To think working 64 hours in a week is too much?

[happinessisabutterfly]

Concerned about a good friend who is doing this.

Are there laws against it?

Aibu to think it is too much and worry she'll make herself poorly?

If you're happy to spend your entire life at work then I wonder if you don't have anything else in your life.

I have aiways had a best full life, hobbies, travel, house full of children and lots of family time. But I slept on average four to five hours a night. Now I have a full life and I sleep

DH's working weeks tends to be 60-70 hours (paid hourly), I work about 45ish, sometimes working from home after the kids are in bed.
We both work close to home and pre-school and have a full time housekeeper/nanny/saint for DS2 who keeps our shit together. I'm very lucky that I can come home and don't have to do much other than play with my babies and put them to bed, but DH usually has a day a week at the most to relax and unwind. On the plus side he enjoys his job and is paid very well, on the downside when we're both slammed at work and before we got the helper, I was regularly tearing my hair out trying to juggle everything and I wish DH got more downtime for his own sanity but we muddle along and are fortunate that we have what we do and the help for our kids.
I don't know how people work these hours with long commutes involved, I know you get used to less sleep but when the work:life balance tilts firmly into the work camp then stress levels reach overload.

Bit of a 'Four Yorkshiremen' theme in this thread.

Retail management here, 40 hours a week. Tbh if I did more hours than that without there being a good reason I wouldn't be doing my job properly.

It's my job not only to manage a store, but to make sure the people I'm in charge of are equipped to stand in when I'm not there, for their own progression and to make sure the store dosen't fall apart when on holidays, or covering another store.

Standard billable hours are 70-80 hours a week in busy season and 50-60 rest of the year. In reality it's many more hours which is why I have gone down to 75%. Average billable hours over the year are 36/wk which is approx 40 hrs a week.

Looking for a new job and considering starting my own business.

HGV driver, permitted hours 3x13 hour shifts + 3×15 hour shifts in one week of the current rolling fortnight.

But if you do that nowadays you'd be dead or banned. ATM I swan into work mid morning, do between 7-11 hours depending on the job, and bugger off. They pay me about £24k for it, which is just enough to keep my self respect against DW's salary.

Sorry, Philoslothy, I guess I mean that if I did those hours I'd have nothing else in mylife because existing on 4-5hrs sleep a night destroys my physical and mental health and would leave nothing else. My payslip says I work 19.5hrs, I actually spend an additional 2-3hrs there on my three days and bring home a couple of hours worth of lesson planning. So a busy week might see me getting up to 35hrs and I honestly don't know how I would fit any more in. DH does 37.5hrs and we manage a reasonable work-life balance but we're still tired and have a messy house and big jobs eg diy drag on for ages. I couldn't and wouldn't want to do any more whilst my children are small.

I think 64 hours a week is too much. Dh works around those hours, he counts working on the train but not travelling time or socialising with clients but it all removes him from the house and the dcs who often don't see him from one weekend to the next. His work try to encourage a work life balance but the definition of this is vague and dh will always be there when needed for work and for us, he's like a bloody machine, but medicals show he is in good health.

Back when I worked 60hrs a week I had a 1.5 hour commute each direction. I was out of the house 6am-9pm each day. It was horrid. Barely any time with DH.

I am very happy that since DD we have now moved to 30 minutes communute, and my 40-45 hr weeks are only 45-50 hours out of the house (usually ~7:15am to 5:30-6pm weekdays). It is still too much for me with my health. I don't get anything else done and have to spend the whole weekend supine. :( Sucks that I'm still falling behind professionally.

I've started obsessively counting my hours: that 40-45hrs is actually almost always 38 hours actual working (minus lunch/coffee/toilet/mn time) -- so if I stay at work more hours I actually just take more or longer breaks! I never counted when working the longer hours, but I highly suspect I had a much higher proportion of break time than I currently do. I do recall I used to take a whole hour at lunch, whereas now it is more like 15-20min, or just work through. So hours in office don't necessarily mean hours at work, although I was obviously managing more actual working than my current effort.

