To be sick of this, think it is utter bollocks and the next generation are actually bang on?

Sounds like a lawyer to me too. Lawyers do burn out more than most professions I think. I did all the long hours working my way up in my early career. I didn't have a family so I wasn't depriving children or anything.

Eric's management style seems to be to work competent people up to the point of a breakdown with this non-stop work nonsense. I've seen too many lawyers crack up under the pressure, commit suicide or die of heart attacks in their early fifties. In a firm I once worked in we found some document that enabled us to work out the age of the partners. Now we were quite young but we were astonished to discover a lot of men we thought were late fifties, maybe early sixties were actually in their forties. All those long hours, stress and no time for exercise really took a toll.

I think the key is efficiency. It is just really easy to get bogged down in stuff. I have known lawyers who did work reasonable hours but they were very focussed and maybe just naturally quicker. Yes, occasionally even those people have to prioritise something urgent and work late or the weekend or some combination of both but not as a regular thing. You can make a performance of working long hours of course.

He's not promised you the money either - he's going to talk about it. What sort of hours does Eric work? If there is HR and it's okay with your firm culture, I'd think about talking to them. Of course, people often forget that HR is not there to take care of the employees, it's there to take care of the firm and, if Eric is senior enough, nothing at all might happen. Can you get yourself transferred elsewhere in the firm/company so you are reporting to somebody else? What about the other people Eric manages? What sort of hours are they doing?

I'd just ignore Eric and start looking to move - sideways or to a new employee. It will take him several months to attempt to fire you for not working long hours.

If you think being worked to breaking point improves productivity, you're living in the wrong century. And/or your surname is Rees-Mogg.

Pretty much every study that's looked into it has demonstrated that a 4 day working week improves productivity and reduces stress. Four day weeks and reduced stress lead to better health outcomes and less demand on public services.

Presenteeism and stress-induced heart attacks are a cause of lost productivity.

A friend of mine was an accountant in a small team for a big logistics firm, hardly the sort of job that involves emergencies or many additional hours other than at financial year end. However, the manager of the team was unhappily married and therefore used to volunteer his section for extra work, so that it would generate overtime which gave him a reason to stay at work until 9 or 10pm.

Oddly I did this with my boss, young energetic. She was working 70-80 hrs a week for the catering at a conference centre. I calculated the pay roll for all the casuals and permanent staff. We were catering for 1200 delegates at times. Her hourly rate was less than the rate of the lowest paid.

I warned her to dial it back. At 30 her heart was playing up. The result by her mid thirties her heart had enough, she's now disabled.

Working way over your contracted hours and being expected to do it on a regular basis and being punished if you don't is actually modern day slavery .

I pointed this out in my old job when I was working up to 20-30 minutes over my contracted time to get a job finished as I was on my own trying to do a two man job . I pointed out in writing either I get help or I get paid for this extra time . I also reminded them of the Modern Slavery Act in my letter . I soon got extra help and was out on time .

@Oblomov24 yes he’s really funny on some of them.

It must take a while to film each one!

Theres an 90s Dad on Facebook I like too who dances to lots of 90s tunes. He’s pretty good too. Makes me laugh. I only use Facebook for dog and cat videos these days and a a few extras 😆

Have you ever worked out how much per hour you are on with all the extra hours you work each week

I bet that what ever Eric is going to offer you after a year of working outside your normal hours for free, isn’t going to cover the amount you have worked. You would be better clocking off at 5.30pm and going to work in a bar or as a waitress. At least you would be getting paid for the hours worked

Ugh, this is so predictable, and mainly from men towards women.
I've just experienced a man getting the promotion over me for the second time in my career. I've been working extra 4 hours a day on top of full time role to cover another area, working towards the top role which would cover my current and the one I was doing. However, company needed to find a role for 'Fred', who has no experience in the sector, none in specific department and no experience of the regulations we're bound by.
But surprise, surprise, the role will now not be advertised and in a jobs-for-the-boys move, Fred is now my manager.
I have gained my extra four hours a day back, plenty of time to search for the next role...

No one on their death bed ever wished they'd spent more time at work. Many though regret spending too much, neglecting their personal lives, their families, their hobbies and passions. Work to live, not the other way around.

Yes, thirty was the age I stopped all that shit too, and I have never regretted making that change, particularly when a redundancy process made it clear how much my loyalty was valued.

I completely agree with you. All it does is make you ill/sad/lonely and gives the shareholders a better dividend payout as the company is able to operate on fewer fte than actually required.

