To think that work in the UK didn't always used to be like this & wonder why it changed?

[abualb]

(name changed as I've posted on here for a while and i'm pretty sure you could figure out my employer. Cheeky fuckers, send them a cheque, toasters, and all that.)

I'm mid-thirties and started working in a semi-professional role straight from uni. So did DH, who's 5 years older than me (41). no DC yet.

Over the last year i've become really disheartened with my job, and at first i thought it was my employer - i've realise it's not, i've never had what i could call a "good" employer, and nor has DH. and year on year it (working practices) get worse. it just seems to be that the accepted way of working that we've experienced is fairly toxic/on a slipping slope. maybe it's the sectors but i'll give you some examples.

• expectations around 'always on' availability. I've had a work phone since about 5 years ago, and more than ever there seems to be the expectation that you're available outside of normal working hours (emails flying back and forth in the evenings, requests for info before a 8am meeting on monday sent at 7pm on a friday, whatever). text messages, calls once or twice most weekends. neither of us are in critical, non-office hours jobs like hands-on healthcare or shift work or anything - it's normal, non-urgent work part of normal work activity. no such thing as 9-5 any more like in our contracts, it's 8am 'oh so you're coming in late tomorrow' to 5pm 'leaving early today' attitudes.

• expectations around having no personal life. example: i'm never really ill, and the one time i recently tried to get to a GP was in the last appointment they had, at 6.15pm. meaning i had to leave work at 5pm. the pressure i was under because i was not available to be in a meeting was immense. it was just a recurring internal status meeting.

• no one taking actual lunch breaks. we have meetings with people eating sandwichs in them, if they managed to get away to get something to eat at all.

• recurring team meetings starting at 7.15am & 8am each day of the week, not time-urgent critical ones, again, just normal ones, meaning mornings are even more hugely stressful than they need to be. a constant drive to go in earlier to "get ahead"... but that re-sets expectations about when we start, so team meetings move 15 mins earlier.. a horrid cycle!

• massive communications overload. we have people sitting in meetings doing work, half listening, half working, because by the time you get out, you'd arrive back to 40 emails to wade through if you tried to actually switch 'off' for an hour. constant phone calls interrupting people at work.

I'm convinced work didn't used to be like this, and i've seen similar patterns across 3 different employers in the last 8 years. DH is recently experiencing similar, over the last 2 years pressure on him to get more done, work longer hours, has increased unsustainably.

i don't know what to do about it - my colleagues seem to deal with it by doing half-arsed jobs of their work to cope, OR enjoy it (feed on the chaotic buzz), OR collapse and go off sick, OR resign to take up different careers. i don't want to leave but i can't see how i can continue in this working culture as it continues to decline.

AIBU to think this is one of the most damaging outcomes of modern technology, as wonderful as it is? i sometimes feel like throwing my work phone into the sink to get a couple of evenings of peace before it got replaced, but then i'd probably just have to stay at the office late to take conference calls anyway, so not solving the problem.

I'm in London too. £50k isn't much here!

Not FS but I recognise much of what you describe. Fewer people having to take on the work. Staff not being replaced.

A couple of years ago my boss walked out and wasn't replaced. I had to absorb their work but strangely not their salary.

It's easy to say 'just refuse' but with a mortgage to pay and food to put on the table I didn't feel I could.

The technology now means there are fewer admin staff. Everyone is their own admin assistant.

I’m not in London and I don’t think £50k is great either. I have management duties but sure what is middle daisypond? That’s what I’m on and I am only a team leader and my team has no one under them. So I’m bottom level management? I think you are paid four too little. Colleagues in London would be at £70k without management duties.

I don’t recognise this tbh. I think you need to look for better employers.

You get paid good money because your life is not your own.

Whilst I agree with this and have always said 'the more they pay you the more they want from you' (and believe it to be true), I don't think it is just happening to senior management types - as I said in my pp, it is happening to admin assistants too which is ridiculous.

You get paid good money because your life is not your own

In some cases the money is not that great.
If you take off travel costs and clothing that you have to wear to look office ready in some cases if you put the time you spend travelling to and from the office, working at the office and at home, the emails and phone calls you answer in your own time I would hazzard a guess a lot of people would earn more on the check out at Lidl and have a better home life work life balance

DH earns more than both of you put together and doesn't do any of this. He has to keep his work phone on overnight - it's a safety critical industry and if something very serious happens then it's all hands to the pump. That's hugely unusual though, he's been in the company 10 years and it's happened twice. Plus if he's been up all night chairing conference calls and organising the team, his boss gives him time off to recover. He doesn't do emails after hours. If there's an early meeting scheduled this is often a conference call so he just dials in from the car on his way to work. Same with late calls.

On the other hand I'm freelance and earn a fraction of what he does and have to put up with almighty shit from clients. Worked once - only once and never again - for a dick from Australia who Skyped me to agree the project criteria one evening then emailed me repeatedly throghout the night getting increasingly more irate that I wasn't instantly responding at 3am. He couldn't see that he was being unreasonable and that I wasn't prepared to stay up all night to write web content which wasn't time sensitive. Too many clients wanting the moon on a stick for £2 an hour.

No pay for attending the out of hours events, and these are lowly admin people on £8/hr, not high fliers!!

Aren't there wage-and-hour laws in the UK? This would be illegal in the US and potentially subject the employer to serious consequences.

Totally get this. Used to work in FS, took a salary cut and got out. However as I work less hours and even taking into consideration the loss of my not to be sniffed at bonus, my hourly rate works out about the same.