Being out of the house is irrelevant, if Dh works from home he is very careful to record all hours worked and will work over the weekend if he has worked less than he expects. On a standard day he'll leave the house at 6.00am and return around 8.00pm, if he doesn't have client drinks - which is often 2-3 times a week.

There seem to be a lot of people on 60+ hours a week. Doesn't male it right!
If you are choosing to do it because self employed fine. And some jobs e.g. nanny, obviously you can't leave the kids until the parent is back from work, but I would hope you would get paid for all the hours and I guess it's not a job you can continue if you have dc of your own.

Unfortunately it is often necessary - you don't leave a sick patient because your shift is over. You are often one of a team of five or six people, handing over to a team of two and it wouldn't be safe, or right, to do that. So you stay. Same as taking your allocated 40 minute lunch break - if the nurses call and say someone's poorly and needs help (I work in ITU, the nurses are excellent and don't bullshit about sickies), you don't linger over your sandwich because otherwise you'd work too many hours

In a normal working week I would leave the house at 7:10, drop DD at nursery, drive to work, start at 8, leave at 5, pick DD up and get home at 6:15. I'd see her for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening, and on any days off. Problem is you then throw in at least one long day each week (finish at 8:30, home at 9pm), and a set of nights every few weeks/work the weekend every other weekend. Benefit of shift work was that even if you worked 26 hours at the weekend, you'd get a random Tuesday off later to compensate...

My DH works over and above his allocated hours but because of the nature of his job, he still only does 9 to 5 in the office. He can do the rest of it from home, and it's not particularly intense most of the time eg he can have the laptop sitting on the kitchen worktop with the emails open and do things as and when they come in.

When I used to work all hours, it had to be in the office. I was unpopular with my boss because I had a long commute home and there were only a couple of buses home a day, so if I had to leave to get the last bus home, apparently I was slacking. Similarly, I was tied to getting into the office at a particular time because that was the earliest bus. Again, this apparently made me 'not a team player', despite the fact that I was out of the house for much longer than my colleagues. I should have lived closer to work apparently - but I was paid a pittance and had to live where I did because I couldn't afford to live in the city.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not just the hours worked that matter to your wellbeing, it's the nature of the hours worked, the attitude of the business you work for, whether you are doing it voluntarily or because you are being pressurised into it. I'm not entirely convinced by the 'you have to work long hours to get ahead' thing either. Surely these days, promotions are all formal with an application process, and it comes down to what is said in the interview. I know there used to be outrage in the company I'm referring to because people were frequently promoted when they had already shown themselves to be unreliable (eg poor timekeeping and poor sickness record) or incompetent, because even if the managers had prior knowledge of those things they weren't allowed to take them into consideration in the recruitment process.

I wouldn't do it, it sounds like a mugs game.

I don't give a crap about fancy cars and big houses and showing off about how senior I am there so there would be absolutely zero motivation for me to do it.

(though I appreciate some people have to do it to keep a roof over their heads, and I think that's terrible :()

I don't understand why anyone would want to work these crazy long hours on a regular long term basis unless they love their jobs or don't have dcs, family, friends or partners! Where is the life outside work? When do they see your children? If they are on a high income, when do they get time to spend time in their big, lovely houses or time to spend their hard earned money on fun things? It seems like a trap to me. My DH works 39hours(too many in my opinion) and I work 15 hours per week. More than enough ;-) I have time to spend with dcs, dh, friends, family and time to just breathe, go for walks etc. That's priceless to me.
So I definitely think working 60hours plus is ridiculous and not healthy.

It's a trap that's easy to fall into though, particularly if you work in certain professions.

I think there are a lot of inefficiencies in the office. Reading that people will spend 2 hours responding to emails at night while sitting on the sofa is a bit silly.

I've done all nighters and work 100 hours while moving. DH works 37 hours a week in the office, but his hours are much more if you include his travel. For most flights he is out by 5am and home at 3pm. He then has calls with HQ from 2am onwards if an emergency.

