I am a Kitchen Manager, and I am scheduled for 55 hours per week. I call that 15 hours of required overtime. I often work 5 or more additional hours. When I first started the job, I was working 12 - 15 hour days, just to keep up with everything. Now, a year later, I delegate more and rely on my employees to do simple tasks that I used to do. I have the job under control, but I still work too long when things get busy.
The KM at our other restaurant across town never works beyond his 11 hour day, and he runs a busier restaurant. My boss’s goal for me is to work at the same capacity as him. I am getting better, but since many aspects about our kitchens are vastly different, I can’t do everything the same way as the other manager. My boss understands this, but insists we work in identical ways. In the end, it means that I put in a few more hours every week to keep things operating smoothly.
On average I do about 20 hours a week. I can do up to 60 hours in a week but then I’d be restricted by flight and duty rules to 30 hours the following week (limit is 90 hours in 14 days.) Because I work on a two week on / two week off roster I can only ever do 90 hours in 4 weeks.
Ex pilot here. I worked as a mapping pilot so working hours were not regulated. Longest on duty call was 18 straight days on the road. 8-10 hours in the air each day.
Longest work every day was 3 months with no day off.
Nature of the business. Weather and leaves and sun angle do not care about mans rules.
But had a good boss and many benefits like free use of a $300 / hour aircraft ( at the time). When nothing was needing done or the Wx was bad everywhere I needed to go, I could scoot out of the place unless something was way behind a dead line and then lab work, plotting, surveying, etc., all came into play. Avg, work week was 50 - 60 or more hours / week away from home over a 35 year time span. It would take from 2-4 hours a day doing all the stuff required to get in 6-8 flight hours if there were no hitches.
I do not count all the hours at home watching weather reports so I could plan my next day or two.
I do real estate research. Most of my work is due at month end with some slight bleed into the next month. If I break my month into four weeks I would say week one, five hours overtime, week two, I probably owe the firm a few hours. Weeks three and four, I do about 60 hours. It would be nice if I could spread it out but lots of my data comes in later in the month.
I ended up taking some personal time last week and this week which I couldn’t get away with if the boss didn’t trust me. But it also means I am looking at 14-hour days for the rest of this week and next week to get caught up.
I voted 6-11 hours. I was a designer in the publishing industry. There were weeks that had no time over 40 hours, and there were weeks that had 60 hours.
I’m a programmer, and I choose 1-5 as that’s what I’ve averaged over the past year. Generally I work a pretty strict 8 hour day, however three times looming deadlines have caused me to work 10 hour days over the weekend. 60 overtime hours divided by 52 weeks in a year averages out to a bit more than 1 hour per week.
I work overtime if I have to, if the project needs it of me. This is nearly never.
A few other people around here, including the boss, work at least an hour of overtime all the time. When he hired me in the interview he asked me how I felt about working overtime, and I told him that I preferred to work just the 40 and go home unless it was absolutely necessary to work longer, and he said that was okay. So that’s what I do.
Health and Safety Manager for an oilfield services company; two divisions in fact, in different disciplines and scattered locations.
I said 16-20 hours over; most of this year I’ve been averaging ten hours/weekday and 5-10 hours total per weekend. I’m also spending 6-10days /month on the road. This is (one hopes) an unusual and temporary situation, based around merger issues and a huge increase in auditing activities by clients in the wake of the recent blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Frankly, I’m getting a bit burned out.
When I was a salaried secondary school teacher my contract stated 35 hours per week (teaching + everything else). I averaged out my hours over the first year, including holidays, and it worked out at 70 hours per week; I was damn good at time-management but that school was worse than the average.
Regular secondary school teachers expect to work 55-60 hours per week over the school year. That’s realistic for the amount of stuff you need to do (and it’s not unreasonable), but it doesn’t fit into the legal hours of work allowed, hence contracts stating 35 hours.
