AIBU not to want to work 60 hours a week?

[DanceWithAStranger]

I really like my job and find it interesting. It's quite a senior role so carries a fair amount of responsibility: I'm decently paid but not nearly as much as I could get in the private sector. I have a professional qualification and want to stay working in my field.

The downside is that I'm working long hours most of the time, and barely seeing DH and DS during the week. I'm seriously beginning to worry about how I'm going to cope with working like this for another 10 years, never mind the 30 I've got till I retire (if I ever do). But every role I've looked at that doesn't assume willingness to work crazy hours is either so dull I could do it in my sleep, or paid so little that we couldn't live on the pay.

The worst of it is that friends in other organisations have it even worse: at least I get enough sleep (when I'm not lying awake worrying about work). Some of them are getting by on 5 hours a night.

AIBU to want an interesting job with some autonomy that still leaves me a bit of time for a life? I don't even want to be part time, just to work 35-40 hours a week instead of 55-60!

Sorry, posted too soon. I meant to add, when did it become the norm to hand your waking life over to your employer?

I don't know. But I work for myself and I'm working right now (well, until I got distracted by MN...). My DH works for an employer, and is working right now.
I think the recession has made it such an employers'/clients' market that a lot of them are severely taking the piss tbh.

YANBU, it's a ridiculous. There was an article in the Harvard Business Review recently about Goldman Sachs realising it is ridiculous, hopefully it'll catch on!

Here it is,

blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/goldman-sachs-decides-restructuring-work-is-possible-after-all/

Does your employer expect you to work 50/60 hrs per week? Is it in your contract?

I have a semi senior position within a 24 hour industry and I will not allow work to creep.into my home life. I dont check emails, however I will answer calls if im.able to but expect them to be emergencies only.

My stance is that I dont bring my home life into work, therefore I wont allow my work life into my home.

Could you look at choosing two days a week to start a little earlier and stay a little later but then finish at four.on other days?

How is your time management?

Time management excellent (if it wasn't I'd have gone under by now) but workload crazy. My boss and the other person at my grade are also both desperately overloaded. It's not 24-hour but a lot of it is time-critical - can't say more than that without risking outing myself.

Sorry, I hate typing on a tablet. I meant to add that I have one of those weaselly contracts that says "35 hours per week or such hours as are necessary to ensure the work is done", or some wording of that sort.

I really get this. I've worked for several housing associations and homelessness agencies in senior roles now and expectations of hours worked and travel times have varied from at their worst 100 hours a week to my current role, contracted for 35 and probably work around 40 - 45. The job I do now is unusual and I got it because I knew the CE and had a good reputation and track record. I am well aware I am very, very lucky. My sis works for a tech start up (having worked in NFPs for most of her career in marketing, the first few years were hard but she earns a great salary and it works around her childcare, albeit with international travel every few months. The good and flexible jobs are out there but finding them is dependent on networks, sorry to say, but you can get lucky - my new Fundraising Manager I've just hired, is I think in a good position in that I want her to be flexible - so I am okay with days when her kids are ill as long as she gets her work done - whereas company policy is unpaid dependency leave. I think it's all about relationships with your boss and working for a more flexible company.

I don't see who it benefits in the long run. I haven't yet made a stupid mistake as a result of being exhausted, but no doubt I will. No-one will die or go to gaol if I do, but it could be expensive and embarrassing for the organisation.

It really depends on the type of field you're in.

What would happen if you starts saying no, or leaving on time half the week?

It is not your company, you don't personally benefit from driving yourself into the ground.

Ultimately, employers will take as much as they can get if you don't push back.

Is yours the only salary?

In a professional job I think 45 hours is a reasonable expectation. I leave the house at 8.15/30 and am home by 7ish usually so not so different from you Euphemia although I work very locally and only have a 7 minute journey and couldn't do it if I had an hour's commute either way.

OP if you are working 60 hours week in week out though you need to formally exclude yourself in writing from the European Working Time Regulations which stipulate that no more than 48 pw should be worked.