OP there are other places out there that really isn’t like that!

I worked like a slave when I worked for a particularly awful law firm.

Recently, in a different law firm, I've been surprised at the extent to which the following are tolerated:

• deciding to working from home that day at the drop of a hat
• leaving early/coming in late for this that and the other "appointment"
• Taking days off sick for fuck all
• long term sickness absence
• general pissing about/chatting during the day

I seem to be the odd one for doing my 9-5 & lunch-break consistently, day in day out, occasionally a couple of hours extra on the evening or on the weekend and wanting to get my head down and get on with it.

Seems to me a lot of folk put huge effort into avoiding work and/or take work to be an inconvenience getting in the way of their social life. Or, to use that MN expression, they seem to feel "entitled" to their salary without doing a lot in return.

Dh works in insurance at a similar salary to your dh but he doesn't recognise he culture you describe at all.

What would happen if you didn’t do all these extras OP, because the meetings, phone calls and emails out of hours are extra hours. Is it in your contract of employment that you need to do all this? The culture of always being present and on is incredibly damaging to your health and I don’t think people are any more productive if they are working 24/7. I deleted my work email account from my phone because the temptation to just answer an email in the evening became too strong. It also creates an expectation that you will always be available. I strongly suggest that you do the same.

Quite liked that.

Oops, wrong thread!

Oh and my example given above was for a role at the bottom of the food chain within the bank. In the 17/18k bracket. The people on 50k+ where all project managers / office managers not the ones actually doing the work trying to meet the ever increasing, unreachable targets.

Work didn't used to be like this. I used to get paid a proper living wage and I remember in the 90s my boss taking us to the pub Friday lunchtime and telling us all we could stay there for the afternoon. I remember working for another company where I was told to spend 80% of my day surfing the net or doing whatever I wanted.

Compared to now, I work for next to nothing (no pay rise for 15 years), I've worked my way into poverty, my boss is a total bully, I'm completely stressed all the time because of the workload, almost everyone I work with is a jobsworth, no job security and I have no quality of life anymore.

It's been a fast slippery slope.

I was in admin - albeit at quite a high level - it was just me and my boss in our dept. He was an MD and I was everything else!

As for private vs. public sector - I had a temp job in the public sector for a few months and boy oh boy was that eye opening. I couldn't believe what short hours everyone worked and how lazy and unproductive they were while in the office. There were a couple of productive people apart from me and another Aussie temp (who worked our arses off), everyone else was just dead wood - doing nothing, making cups of tea and wasting time pretending to photocopy documents and wandering around the office carrying pieces of paper. They wouldn't have lasted 5 mins in any of the private sector companies I worked in.

So,. An update prompted by a similar thread posted today (here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3118006-Is-a-toxic-and-high-pressure-work-environment-the-norm-now?pg=1&order=

No long after I posted this thread things came to a head at work and (I think due to a combination of stress and physical exhaustion), I had a massive breakdown at work.

I lost it in a meeting with my manager on a day where I was already completely overwhelmed with stuff to do and by midmorning was looking at having toput in so many hours to pull something together for the next day, I couldn't see how it could be done. Then my Manager blindsided mein a morning team meeting with a whole other load of stuff to look at as "high priority" ASAp and I sort of just mentally flipped and gave up, satfiwn quietly in my chair and couldn't even summon the energy to speak with anything other than 1 or 2 word answers.
My manager pulled me aside after and asked what was wrong in private and I ended up almost immediately bursting into twears, shaking, shouting, ranting, and essentially I really only remember repeating stuff about not being treated as a machine, I'm a human - not much else.

They've taken me off teamwork with almost immediate effect that day,i took a week of annual leave,, and now I'm back in, my Manager isn't speaking to me, he basically blanks me in the corridor. I've been back 4 days and I'm not on team work but I'm supposed Tobe working on "improvement and efficiency work" according to my schedule notes,but it's no clear who with or what on.

No attempt to support or suggest paid sick leave (I don't get paid) Oran attempt to figure out a managble workload or anything.

The 100s of emails I came back in tojust included an email from HR about our employee weellbeing telephone number.

Soooooo.
I have 1 more day here at work before Christmas and tbh I don't know what to do next. It's clear neither my manager or workplace are in a position to aid me through what is a direct mental health breakdown caused by work. Not in practical terms anyway.

I suppose I should say that I really feel like I'm being punished for essentially completely collapsing with overwhelming levels/pressure of work here. My attempt to set up a private return to work chat has been completely ignored for 4 days despite chasing via email, phone and once in person. This thread has made me see that working in this sort of toxic place/Industry isn't such the norm in other sectors so it's time to look elsewhere. Thank you to all who posted for advice.

Sorry to hear this OP and I hope you recover quickly and find another role. Even if it pays a lot less, the improvement in your wellbeing will be worth it. It is easy to think you can't cope with a lower salary, but you often can. I'd had it with a job about 6 years ago and was able to leave with a settlement that paid the mortgage for a while, DH paid the rest of the bills and I had a part-time job earning pocket money. Maybe use the time over Xmas to look at your budget and outgoings and see what you could afford to live on?

Eventually I was offered a much better paid job and I've been there for 5 years. However, I recognise some of the things you and PPs have talked about - trying to do more with less, coming under a lot of scrutiny and working well over hours. At the moment I feel like someone finds something to criticise every day - I am given a mountain of work to do with short deadlines - and then told I am rushing things. I am seriously considering leaving in the new year although I have a health issue to resolve first. But if all is well, I am looking at local universities.