To ask, how hard do you work at your job?

[Countrymouse1]

Curious as to how hard you find your job?

Do you do a lot of unpaid extra hours, work through lunch? Is your workload manageable?

What is the most stressful thing about your role?

I am going through a rough time with my work situation, and am eternally grateful to MNetters for just being there with me when I was panicking (a LOT) about it all this morning and over the last few days. I am sorting that with my doctor and going to find a new job. I need to do some serious thinking about what move will be right for me, my confidence is a bit low, and want to make a good decision and see what the norm is for levels of job stress.

I won't come in early due to needing to get the kids out to school first. But from 9.15 a.m to on average 7pm I run, run, run. It's so intense I often don't get to eat anything until 4pm ish and consciously restrict fluid intake because I don't have time for a wee. Also spend 4 - 5 hours catching up on emails and paperwork at the weekends. I don't mind the long hours as much as the pressure and intensity. Another one in the NHS here.

My bosses are very flexible so I leave at 2.45pm every day to get the kids from school. The trade off is I don't have a lunch and I'm supposed to be in for 8am each day. I don't claim my time back on the days I have to stay late either, as it's usually more like 8.30 that I actually get in.

No terms of how hard it is...it's not physically hard (waitressing was much tougher) and I get paid very well paid for how hard it is, but there are a lot of judgement calls and people relying on me to make the right decision. That's hard. About 80% of my job is fairly easy. The other 20% is why I get paid what I do.

On the whole, I walk out at 2.45 and don't think about work again until the next day. Some weeks though I'll be in until 7pm every night trying to get stuff done.

I think it's a good balance - just tough enough to keep me challenged but not so that I feel swamped all of the time.

I am also an academic, but I don't work really long hours every week, I vary it so I have a few intensive months, then slack off a bit and so on. Term time is always crazy and I have to do a few hours one day on weekends to catch up with myself. I then work less intensively in the holidays, plodding rather than adrenaline fueled.

I know some people who work harder than me and a few that have worked less although this is increasingly less viable. I do try not to work too many evenings and weekends though, only if there is a real need. Otherwise it just seeps into everything all the time and I really don't want that.

Used to work v v hard - 60/70-hr weeks - and got some of the best results in my area for years running. Then I was treated very badly, I mean shockingly badly, by management and some people at work when I was in a horrible situation (pg and partner critically ill in hospital). Still work in the same place but these days I phone it in and do as little as possible. Serves them right, too.

country what hours are you contracted to work? I have read your other thread and believe supportive management is key to helping me be able to do the amount of work I do.

I also suffer with horrible anxiety and really struggle sometimes

The last email I received from my senior director after completing some work whilst on annual leave (took me 20 minutes and I was MN'ting when his email came through) was:

WOW

How brilliant are you.

Thank you so much

It helps put a smile on your face and want to help out and feel valued.

Bloody hard. The last three weeks have all been six day weeks plus five nights on-call. Generally don't get a lunch break and usually are working an hour or so late each night. During work hours I an running myself ragged. It's due to my NHS service being seriously understaffed.

It's horrible and I'm thinking of quitting.

I do work extra hours, but the extra is voluntary - training I've opted to do (rather than the compulsory training which I have no interest in and am really procrastinating on,) and things like organising voluntary outreach work with schools and so on. I am very good at taking a lunch break, and have learnt to book it out every day, so other people don't book meetings then. I do work through occasionally, but it is occasional.
I do work late sometimes if there's a piece of work that needs finishing and I'm sort of in the zone, but I don't do that often - if most of us in the team are regularly doing an extra hour a day, it would cover a whole extra person.

But as I'm a techy, I do have to do on-call and sometimes out of hours maintenance work - it is expected (and the on-call side of it does get an extra payment, plus we can claim overtime for weekend maints), but we are quite flexible between ourselves, and a colleague on European time is doing the one due in a few hours, so I don't have to get up at 4am for it; he is an hour ahead anyway, and gets up early normally, whereas my choice to do it out of hours would be starting at midnight, and I'll get to pick up something that needs doing then in a couple of weeks. Doesn't happen often, though, so it's not a major issue.

