Playing For Old Age

“…in ambitious middle life it sometimes seems there is only work…For certain days, even weeks on end, work can shape every hour; it’s the tide, the lunar cycle they set their lives by, and without it, it can seem there’s nothing.”

- Ian McEwan, Saturday

Something happened in the workplace between my childhood and now. The forty-hour week, fought so hard for by workers and union organizers in the early part of the 20th century (people died agitating for the 40-hour work week), became the 80- and 90- and more-hour week.

Workers volunteered for...indentured servitude.

By the mid-1990s, computer techies and Wall Street masters of the universe proudly boasted of their caffeine-fueled days and indulged in one-upmanship regarding the number of email messages, cell phone calls and frequent flyer miles racked up in service to their jobs. Employees’ unused vacation days accumulated into the high double digits and those of us who were not masters of the universe felt compelled to adopt their schedule.

By the time the technology bubble burst and the economy tanked at the end of the 90s, any employee in almost any business who expected to get home in time for dinner with the kids and reserve weekends for family and fun was on a fast track to career oblivion. No employer forced this on anyone. Workers volunteered for what in the past would be considered indentured servitude.

And so it still goes, but at what price? How about men and women who know of nothing but the closed, little worlds of their chosen career fields. How about passions and interests suspended - perhaps lost forever. Personal pleasures never taken. Books unread. Travel confined to uniform hotel rooms with broadband jacks. How about a generation of kids who barely know their parents.

And how about health? I learned the hard way a decade ago, after more than 90 18-hour days in a row, when I collapsed with what I supposed was a heart attack at 11PM at the office, but was diagnosed in the emergency room with exhaustion. No employer ever gives enough back to make that worthwhile – or any of the other losses listed above.

It is our souls we lose...

After that wake-up call, it took several weeks before I remembered what I had done with my own time, my private time, in the past. And so it undoubtedly is too for those whose alarms are less dramatic - those former 24/7/365 go-getters who find themselves without practiced resources when loose time appears through layoffs and retirement – chosen or forced.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” said James Howell in 1659. “Man does not live by bread alone,” said Moses, and Jesus too. Yeah, yeah, I know. Trite. But trite is usually true and those old guys knew what they were talking about: It is our souls we lose when we allow work to push all else from our lives, and perhaps men would not feel so hopeless about their old age if they had played a little more.

It is said lately that many in generation Y, the youngest workers, are refusing to give over their souls to their employers. Sometimes the kids know better, and let’s hope their elders take heed so they will have more to sustain them in old age than McEwan’s nothing.

Comments

[Laura]

You still see a lot of that...even at work I see people pulling 60 hour weeks routinely, and among personnel who must travel (such as trainers) even longer weeks are normal.

Me, I try to stick to 40-45 hours, as do several others in our office. Working all the time is ridiculous and no way to live a life - indeed, it leaves you no time to live your life - but it's so hard to see that in some contexts, when everyone around you is giving so much more.

I simply don't understand giving up your life for your work. Doesn't that kind of skip the point of the exercise?

[Tamar]

Oh Ronni, how this post speaks to me! I came to my "forced sabbatical" depleted and completely exhausted. I had been putting in 12 and 13 hour days for the past seventeen years. I discovered that by working so hard there was no time for me to face my demons and shadows, pain and anger. Taking time for me is helping me face all that I have been running from or denying about who I am, and frees me up to make different choices for my future.

When I return to work outside the home in September, I shall do it so differently this time around!

[kenju]

My daughter the NY attorney, is now required to bill 200 hours per month. That results in 14-16 hour weekdays and weekends too. Shameful and obscene, I assert!

[Cowtown Pattie]

I suppose there are those few rare folk who have jobs they love, and thus the extra hours are labors of love...perhaps. The typical jobplace today frowns on its workers even taking the perks that were part of the hiring package, like weeklong vacations. I feel groveling when asking for a day off.

