working longer and longer and...
Something i have been meaning to write about but i couldn't seem to find the time is that i can't seem to find the time for anything.
After one evening when i got home around 9pm, it occurred to me that the older i've gotten, the longer hours i am working.
In my first office job, it was an Australian government department, and i worked 7.25 hours every day with 0.75 hours for break. The office hours, if i recall, were literally 9 to 5, or possibly 9:30 to 5:30. This was late 1990s.
In my next job, i don't remember what hours exactly i worked, but it was a small company, so sometimes i'm sure i stayed late to put out fires, although i don't remember ever staying out past dinner time.
Slowly but surely, in each job i worked, i stayed longer and longer hours. I had to contact an ex-colleague to confirm this, because i didn't believe it. When i lived in Canada around 2012, i was getting into work with plenty of time to spare ahead of our team meeting at 10am, and i was meeting up with friends at the pub at 6pm. So, let's say 9:30 to 5:30, with a generous lunch break. Still just 8 hours, although by the time i got to Canada i was senior enough to be involved with late night escalations and deployments that sometimes had me doing overtime or weekend work. Occasionally rewarded with time in lieu.
Then cut to Germany, which is a typical European country where you get 25 days of annual leave, and a place where theoretically work/life balance is much better than North America, but... that was the first place i worked where i regularly found myself still in the office at 8pm. Not because my manager demanded it, but usually because there was still shit to be done and i wanted to get it done. Also, working in Europe you tend to have American colleagues, so the work never ends - you are ending your day as America wakes up, so there is a temptation to keep working to get all of the cross-timezone conversations in.
I would say my usual work days in Germany were from 9:30 to 6:30.
It didn't get any better in "communist" China, where we were only granted 12 or 15 days of annual leave depending on company. Timezone overlap was with Europe. Work from 10 to 7 every day.
Taiwan. 15 days of annual leave. Now i'm working 10 to 7:30 every day. Leaving late ostensibly to make up for the days where i roll in a little after 10... But i also turn up before 10 some days. And i only take about 20 minutes lunch - 30 minutes at most - so we're talking 9+ hour days as the standard. And some days i'll still be in the office at 8pm.
I don't think it's because my managers are making me stay late. I don't think it's because the expectation for seniors is different to the expectation for juniors. (On a side note, everywhere i worked after Canada my salary has gone down. So i am earning less money and working more hours than i did 10 years ago.) It's possible that the industry has changed - certainly in this modern era where secretaries no longer exist outside of the executive level, white collar workers have to do way more administrative tasks themselves than they used to - but i don't think the expectation is for us to work more hours to offset the time spent doing administrative tasks that historically someone else did.
No, i think something in me has changed. Somehow, for some reason, i am spending more time at work. And i don't know why. I don't especially enjoy work. I find it all-consuming and thoroughly exhausting. The whole concept of it depresses me, because i don't think people should be forced to work just to have a simple lifestyle like i do. Work fucking sucks. I hate it. So why do i spend so much of my time doing it?
I look at my LiveJournal friends and they have all kinds of hobbies and go to gatherings and have kids or pets or all of this other STUFF in their lives, on top of working a full-time job! How do they do it? How do they even find the time to plan to do it? I can't even find the time to send a text message or short email to my friends or family members to let them know i am alive. My dad goes months at a time between messages from me. I am so fucking tired. I watch a few shows, but people i know watch way more shows than i do. People fucking rewatch shows. Like, watch the same shows they already watched before, over and over, and then go to cons or record podcasts or post on social media to talk about the fucking rewatch. It's ridiculous.
And i feel like i don't have the time for any of that shit, because it takes me a couple hours to get out of bed in the morning, then i go to work, and when i get home it is already hours later than most people's dinner time. I cook, i eat, i do my flashcards, and then i have about 1 hour left to watch a show before falling asleep again.
What the fuck man.
How do people fit it in? Where do they find the time?
Are people just sticking to that 8 hours a day for work? It doesn't seem like 1-2 hours more in the office should make that much of a difference, but does it? And if i started going in at 10 and leaving at 6, would anyone in the office notice anyway?
I dunno, this whole thing is weird to me, and i wish i knew why it was that my career seems to have gone in the opposite direction to others. Like, shouldn't it be the young ones who are doing all the overtime and desperately trying to impress the boss? The old ones should be well and truly over it by now. We've seen and done it all before, there is nothing interesting left for us at work, just the endless grind. And yet, and yet...