I am still working. I have done a three hour round trip commute, have had back to back meetings all day, lunch with one of my team, a secret meeting after work with someone I am trying to headhunt and am now home finishing off.

I am a management consultant in a niche area. My job is interesting and engaging, but relentless. I am starting to worry that I am too old (50) and wonder how many years I will able to keep going at this pace.

Hmm

Pre DS I worked about 60 hours a week (paid for 35)

now I work about 40 hours a week

I give it about 90% now. Used to be 100. Or 110% in X Factor parlance.

I rarely take a lunch. I don't work from home now at evenings or weekends, which is new. And better (for my sanity but not my career prospects)

I get paid for the hours I work, so if I work more hours I'm paid more. I work hard, we have a years-long backlog of issues to fix so the more I fix the more I get given to fix. Which is fine by me. I'm there anyway, why not concentrate hard? If I thought about the workload I'd melt - there is man-years of work which needs to be done. I just start at the top of the pile and work steadily through as much as I can. It won't all be done this week, this month or even this year. That's just the way it is.

I will try to be flexible if something really needs doing right now today, but I've always been ruthless with having to leave if I have no choice - came from picking small kids up from school half an hour's drive away with nobody to step in if I wasn't there. I've always said to my bosses "if I say I have to leave at 3, that means I walk out of the door at 3 no matter what is happening." But I do that having worked hard up until 3. It's never been an issue, and if it was I would leave. They know that.

Most stressful thing about my role? The amount of money on the line if I screw something up and the testers don't notice.

I agree with the last two posts. OP, you clearly were in a job that stressed you out - worth thinking about what, specifically, was stressful, why, whether it was an inevitable part of the nature of that job that didn't suit you, or some aspect of the culture. Don't underestimate workplace culture - my last 2 jobs have been very similar in description, responsibility and pay, (senior manager in a charity), but in the previous one the management was ineffective and contradictory and I worked very long hours; in this one the management is clear and straightforward, and I work shorter hours and have more impact. In both I do unpaid overtime and work through lunch; as a PP has said after a certain level of responsibility it's just what happens in many jobs.

I think there's a distinction between work and career, work is work, but a career is a bit different - it involves work, but with some provisos, besides any work you must link what you do to a certain objective - career towards your career. Some people/careerists have only worked in one trade/profession excepting some get-by/casual when they were at uni (or not). How can they know how hard they work if they only have their career experience to go on?

Countrymouse1 - if you're good at what you do, there will be a space for you somewhere, it might just take time to find it.

My previous role involved essentially never being off-duty (had to take any calls that came in, including on holidays) and travelling at the drop of a hat for the guts of ten years. When not travelling, I didn't take lunch - people used to drop extra strong coffee to my desk at various points during the day. I didn't realise quite how dysfunctional it was until I stopped. When I did stop, it took two years off before I could face considering going back to anything.

Now, I'm just about to move to a four day week (has been two/three for the past two years), can pick my hours and don't have a Blackberry so no contact outside of when I'm on-site with a client (management consultant). Sounds great, and is. Admittedly, there is the risk that it could all change tomorrow, being contract, but still, I'd rather that than my previous life.

Sorry for ramble, but I wanted to re-assure you that, when you're ready, there will be opportunities there to build the career you want, just don't underestimate the time you need to recover from the stress your current job has put you under.

Another teacher here! Primary school ( reception age) but nearly 30yrs in post so LOTS of other responsibilities too-SLT/DT/LitCo etc. I'm in 8-5. Get 20 mins for lunch as I'm also lunchtime supervisor!! I work in the evenings sun-thurs. Minimum of 2 hrs per night but can work until 2-3am as I don't sleep well. I love my job. The bond that I have with the children and their parents is amazing but I know I'm getting on a bit when I say things like "it's not the job I went into" and "children aren't like they used to be"!! We were inspected within the past yr by ETI (NI) and were judged to be "outstanding". My friend was also inspected and her school is now in special measures. One of the differences is that in her school the culture is that they do what they're paid for and not a minute more. She has never covered break duty, brought work home, worked "proper" directed time and seldom had staff/curric dev meetings. The system that we, as teachers, work in seems to mean that if you don't do more (waaaay more) than you're paid for then you are open to "public humiliation" when the inspection report goes public. In my friend's case it included a double page newspaper spread!!!

