Posted on 09/02/2002 1:34:45 AM PDT by sarcasm
Monday, September 02, 2002 - Bill Gwaltney leaves his Englewood home before 6 a.m. most days to catch the bus, and doesn't return until 6:30 each night - usually with a full briefcase.
"I've got so much to take home," says Gwaltney, who logs 60 to 70 hours a week trying to recruit and retain park rangers for the National Park Service.
"If I thought it was too much work, I wouldn't do it," says Gwaltney, 47, a father of two. "It's important. Everyone I work with works just as hard or harder."
That type of work ethic has become epidemic.
Whether Americans like their jobs or not, they are spending more time working and less time with family and relaxing.
Americans spend an average of 1,900 hours a year at work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's 20 more days each year than a quarter century ago, and more than any other advanced nation, including Japan - which embodies industrialism.
Americans have fewer vacation and sick days than most of the industrial world. European vacation time averages about six weeks.
The average workweek is longer in part because women are spending more time on the job. Eight of 10 mothers with young kids worked full-time last year, up from six of 10 mothers three decades ago.
U.S. family leave policies, while more progressive than a decade ago, are less accommodating to families than many other countries. In Sweden, Germany and France, both parents get paid time off after children are born, says Heather Boushey, economist with the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of "The State of Working America, 2002-03," being published in January.
Many workers say they would work less and relax more, but they don't because they fear repercussions. Some are afraid of getting fired. Others need overtime pay to make ends meet.
Salaried workers often feel "that if they want to move up the ladder, they have to work more hours," Boushey says.
Pressures have been heightened in the weak economy. Layoffs and hiring freezes have compelled some employees to work harder and longer to avoid being next out the door.
In Gwaltney's case, working less equates to abandoning a critical and never finished mission.
He doesn't even use all his vacation days, which is also a function of time. He, his wife, who's in nursing school, and kids have a hard time coordinating schedules.
"I think if (more leisure time) was part of the cultural tradition I would do it," Gwaltney admits. "If you've been on vacation a day and a half and you feel guilty for not being at the office, that speaks to the expectations of the culture."
Dr. Richard Ryan, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Rochester, says companies are ignoring the long-term consequences of workers' stress and long hours.
"We're always looking at the short-term goal," he says. "If I'm the manager with a deadline, I want to get it done."
Those ways of working - for the immediate pay-off - result in turnover, absenteeism and stress that leads to mistakes at work and negative attitudes that are conveyed to customers, he says.
All of that can affect profits.
Materialism also feeds our frenzy for work, Ryan says.
"We're in an endless cycle of work, consume, work, consume," he says. "We have the false belief if we work more, achieve more and make more money that we will be happier. That's not true."
John De Graaf remembers when academics in the 1960s worried about how future generations would cope with an excess of leisure time they presumed would result from technological innovation.
Then the opposite happened. Cellphones and e-mail made people accessible around the clock, anywhere they went. Work goes everywhere people do, says De Graaf, co-author of "Affluenza," a book about how Americans exhaust themselves in the pursuit of more stuff.
De Graaf is making plans to change that.
He'll announce next spring "Take Back Your Time Day," scheduled for Oct. 24, 2003. That date marks nine weeks until the end of the year, which is the difference in annual work between Americans and Europeans.
"American society is suffering from an epidemic of time famine. We're just going too fast.
"The economy is the god we worship more than anything else," he says. "Work has become our modern religion in this country."
Ironically, De Graaf, a television producer, is overworking himself between his career, organizing the time-off day and writing a handbook about restoring work-life balance.
"I laugh about it, but I think it's something that has to be done," De Graaf says.
De Graaf, Ryan and Boushey say government should enact policies that limit workers' hours, which could relieve some of the guilt workers feel when they walk away from their work.
Gwaltney isn't so sure legislation would help.
He takes home projects that involve writing because he has a hard time concentrating at work where e-mail, phone calls and people interrupt him.
Gwaltney says downtime won't come until people value leisure more. If he had more leisure time, he'd spend it in the mountains.
"Camping gear has never been cheaper, but it seems harder to make the decision to go the mountains," he says.
"The Internet, cable TV, other toys are at home. If you're at home, why not work?"
I recently saw a documentary about the introduction of the 35 hour work-week in France. They talked about great it was that the French people now have more leisure time. Then they showed previously high-powered execs moping around their houses, learning to iron clothes and putter in the garden. It was pathetic! Grown men shouldn't be wasting their time like that. They, and the country, would be better off if these men spent their time productively.
However, I'm not going to be caught at the end begging for an extra inning to do everything I wanted to do. I work to live, not vice versa.
That depends entirely upon what you like to do. I can't build and fly jet aircraft on my own.
But who said anything about working for somebody else? The self employed work more hours than anyone else.
A government worker? If true, I wonder how the author found him?
Otherwise, everyone at some point or another find a time when work simply demands more attention, and being the responsible, accountable, reliable American employee that you are, you simply do your job!
I'm sure later on there are times when the opposite occurs, when it's slow, maybe a few late lunches or you're out a bit earlier. I suppose it depends on your environment. In our office, we are nearing the completion of a project that has been my mentor's vision over the past 5 years. We were working on it this weekend (yeah, so I've been here a lot in between!) You better believe once this project is complete and it WILL BE along with being A COMPLETE SUCCESS, that we'll probably find a nice golf course to leave a trail of divots across (joking, golf fanatics!)
Americans work hard but regardless of whether or not you believe it, generally all Americans live a better quality of life than their counter parts do in other countries. Don't tell me about Europe, repeat after me: EUROPEAN UNION! Don't tell me about the Swedes, their economy is more comperable to a third world country and does not rise to the level of our poorest state. We have it all here in the USA.
At any rate, yeah, the work ethic is different here. I feel a very deep commitment in seeing my mentor realize his vision. We are going to see that the stock holders realize full potential for their investments (including us, too.) Once we're done, we'll have put our company in a great position for further growth and we will have consolidated all our new aquistions onto one system, one standard.
Any way, just because Europe embraces the lowest common denominator doesn't mean America has to give up a working formula.
Personally, my work time and personal time overlap quite a bit.
Wonder how much time he would spend at a real job. With so many folks scrambling to get on the Fed Gov tit, finding forrest rangers couldn't be all that difficult. Finding those with the correct PC pedigree might take a little more time.
GOOD!!!
I truly hope that we will remain the most productive and hardest-working nation on earth for a long time to come.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Socialist Party is doing their best to make sure that this does not happen.
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