Seems like we’ve got unrelated two conversations going on here. One is about unpaid overtime on weekends for salaried workers with 8-5 M-F jobs.
Th eother one is about having a flex or at least non 9-5 M-F job.
Two very different topics.
Ours was the “on-call” phone, and I loathed that thing with every ounce of my being. Basically my colleagues and I were the first line of support for when my company’s big electronic medical record had some sort of issue that the help desk couldn’t immediately answer (like password resets).
I hated the “on-call” phone more than mere working on weekends, because at least with working on the weekend, you know you’ll be working and roughly how long. The problem with the phone was that you could be out for dinner with your spouse on a Friday night, halfway through your meal and two margaritas in, and that damned thing would ring, and you were expected to somehow put that on hold and deal with that shitty EMR as your first priority, regardless of what you were doing or where you were. Can’t just let it go to voicemail and deal with it when you got home, oh no. Didn’t matter if you were at your kids’ scout meeting, or dinner, or church, or whatever.
I think part of the reason it pissed me off so much is because I’d worked there like 9 years, and then some new asshole managers from elsewhere (we got bought by a different company) decided to impose this on us. Had it been something I’d signed on for, that might have been different. But I hadn’t, and this was essentially forced onto me.
Yes, yes. Exactly. It could happen at any time and you had to respond right away.
The weekend thing you can prepare for and plan around. “Sorry I can’t go to the event, I will be working.” When you’re at the event and have to bail unexpectedly because of this stupid phone, that’s so much worse.
That is absolutely common among executives, in particular that same class of executives who are never going to retire until forced to, even though they have more than enough money.
I worked long weekdays so that my weekends would be free, and so people knew I would not be sending emails out over the weekend, which is among the shittiest of boss behaviors. I would log on some Sunday morning to clear out my own email, but still wouldn’t be online.
So, my very strong preference was not to have weekend work.
Loved it. Very much. I sit next to our marketing department, and they tend to discuss every detail of their lives, mid-loud, frequently all day.
Working a nice Saturday, with a quiet office, was blissful. Easy to focus on one topic.
I really enjoyed that they mostly worked from home during Covid.
I don’t look at weekends any different than weekdays. Days are days. The only thing different about going to work on Sunday, is there is absolutely no one else on the Autobahn, so I can cruise to work at 300+ kph. Weekdays have trucks in the way.
I’ve worked weekends virtually my entire professional career. I coached Debate, and tournaments are on weekends all year long. Saturday was just another day with the team for me for 34 years.
Now that I only coach when the Head Coach has another commitment, I charge a couple of liters for my weekend time.
During my telecom career, I worked a lot of nights and weekends. When I hired in at Nextel, I told them that I wanted to work nights and weekends because my husband worked for the railroad and his rest day was Tuesday. The management thought they died and went to heaven!
I worked Thursday night through Sunday night; four ten hour shifts. I got off Monday morning at 8am and didn’t have to go back in until Thursday night at 10. It was absolutely terrific and everyone else thought I was nuts. I made a career working shifts that nobody else wanted!
When I worked in college and public libraries, I accepted it as par for the course. I knew it was required when I got into that line of work. I like the number of days I work as a school librarian, but working conditions have gotten bad enough that I’m not ruling out finishing up my career in public libraries even though the salary is smaller.
I’ve worked them all my career. As others have noted, your concept of what “the weekend” is, is demolished. Lot’s of mentions of “It’s my monday”, “It’s my friday”. Also as others have noted, the advantages nothwithstanding, the schedule puts downward pressure on one’s social life. This is especially acute when one is younger.
Fast forward a few decades, now I have the seniority to hold saturday/sunday as my RDOs, I don’t want them. I prefer to bump it up one day and have at least one weekday off. Very very useful in dealing with the bureaucracies of modern life.
Yes, very different. My husband was a retail manager for years. One store required him to work 5 1/2 days a week ( they closed early Sat) He hated that. The other stores were open 7 days and he had one weekend day off and one weekday which was great when our kids were young.One less day of worrying about childcare , he could go grocery shopping and do other errands when the stores were less crowded- it was great.
Most of my work is billed to clients and it doesn’t matter when I do it, as long as it gets done in a timely fashion. And often the most convenient time for me is an evening or weekend. I’m also able to shift some work around to use less PTO when I’m going on vacation.
But being told to work on the weekend? Hell no.
I think it really depends on the job. If I’m working Mondays-Fridays as standard, then weekend work means overtime which I resent greatly. But if I worked in, for eg, retail, I wouldn’t mind, it would just be a different routine. It would help if my wife worked the same hours. I’ve done bar work as a student and didn’t mind working weekends at all.
Now that I work from home, I feel pretty much the same. I worked some this weekend, and also kicked off some code to test this morning at 5am. Whatever.
It never made a difference for me. With what I do now (wedding/event photography), most my work is centered on weekends, but even in my journalism days, work was work whenever we had it, and when I was in college I had no issues working weekends, either. It’s all the same, and if it meant working overtime (especially in college) that was a bonus for me!
I’d rather work weekends than late hours.
I’m in retail so some weekend stuff is inevitable, and Sundays have been my day, mostly. I’ve recently been given the store manager job though so a bit of weekend work at home will also be happening. Frankly I’d rather have a weekday free to be able to appointments and things without playing merry hell with my regular schedule.
Now my aim is to try and get two days off in a row …