OP, I suspect if you posted another thread with a different title, you'd bring out all the "piece of piss, can't think what they're paying me for really" posters, instead of all the grafters as pp said.

I have found working in IT that it varies a lot. Some places clear out at 5pm, others expect some insane macho one-upmanship in terms of hours (and claim fervently that EVERYONE does this and it's IMPOSSIBLE to deliver anything without sacrificing your first born etc. Bunch of wankers.)

I occasionally work through lunch, but try to take a proper lunch break at least a couple of times a week usually an hour, with colleagues - it's a great chance to catch up. I rarely work late, though am doing so occasionally at the moment due to big project. A common philosophy is "sustainable pace" and a 40 hour regular work week is considered sane and sensible, though there's the occasional busy patch. I actually love working late, but feel guilty if I do this too much as I feel I'm setting a bad example.

I think for me the most stressful thing in any job is lack of autonomy, which generally comes down to lack of trust. I've found having a "career" job a lot less stressful in that regard than something like waitressing or callcentre or factory work because being micromanaged and treated as replaceable is less common.

PACIFICWEREWOLF-I'm guessing you are a GP?
You've just described my job!

I work really hard, lots of hours. My job is very flexible and most of it is very local or I can do from home (SW). Most weeks I get to collect kids from primary school 2 or 3 days but I make up that time, and the time spent cooking meals while they chat to me later in the evening, or on the days when I travel. An easy day in London for me is leaving home at 6.30am and getting home 12 hours later.
I'm not paid well at all (nothing like the salary of a normal London wage-slave) but one of my two jobs is amazing, incredible, and gives me the chance to "change the world". I love it and I do it very well. I get immense satisfaction from it.

Public sector job, work load completely unmanageable so I have given up trying to manage it and just tell people I haven't done X,Y or Z. I do urgent high priority stuff only these days. But I don't go in early and I very rarely work on my days off. I do stay late but as I work part time I don't mind this too much. It's a career type job and very demanding and I don't know how the current sitaution is going to end up as it's not really sustainable at the moment.

I work hard when im at work and think about it when im not- in a good way mostly but with a hint of ..'please dont let there be any complaints!!' New manager of a small cust serv team so still finding my feet ....work late most days and dont take enough lunch breaks despite telling team to!
Love work and am good - work with ppl 15-20 years younger than me who need more common sense and work ethic!!

I work very hard at my job and never take lunch. I love my job and my boss is fab. She often runs out for coffee in the afternoon to keep us going.

I'm a reliable worker. Punctual, no sick days & very helpful. However I do have a tendency to leave jobs 'til the last minute. My best work is done under pressure, but I'd love to be more organised.

I always take my breaks. We aren't allowed anything other than water at our desks so have to physically go to the brew room to eat. And I find I'm more productive after a break too.

Very rarely start early or work late unless its for a specific project. This week I'll work a couple of hours extra each day but it was discussed and agreed beforehand. If I have to stay late for an unexpected deadline or piece of work then I come in late or go early another day. It's the norm really in my environment.

I spent far too many years working all the hours under the sun and being on constant call to negotiate on it now.

I work retail - 32 hours a week. If I stay late/start early I get paid because we work on a clock-in/out system, but I never do unless agreed in advance to cover someone on holiday or who's off sick.

I find that once you start doing overtime, you get put down for it without agreement and you're expected to start staying late etc. every shift. Which is fine if you're happy to work the hours as you do get paid, but I like having a life outside of work!

I work pretty hard once I'm there, though. I do earlies so lots of manual stuff in the mornings (delivery, lugging cages everywhere, etc.) and it's customer based so I don't really get the chance to be grumpy!

Depends on the wage tbh. On just over minimum wage they just over minimum effort :D

I often go in an hour early because it suits me to do that and I'd just be hanging around after the school run when there isn't time to go home - work is near the DCs schools and some distance away from my home.

I work damn hard and they get their money's worth when I'm there. I don't stay late or do overtime though - I enjoy a good work/life balance and it's going to stay that way. I am rarely off sick. I use all my holidays every year and have bought extra days. I take most of my lunch break depending on what project we've got on at the time.