I think that it is easy to fall into the trap if you work in a " vocational" job or in the public sector. If I work long hours as a doctor or teacher, I can't just switch job and assume my hours will go down - because the job is pretty similar wherever you go. I can't leave one bad company and join a more sensible one. Although there are certain schools, hospitals etc that see to get it more right. For me when I no longer wanted to work those hours I had to just leave teaching, for many people that cannot feel like a option because you fall into the trap of thinking that is all that you can do.

I don't understand why anyone would want to work these crazy long hours on a regular long term basis unless they love their jobs or don't have dcs, family, friends or partners! Where is the life outside work? When do they see your children? If they are on a high income, when do they get time to spend time in their big, lovely houses or time to spend their hard earned money on fun things? It seems like a trap to me. My DH works 39hours(too many in my opinion) and I work 15 hours per week. More than enough ;-) I have time to spend with dcs, dh, friends, family and time to just breathe, go for walks etc. That's priceless to me.
Lots of people in public sector and/or vocational jobs do love their jobs. I loved teaching, I loved creating resources, reading what the students had written, forming relationships with families etc and therefore it was very easy to slip into doing more and more. I had a life outside of work but that was achieved by living on very little sleep and by only working in term time.

Of all the teachers I have worked with, I was probably the one who wanted to do the least tbh. I went into teaching so I could have holidays with the children and be home by 4pmish at least once a week. To me that was valuable and made up for the longer hours elsewhere. However now that I do not work at all, I do not miss it and I am much happier.

I remember being terribly impressed reading an interview with Graydon Carter (editor of Vanity Fair) saying that he left work at 5.30 every evening when his children were young so that he could spend time with them. I think that sounds like a great life; brilliant job, short hours! I did very much admire him for that.

I think that in quite a few jobs you're working flat out to make someone else - the publisher, the company that owns your business (and the people who own that), the shareholders, whoever - richer. This I have resented when working in various flat-out private sector jobs. (The voluntary sector, which comes with its own flat-out martyrdom, is at least not about the profit margin.) Work ethic becomes in fact self-exploitation. And is not IMO a Good Thing.

On the other hand I do like my job and rather like doing it, as long as it is within reasonable hours.

I've never worked more than a 41hour week (35 in 1 job, 6 in another).

I purposely didn't choose those types of career where the crazy kind of hours quoted above are expected.

I'd rather have the time than the extra £££

When I first met DP he worked very long and antisocial hours. I realised later that I hardly knew him those years. It made it do much harder for me as a new mum not having someone there most evenings and weekends. It was very isolating. He does a family friendly job now. We don't have much money but we're much happier.

Philoslothy, I think you have something there. It's those vocational jobs, like teacher, healthcare, probably the clergy and even some types of law there are probably more where people get into them because they want to help others. You're meant to do the job because you love it, not for the money. Then the hours are crazy, and beyond what you're officially paid, but if you do less, it's not some faceless corporation that looses out, it's the people who rely on you to do your role to help them: students, patients, etc. And the organisations can ask you to do more because they know you won't drop the ball on the people who count on you. And I think most of these are at least reasonably paid, but certaintly not big bucks.

I was once witness to a conversation about working over maternity leave (and the problem our organisation has that women take exceptionally short leaves) where one woman stated that she loved what she did so much, how could she stop? Of course she kept doing it on leave. Well, for me, I didn't particularly want to run my savings to zero to pay the mortage that I had intended to use to buy a bigger house in which to fit the baby (we did, yay!) while at the same time working! So I took the shortest leave and worked for real money. But it's attitudes like that that pervade vocational careers. If you don't want to work the hours, someone else will be there to fill your place.

My DH works 60 hours a week. Out of the house for 72 hours over 6 days. It is a skilled manual job, with a fair amount of driving. We are in our 30's and we have 5 children. I stay at home to look after them and the house. He does not earn a lot for the hours he works (£35k ish) Not enough to get a mortgage within 50 miles of where we live! We have savings, but he absolutely does not work to provide a lavish lifestyle!

We both come from very poor working class/non working families and feel rich having enough to buy our children leather school shoes and not needing free school meals!

He works those hours 48 weeks a year. He is exhausted. I miss him, but it's just the way it is. Everyone we know works similar hours.