Anyway, just something i have been mulling over for the past week or two, and haven't posted about, because, you know. No time. Work.
After one evening when i got home around 9pm, it occurred to me that the older i've gotten, the longer hours i am working.
In my first office job, it was an Australian government department, and i worked 7.25 hours every day with 0.75 hours for break. The office hours, if i recall, were literally 9 to 5, or possibly 9:30 to 5:30. This was late 1990s.
In my next job, i don't remember what hours exactly i worked, but it was a small company, so sometimes i'm sure i stayed late to put out fires, although i don't remember ever staying out past dinner time.
Slowly but surely, in each job i worked, i stayed longer and longer hours. I had to contact an ex-colleague to confirm this, because i didn't believe it. When i lived in Canada around 2012, i was getting into work with plenty of time to spare ahead of our team meeting at 10am, and i was meeting up with friends at the pub at 6pm. So, let's say 9:30 to 5:30, with a generous lunch break. Still just 8 hours, although by the time i got to Canada i was senior enough to be involved with late night escalations and deployments that sometimes had me doing overtime or weekend work. Occasionally rewarded with time in lieu.
Then cut to Germany, which is a typical European country where you get 25 days of annual leave, and a place where theoretically work/life balance is much better than North America, but... that was the first place i worked where i regularly found myself still in the office at 8pm. Not because my manager demanded it, but usually because there was still shit to be done and i wanted to get it done. Also, working in Europe you tend to have American colleagues, so the work never ends - you are ending your day as America wakes up, so there is a temptation to keep working to get all of the cross-timezone conversations in.
I would say my usual work days in Germany were from 9:30 to 6:30.
It didn't get any better in "communist" China, where we were only granted 12 or 15 days of annual leave depending on company. Timezone overlap was with Europe. Work from 10 to 7 every day.
Taiwan. 15 days of annual leave. Now i'm working 10 to 7:30 every day. Leaving late ostensibly to make up for the days where i roll in a little after 10... But i also turn up before 10 some days. And i only take about 20 minutes lunch - 30 minutes at most - so we're talking 9+ hour days as the standard. And some days i'll still be in the office at 8pm.
I don't think it's because my managers are making me stay late. I don't think it's because the expectation for seniors is different to the expectation for juniors. (On a side note, everywhere i worked after Canada my salary has gone down. So i am earning less money and working more hours than i did 10 years ago.) It's possible that the industry has changed - certainly in this modern era where secretaries no longer exist outside of the executive level, white collar workers have to do way more administrative tasks themselves than they used to - but i don't think the expectation is for us to work more hours to offset the time spent doing administrative tasks that historically someone else did.
No, i think something in me has changed. Somehow, for some reason, i am spending more time at work. And i don't know why. I don't especially enjoy work. I find it all-consuming and thoroughly exhausting. The whole concept of it depresses me, because i don't think people should be forced to work just to have a simple lifestyle like i do. Work fucking sucks. I hate it. So why do i spend so much of my time doing it?
I look at my LiveJournal friends and they have all kinds of hobbies and go to gatherings and have kids or pets or all of this other STUFF in their lives, on top of working a full-time job! How do they do it? How do they even find the time to plan to do it? I can't even find the time to send a text message or short email to my friends or family members to let them know i am alive. My dad goes months at a time between messages from me. I am so fucking tired. I watch a few shows, but people i know watch way more shows than i do. People fucking rewatch shows. Like, watch the same shows they already watched before, over and over, and then go to cons or record podcasts or post on social media to talk about the fucking rewatch. It's ridiculous.
And i feel like i don't have the time for any of that shit, because it takes me a couple hours to get out of bed in the morning, then i go to work, and when i get home it is already hours later than most people's dinner time. I cook, i eat, i do my flashcards, and then i have about 1 hour left to watch a show before falling asleep again.
What the fuck man.
How do people fit it in? Where do they find the time?
Are people just sticking to that 8 hours a day for work? It doesn't seem like 1-2 hours more in the office should make that much of a difference, but does it? And if i started going in at 10 and leaving at 6, would anyone in the office notice anyway?
I dunno, this whole thing is weird to me, and i wish i knew why it was that my career seems to have gone in the opposite direction to others. Like, shouldn't it be the young ones who are doing all the overtime and desperately trying to impress the boss? The old ones should be well and truly over it by now. We've seen and done it all before, there is nothing interesting left for us at work, just the endless grind. And yet, and yet...
Anyway, just something i have been mulling over for the past week or two, and haven't posted about, because, you know. No time. Work.