I keep thinking of a watch that stays wound too tight too long - it suffers an early demise.

[M Sinclair Stevens]

My family encompasses both extremes. My son, 26, works 39 hours a week so that his employer can label him "part-time" and not provide any benefits whatsoever. No health care. No retirement program. No paid vacation days. And no paid sick days. If he has to go to the doctor or the dentist, he pays full price. Not only because he doesn't have health care, but because insurance agencies often pay a discounted rate based on the "normal" charge. When my son needed a filling last year, it cost him $500, or 1/4 of his life savings.

My husband, 42, is a programmer and works the long hours you describe, typically 12/7. We can pretend he's well-compensated if we ignore the fact that he's basically working two 40 hour-a-week jobs.

I used to live that life, too. In fact, we met at work. Before I got laid off, people used to always tell me I needed to "get a life". Work was my life. But I got paid a lot of money to do what I loved a chance show off my creativity and be part of something. Now without that pressure and interaction, I find it hard to be creative. I feel invisible.

Looking at our three lives I think that the American dream of smallholders and small business owners is dead. Those of us who are lucky enough to find work are serfs of the corporation. The rest of us are beggars who wish we were serfs. That's how they get away with it.

[Jen]

My adage now is I work to live, not live to work. Plus I leave my paid job and go home to my unpaid job as I have no 'wife' at home to keep my house, cook my meals and look after my kid.

I used to work in an office where I'd do around 45 hours a week and got RSI to thank for it, but my professional colleagues worked at least 60 and the ones with kids hardly ever saw them. Not quite right me thinks.

[Steve Garfield]

I used to work late a a job where there was this other guy who ALWAYS was working late. He always ordered in the pizza.

Then one day layoffs came, and HE was laid off! We were shocked, since he was the hardest working most dedicated employee.

Next came the directive that EVERYONE HAD to be in by 8:00 AM. Not 8:01 or 8:03, 8:00 AM.

In our group, we used to work past 5:00 all the time, till 6:00, 6:30, maybe 7:00. But when they got so picky about 8:00 AM, we all decided to leave at 5:00. Not 5:01 or 5:02, 5:00 PM. So every day at 5:00, no matter what was happening, we all got up and left.

Guess what?

The business didn't fail. Nothing changed. And we got home early!

[Jeanne]

Hi Ronni

Working at a law firm in the City of London, I see a lot of this. These guys just have no idea whatsoever of what having a life means... One lawyer with whom I am friendly commutes 2 hours each way every day. She seldom leaves the office before 8pm and then drives 2 hours to get back to the commuter town where she lives - and her husband. One day I jokingly asked her who cooks dinner in her house and she relplied that they *never* eat dinner together during the week. Now how is that a way to live your life??

I have also seen the dangers of working so hard all your life that you forget how to do anything else. When my father sold his medical practice in his mid 70s, it became painfully apparent pretty soon that he had maintained no real friendhips, had played no sport since shortly after leaving university, did not read books and belonged to no clubs or groups. Nor did he want to do any of these things!! He wanted my mom to entertain him (tricky, as she was still working full-time!) and sit at home criticising the world from his armchair, Archie Bunker-style. Even now, almost 10 years later and with my mom no longer around, he still seems a little lost without his career - the one thing in his life that pushed out everything else. If he has taught me nothing else, he has certainly taught me this: your job is what you do, not who you are.

[liz]

I am seeing a connection between these insane hours for parents and the kids being diagnosed with psychological illnesses and requiring the intervention services of therapeutic boarding schools etc.

My dad the entrepreneur in the 1950s was home by 6:30 pm every day, earlier if we had something special like a play at school.

I am also seeing this insane "more more more" in pressuring the high school students to take 3 college level APs plus the rest of the high school course load, and volunteer, and do this and do that and get by on 5 hours of sleep. No wonder the suicide rate is rising.

Where do we go to form a separatist state?