. Ive just come from a contracting industry background, where the guys on wages work 70-100 hours a week, and the (salaried) engineers are expected to do the same… lest you be labelled as slack. I mean WTF… the whole point of getting qualifications and experience is to be able to work smarter instead of harder, but my coworkers don`t seem to share me point of view. Iwas glad to get a nice 45hr a week job on salary, but now I find its expected for staff to put in closer to 55-60… with the possibility of claiming back Tim in Lieu… what a gyp
What Bill H is forgetting is that it’s HIS company. It’s unreasible for a CEO or owner to expect the employees to have the same love of YOUR company as YOU do, unless they are sharing in the success. While the boss reaps the rewards Bill from accounting and Jim from marketing are all like “yessim massa!! Tow 'dat barge…compile 'dat spreadsheet…”
I think that everyone goes through the crucible at one point or another- 70+ hours a week, devoting everything you have to your job. While I was in college, I worked full time as well as a full class load, and I remember sleeping in my office some nights rather than make the 3 block walk to my apartment.
Thing is, I grew out of it. I don’t begrudge anyone their drive and ambition in the workplace- but I think that it’s a stage to grow out of, especially if you have a family. There’s a point where you have to step back and ask why exactly you are devoting so much time and energy at work- are you working toward something, or running from other things?
I think it’s perfectly natural to want to create on a level that Bill H. discusses, but it should be tempered by a healthy emotional life outside of work.
You can be dedicated, but I’m sorry, there has to be something wrong if you don’t want to go home to your SO and kids at the end of the day.
Of course, I’ve resigned myself to never being rich. I’m very happy being comfortable, and knowing that I can take time off to go to graduations, birthday parties, field trips, and the like without feeling guilty over it. I also have the good fortune to be employed doing something I love, and have an office atmosphere very conducive to family time.
Yikes, it dosen’t work that way for me. My to-do list never gets done. If I finish one project there are always 4 more waiting for me. If my employer had their way I’d be here 15 hours a day. Helps that my boss has kids, at least she can’t be here all the time.
It seems to be a common phenomanon with kids right out of school. They’re all excited about their first job, they think if they work hard they’ll be VP at 28. They are often carry college “group” mentality to the workplace (they do everything on and off work together instead of going home at night to their individual lives).
Probably the best thing I ever did was quit work right after business school and take a few months off to do jack shit before starting my new High Paying Post-MBA Consulting Job[sup]TM[/sup]
msmith537 wrote
Care to explain where you got that idea? As it turns out, you are partially correct in the sense that I’m an owner. Along with all the other other employees and investors. It’s not relevant, but I’m not even the majority owner in my current company.
Also, though I’ve been CEO a couple times, I wasn’t born that way; I’ve held plenty of non-CEO roles, where I held a similar joy of my vocation. In fact, it’s that joy of building that made me a CEO, not the other way around.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of you and your company since I don’t know what they are. My point is that just because an company owner or even a high level manager has found his calling in either setting up a company or managing a portion of it, it is unreasonible to expect that all the employees should share in their obsession (and I’ve worked at places where an almost psychotic level obsession is required to work there).
It becomes doubly frustrating when you have to work late because an inexperienced or incompetant manager has failed to properly scope a project. Of course, there is no incentive to since everyone is a ‘professional’ and should be willing to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get the job done.
The reality is that there is very little that is so important that if it doesn’t get done by, say 8:00pm it couldn’t wait until the next day. Some people just get too caught up in their own self importance and their desire to ‘achieve’ at whatever nonsensical task they do (most of us are not curing cancer).
No kidding. Of course, I want to be clear- if that’s your thing, and you’ve no other committments in your life, have at it. It doesn’t hurt anyone, and eventually you’ll burn out and turn to other things. Though to be fair, I’ve witnessed chronic workaholics that simply overwork themselves at job after job, burning out and then flaring back up. However, if you’ve found your dream job/career, and you want to devote your whole heart to it, I’m happy for you.
My biggest issue tends to be with those that chronically work 70+ hour weeks and have a family at home- whether it be a spouse, kids, or both. If you work that many hours a week on a regular basis, don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re doing it for your family. Any monetary gains you make are offset by the impact your absence has on them.
Just to clarify - I consider myself lucky when I get out of work “early” at 8:00pm. In general, I don’t mind working a little later if it is something that has to get done on time. I’ve just spent too many nights working until 1:00am to finish something that ‘absolutely must get done tonight’ only to come in the next morning and find it has been pushed off a week.
Well, I confess that as Sublight points out, I tend to be rather forceful when it comes to ending meetings by 9pm or so on a Friday (that’s my yakiniku/08:30 night).