I'm all for a gen z workplace revolution and think we can all benefit from aligning our practices.

Entirely agree with you. Never work late as a norm. Eric sounds a total twat.

I used to agree with the snowflake term but now I admire their boundaries. They don't have that same drive to achieve that older generations do because they are thinking about climate breakdown and honestly a lot don't believe they'll get old, have children, own a house, so why work themselves to the bone? I think they have a point.

You are young to be talking about 'the next generation'. Methinks it is time for a career change.

It's very telling that nothing in this post acknowledges how unpaid caring responsibilities outside the job are part of a lot of people's work-life balance. If you want to talk about social responsibility and GDP, those things need to be very prominent in the discussion. Focus on wage labour alone certainly won't suffice. The premise of much of it is poor anyway, but you're not even making your own argument well.

Time to start working on getting out of
there however long it takes.
Working for a twat like that usually doesn't end well.

a) How sympathetic I am depends on how you are getting paid. You have to decide what your threshold is for putting up with this shit.
b) Your manager's a dick, as PP have said, but could he also be leaving the company open for tribunal - he's essentially said that he's going to deliberately cause you stress/mental health issues.
c) Could it be constructive dismissal?
c) Is it a career where there's a defined path to seniority (e.g. a lawyer getting made partner? If not they're probably trying to exploit you - the promotion will always be 6 months away. I think most people get more money by moving employers.

Eric is an idiot manager.

I was lucky at my old place of work. Our HR manager set up a clear career path for the chemical operators and lab technicians and what they needed to do to get pay rises. It was all about coming up with ideas to improve the company's performance, training new employees, experience, and doing things more effectively.

None of it was about working yourself into the ground.

There were employees who didn't even have a high school diploma who were earning $15,000 a year more than a new graduate engineer would have taken in.

We had very low employee turnover and it made my job as a manager so much easier and my employees much happier.

Look for another job.

Work smarter not harder...used to get trotted out to us in teaching, normally by HTs. I'm still in therapy.

Clock off at 5.30. Have down time. You will be way more productive. I now work in a job which is equally long hours but completely flexible, and I'm treated like a professional. The reduction in stress is incredible.

Eric is a knob.

God what a twat of a manager.

Nobody ever looked back on their life and wished they'd spent more time at work.

I'd be looking for a new job. I work but when I log off that's it. I couldn't imagine having to put my own time in well into the night or on weekends. I'd rather have less money and more time.

Eric has cottoned on that you are very good at what you do and get it done quickly, so he’s figured out you’re a good bet on pushing for more. But the money he promises won’t ever be there, just a carrot on a string.
Answer do the opposite, start to slowly slow down and keep slowing down until to reach a pace that suits you.
Eric will find someone else to pick on soon.

He then proceeded to say next I want to really mount the pressure, I want you to be feeling you have too much work and have to say to me ‘(Eric), I can’t take this on, it’s too much.’ I want you to almost feel like there’s so much on that you are non stop. That will mean next year we can talk about more money. It will mean late nights of course. We want to keep building more and more.

Telling Eric to Foxtrot Oscar would be the response I would like to make.

But with bills to pay:

• polish up your CV
• start looking for new jobs
• quote Eric's words verbatim to HR if you think it will get anywhere

booisbooming, I agree. People didn't work as long hours when I started in 1983 (lawyer, London). Some people got the 5.55pm train back to the home counties every night for a 40 year career for example or an hour later on some occasions. What seems to have happened is that my £13k pay in 1985 after applying inflation at exactly the same job is now about 3x as high even after we allow for inflation as we moved through the 80s into boom times, loadsamoney etc. My father, a doctor, came home for lunch almost every day of his working life for example. He worked very hard when a junior doctor with many on calls when younger, but not most of his career although he chose to work long hours when he also did some of his self employed work on top of the NHS job.

I started working for myself in 1994 and have worked some very long hours but it has been on my terms and entirely for my own profit.

However I do think some people make an actively choice that they want the chance to earn £1m a year in due course and sacrifice everything for that in some of these very long hour jobs and that is their choice and there are huge numbers of really top graduates who want those jobs.

In this case of "Eric" I would just say - good plan, looking forward to that pay rise, smile and then continue working the hours as before doing good work. Don't play Eric's game.

We seem to have abandoned so many beliefs :
wages covering real living costs
work is only a part of the life of a citizen
society requires the active participation of its citizens
we live in communities …..