Have you actually signed an EU working time directive waiver? If not you don't have to work such long hours. If you are senior level you can control your workload to some extent, it just means being brave. I could do the hours you do and work over weekends but I resist the urge. If you are in the public sector I suspect you waste a lot of time in pointless meetings.

I'm exactly the same. Some works I can work 70 +. I really don't think I can sustain thus for another 20 years. I love my job (mainly) It isn't in the contract in fact my contract is 1295 hrs per year, but it is expected in order to meet targets and successfully do my job (another teacher)
I am also considering a career change. But to what!?
Sorry not a helpful answer at all :(

X-post with Windmill.

I can appreciate this from when I was working and from the hoes my husband does now. In both cases it's what aided our career progression. The hours my hubby does (he was actually away 4 nights last week) mean that he's extremely well paid and he now reaps the rewards for the extra effort he has invested.

Personally for me, if I needed to return to being employed by others I'd now see it as just a job rather than a career and accept that I'll not be a high flyer. I'd just work in a role that pays less but expects me to work very hard when I'm there. Nobody would fault the work I would do in the time I was there but I wouldn't go back to working long hours again as I'd work to live, not live to work.

I'm in Euphemia's teaching boat: although I think the 'contracted' hours are something like 8-4 week days during term time, when you add together all the work done in the evenings as well, it's around 60 hrs per week. (I haven't included the evenings worked for most of the holidays).

My perpetual aim in life is to go to bed before midnight.

Yes, we're only legally obliged to work during school hours, but it's impossible to get everything we're expected to do completed anyway, even with working every waking minute of the day, let alone in the 3ish hours of PPA time provided each week.

Threads like the one I read this morning about how awful uncommitted teachers are make me want to cry. Which happens a lot, since I am chronically sleep deprived! Especially since I wouldn't want to do anything else, I just want to be able to do this job properly.

Ha! Posting at 8:15! I'm on the way to work!

Have you opted out of the Working Time Directive, which sets the maximum number of hours worked per week at 48? You can choose to work more than this (but have to sign a waiver); your employer cannot make you work more hours than this, if you are not opted out.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

This supercedes your written contract - so actually your contract is to work between 35 and 48 hours per week.

It is not the norm to hand over your entire life to an employer.

Are you in a trade union OP? How about a quiet chat with your rep? There may well be the possibility of some kind of collective representation if others feel the same way as you.

Yes, I've opted out of the WTD. I've never had a job where I wasn't presented with the opt-out as soon as I got my contract.

I'm not really moaning about my personal situation (well, I am, but only as an illustration): the thing that prompted my post is the wider structural problem. As I said, all my friends are in similar or worse positions, and my boss (who is older than I am) is practically on his knees with exhaustion.

Yes, I can say no to things (and I prioritise ruthlessly). But ultimately employers of people in roles like mine can rely on us to do the extra work out of professional pride and also loyalty to colleagues (not to the organisation - couldn't care less about that). I want to do the best job I can, and I don't want colleagues to suffer because I haven't done something.

I don't want a career change. I also don't want megabucks, and nor does DH (great for your DH that he's done so well, Joysmum, but there's no amount of money that would make me work away four nights a week). All I want is a job that pays enough for the bills not to keep me awake at night, really uses my abilities and is interesting, and I really don't think that's an unreasonable thing to want.AIBU to think the system is broken?!

ocelot, yes, the FDA, but they've got bigger fish to fry at the moment.

YANBU at all - there is a 40 hour week norm for a reason, and that's because humans work the most productively and sustainably on 5 days 9-5. There is an inordinate amount of research proving this, right from Henry Ford through to the modern day.

Unfortunately it's an employers' market right now, meaning they can get rid of 1/3 of staff in "effficiency savings" and just expect the remainder to pick up the slack through fear. It's so far from acceptable.

I think it's also caused by the concept of a career, meaning you can't just turn up each day and do a good job, you constantly have to be going above and beyond in order to prove you're ready to take the next step up the ladder.

Those suggesting opting back in the WTD (assuming you have opted out) presumably do not appreciate the realities of working in a senior role.