To not be certain what people mean when they say they work for 12 hours a day.

[topcat2014]

Now, I get that we are busy - but here is my question.

If people say they work 60 hours a week (say), then do they really mean:

At my desk from 07:00 to 19:30 with a half hour for lunch, every day - or

Leave the house at 07:00 and arrive home at 19:00.

I have never worked anywhere where staff are sat at their desks from 7am to 7pm, so not quite sure.

Husband is a dairy farmer. His alarm goes off at 5am. He is in for 6.30pm. Probably has an hour and a half breaks a day. He works 13 days out of 14.

When I was an HCA with the NHS a 12 hour shift was 7.30 - 8.30. (1 hour for dinner in the middle)

And don’t get me wrong, I admire the stamina it takes to work 12-13 hour days (I am standard 9-5 5 days per week so feel very lucky compared to some)

All those doing standard 60 hour weeks every week, I’m fascinated. Do you have a partner at home picking up the slack? A cleaner? Can you get enough exercise and sleep for yourself?

@CurlyhairedAssassin my DH works 60ish hours a week, often starting at 6am and home at 9pm. He gets exercise on the weekends but I do the vast vast majority of housework etc (I am a SAHM)

I work 8na. Boarding school, actually in a boarding house. I work 7-6 every day and 7am-11pm twice a week, plus retaining responsibility for any illness or issues overnight, picking up again 7-6 the next day. That’s a 35hr shift by my calculation. I’m rehearsing at lunch time, but I do get a 20min break mid morning...

CurlyHaired - My partner and I both work at least 60 hrs a week (same job). No you do not get enough sleep / exercise / vitamins. When we have children we will 100% need a lot of paid childcare or will have to change jobs - those that manage without a LOT of help must be magic and I want them to share their secrets

For hospitals a "long shift" is usually arrive half an hour before shift start for a handover meeting, start at 0700 and work through to 1900.

In theory, there's supposed to be two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch, but short staffing means that goes out the window a lot of the time.

If there are admin staff on, there may be hot drinks made every so often, but no formal breaks.

Tired: but where are you going to even find the time to make those children?!

I used to work at an NHS hospital and we started at 7am and finished at 8pm. I left home at 6.30am and got back at 8.30 so could say 14 hour day! Did that 3x a week but some people did it 4x, was totally exhausting and breaks were 2x 45 min breaks which we didn't always get due to staffing issues and incidents.

I’m a nanny, my employers do a 10 hour day with an hours commute. So I do a 12 hour day. I cannot leave ‘my work’ at anytime during those 12 hours so yes I work a 12 hour day.

I'm a nurse and I do double shifts at the hospital on set days. I do 14.5 hour shifts (6.45am - 21.15pm). Although I supposedly get an hour's unpaid break in that more often than not I work through it. Travelling time etc is on top of that. My standard work day is a 5.30am alarm to start the day and I normally get home at about 21.45-ish.

Overtime in the NHS is seriously well paid. Plus you get a hefty pension and very long sick pay, etc. Funny how that never gets mentioned on these threads.

Neither do GP salaries - way higher in the UK than doctors in most places on the planet.

It's not all thankless toil, to be fair.

I’m at physically at work 7:30-4:30. I then work from home 7-9pm. I also work Sundays 12-4pm.

Lanaor - Overtime! Ha! Where I work 'extra hours' are paid on the bank contract system (which is often a lower rate than most people's regular hourly rate). I can't actually remember the last time me or a colleague got paid overtime.

That's fairly standard in a lot of NHS trusts now.

I tot up the hours I work. I spend quite a lot of my working hours wfh, so then I literally "stop the clock" if I stand up and leave my workroom, because I have this massive guilt complex about unloading the dishwasher whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, or if I take 10mins to get the washing out the machine and hang it up.
Oddly though, if I am working in the office, and I went to make a brew, I'd go down the corridor, make the brew, quite possibly unload that dishwasher, but would count all the time I was at the office, for that day, as working time
Quite a lot of professionals will do their 8 hours or whatever in the office, and then sit and do another 3 or 4 in the evenings or at the weekends a couple of times a week.
I've always counted the total number of hour I spend on (paid) work, divided by the number of days a week I'm paid to work. So, FT, is total hours for week /5, and PT is total hours /3 or 4 or 2.5 or whatever I'm paid for.

start work at 7 am
finish at 7 pm

Our shifts at work are 7am-9pm. 1 hour unpaid break but we're lucky if we get that.

I'm a teacher. Usually in school by 7.30. Always aim to leave work early, but it's usually about 6 - sometimes later. Although I've got the flexibility to leave early if I need to. Work a few hours every evening and work on Sundays.

dd's now a teenager. When she was little I used to leave earlier, but bring home more work to do in the evenings. Now that she can eat later and stay up later I prefer to try to get as much done at school as I can.

@CurlyhairedAssassin: All those doing standard 60 hour weeks every week, I’m fascinated. Do you have a partner at home picking up the slack? A cleaner? Can you get enough exercise and sleep for yourself?

I have a partner, but he also works full time and often needs to leave the house even earlier than I do. We split the cooking and washing up between us and he'll hoover if I ask him, but he never notices that anything needs doing. He doesn't expect me to do housework, just never realizes that it needs doing

No cleaner - the place is never as clean or tidy as I'd like

Exercise - walk to and from school (about 40 minutes each way) plus go to the gym on Sundays

Sleep - never enough in term time

If I say I work 12 hours then I mean booking on at 7pm and booking off at 7pm. Whether/how long a meal break I get depends on the day. (thankfully 12 hour shifts are the exception rather than the norm for me)

A friend who was a nurse worked 12hr days, she was permanently exhausted. 3 days on, 2 days off, her days off she lay in bed all day recovering.

I'm deputy matron at a residential nursing facility, I do two 12 hour days nursing 8-8 and two eight hour days 8-4 of admin to make up my forty hour weeks.
I'm alao on call every other weekend so can do an extra 8-12 hour usually night on those weeks.

Not unusual at all in my role.

I regularly work 9-9.30 either during day or overnight. Doctor. Those are my actual shifts times. I am often rota'ed for 70 hours/week, but often work more as don't always get to leave on time. What do you find so hard to understand? Some people work long hours in some jobs.

To add I'm not permanently exhausted, I have five children, eat well, take my vitamins and average 12000 steps per day.

My diet isnt the greatest and includes far too much wine but I'm fit and slim.

Dh has just worked a 24+hr shift - 9am Saturday - 9.20 Sunday

OUr 12.5-13+ hour shifts are punishing. Everything hurts at the end of them. I was limping today from hours spent contorted into weird positions over birth pools yesterday. If I'm on long days I don't see my kids at all.

my husband works flexibly and will WFH when I'm on long days. When I'm on long nights then I get home, do the school runs and catch a few hours kip while the kids are at school. It's not healthy at all. But that's the job.

And well paid NHS overtime? Please! Those hours at the end of the shift, the breaks worked through - entirely unpaid. We get unsociable hours payments for our nights, but we're paid such a pittance as our basic - for degree qualified medical professionals - that it's needed to bring us up to an even vaguely decent wage.