How many hours do you work each week?

I came across this article in the internet:

“According to some recent surveys, more than 50% of business executives work 46 hours a week or more, more than 56% find their working hours too long. Whatever their responsibilities in the firm, more and more executives dream of a more balanced life.”

I work for an industry where working long hours is normal, especially during the “busy” season. During the lean period, working hours can be considered highly desirable – eight hours a day, Monday to Friday. That’s a total of 40 hours a week. Very light work.

But come busy season, which lasts for four months, almost all other aspects of our daily lives take a back seat. We usually work for 14 hours a day (that’s up to 11:30 pm) and whole day Saturday. If there are really pressing matters and deadly deadlines to beat, we even have to work on Sundays. If that busy season falls on Holy Week, we are exempt from working only on Good Friday. Which means that Holy Thursday, Black Saturday and Easter Sunday are just regular working days. Total working hours often reach 80 hours a week. Whew!

Naturally, turn over rate of employees in this industry is high. An employee usually stays with a company for 2 years (or 3 busy seasons), and off he goes looking for another job, earning the bragging right that he was once connected with this firm and that he was able to survive all the long hours of work. Some employees cannot stand the thought of rendering long hours, and quit after a month or two. Most survive a year just to get the experience and the feel of it.

Generally, employees in the industry get paid for overtime work. However, some companies have time allocations for the assigned projects. If an employee is not able to finish the assigned work for the allocated time, he forfeits the overtime pay. Since long hours are rendered, employees usually have lots of extra money during this period. Unfortunately, they cannot find the time to spend their hard earned money due to time constraint. What a shame.

So you might ask: how long have you been in the job? You might be surprised if I tell you that I am on my 14^th year on the job and that I already spent 15 nerve wracking, time consuming seasons. Why did you stay that long? – you might add. I myself cannot understand it, so I am slowly dissecting it now.

My original plan was to stay on the job for a year or two to gain experience, the usual trend in the industry. I was about to quit after a year, for obvious reasons. Then my father gave me a call. He told me he just quit his job. Uhhh…Ergo I cannot quit mine. That’s fine. I got a raise anyway.

So for various reasons, I stayed on the job, whether I got an increase or came a project which I really liked and made me momentarily forget that I don’t really like my job. As the seasons rolled on I kind of got addicted to the feeling everyone experiences right after the last assigned task is passed, just in the nick of time. The feeling of ultimately relief sends shivers across your whole body and you can smile and laugh again, genuine laughter from the bottom of the heart after all those sleepless nights. I guess that kind of feeling made me want to stay.

2.11.08