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Is there a kind of addiction to working after hours?

gabeygoat

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I've always hated the idea of companies requiring/expecting after hours work. My ex used to put on a show on Netflix to us to barely pay attention too as she made facility maps for HP. Now I make maps for my college in a little work study job. And I'm on a Student Council. And my class is requiring group study stuff, which I tend to take over, more than I should. And I find myself constantly checking my phone to keep busy. It's weirdly addictive. Like checking social media, this message board, or other tasks and being disappointed if I have nothing to do. It's actually good for me for reasons not necessary to go into, but I wonder if it's a real effect or psychological thing with new media to become addicted to work even if we complain.
 
One about working beyond my scheduled time is that I made sure to be paid for it, either in money or time off. I much preferred the time off because that can't be taxed. I worked tech support so I was on call week-on, week-off. Whenever I started a new job (not that often) I'd make sure to get a certain number of days off and made it clear that I would not work for free, but would go the "extra mile" once in a while. That meant maybe, once a month at most, not every weekend.

Now that I'm retired I'm sometimes amazed at how much time I put into work and other things (not a complaint). I'm almost 100% occupied (that includes nap time), and even though my skills are still viable (many companies still use legacy systems) I wouldn't think twice about going back to that schedule.
 
I've always hated the idea of companies requiring/expecting after hours work. My ex used to put on a show on Netflix to us to barely pay attention too as she made facility maps for HP. Now I make maps for my college in a little work study job. And I'm on a Student Council. And my class is requiring group study stuff, which I tend to take over, more than I should. And I find myself constantly checking my phone to keep busy. It's weirdly addictive. Like checking social media, this message board, or other tasks and being disappointed if I have nothing to do. It's actually good for me for reasons not necessary to go into, but I wonder if it's a real effect or psychological thing with new media to become addicted to work even if we complain.

Maybe you’re doing tasks at night that make your day easier so you can goof off a bit at work during the day.

I don’t see that as pathological.
 
Maybe you’re doing tasks at night that make your day easier so you can goof off a bit at work during the day.

I don’t see that as pathological.

I've known people who worked after hours because they just could not keep up with the workload that was dropped onto them.

It's often a leading indicator that you're about to lose a really valuable employee.
(Good employees tend to be overloaded, bad employees are allowed to do nothing, I really hate that the world is like that.)

Generally, I was Bolshie about only working the hours that I was paid, but during covid, there was a brief period where I was logging in at midnight every night to run a script (until we could get the automation through change management).
 
I used to work in the pub trade. My last employer in that industry would start paying us when the pub opened, and stop paying us when the pub closed - specifically, when the bar closed.

They would expect demand that we stayed on to kick out the customers, clean the pub, restock the fridges, clean down the kitchen, clean the lines, and cash up. They expected demanded that we be available to help take in deliveries (at around six am).

They put me through their disciplinary process and fired me for 'breach of contract' when I started turning up at the beginning of my shift, and leaving at the end.

The employment tribunal made them pay me a not inconsiderable sum.


TLDR: I will gladly work in exchange for pay, but no pay=no work. Also, unions are good.



It was Greene King, by the way. I'm barred for life from all of their pubs as a result. Had a fairly nice lunch in one at the weekend.
 
I used to work in the pub trade. My last employer in that industry would start paying us when the pub opened, and stop paying us when the pub closed - specifically, when the bar closed.

They would expect demand that we stayed on to kick out the customers, clean the pub, restock the fridges, clean down the kitchen, clean the lines, and cash up. They expected demanded that we be available to help take in deliveries (at around six am).

They put me through their disciplinary process and fired me for 'breach of contract' when I started turning up at the beginning of my shift, and leaving at the end.

The employment tribunal made them pay me a not inconsiderable sum.


TLDR: I will gladly work in exchange for pay, but no pay=no work. Also, unions are good.



It was Greene King, by the way. I'm barred for life from all of their pubs as a result. Had a fairly nice lunch in one at the weekend.

Congratulations on sticking it to the man! :):thumbsup:
 
Working on the computer systems I find working at night when everyone else is off the system can be handy. So I've worked odd hours for decades. Even the last few years when I've been working in just one office I've done the same thing. Office hours were normally 7:30 to 4:30, I'd usually come in around 9:30 and was frequently there until 7:30 or 8:00 P.M.

But the extra hours were my choice and gave me lots of leeway in my schedule and autonomy in my work. I took lunch and breaks when and as long as I wanted and had a nice private office where I could shut the door and play my music. As long as things got done I was on my own. And they got done. So I was happy with the situation. I do believe work done should be compensated, companies who think people should work extra for free because there's more work then can reasonably be done in normal hours are not people I'd work for.

Now I'm recently retired, mostly at least. I'm still managing a couple of servers and email for my former employer, but that's a only few hours a week and I get AWS server space and bandwidth in exchange.
 
I used to work in the pub trade. My last employer in that industry would start paying us when the pub opened, and stop paying us when the pub closed - specifically, when the bar closed.

They would expect demand that we stayed on to kick out the customers, clean the pub, restock the fridges, clean down the kitchen, clean the lines, and cash up. They expected demanded that we be available to help take in deliveries (at around six am).

They put me through their disciplinary process and fired me for 'breach of contract' when I started turning up at the beginning of my shift, and leaving at the end.

The employment tribunal made them pay me a not inconsiderable sum.


TLDR: I will gladly work in exchange for pay, but no pay=no work. Also, unions are good.



It was Greene King, by the way. I'm barred for life from all of their pubs as a result. Had a fairly nice lunch in one at the weekend.

Will remember to not patronise any Greene King tied pubs next time I'm in the UK. Thanks.
 
I worked as an electrical engineer my whole career. I loved it. Designing cool new stuff mixing analog, digital, and coding. I did get paid well for it but mostly I did it because it was a challenge and incredibly fun. Reminds me of another programmer (high school only but good C programmer) who once said "I can't believe I get paid to do this."
 
An engineer friend of mine scoffed at the idea of unpaid work.

"Engineers don't work for free." She said.

I liked that attitude a lot.

As a formerly bolshie union organiser, I'd like to point out that everyone who works unpaid, is supporting the managers that refuse to hire sufficient staff to get the work done.

This is why 'work to rule' is so powerful as a bargaining tool.

The bosses rely on your goodwill to cover up their incompetence, you should stop giving it to them.
 

Is there a kind of addiction to working after hours?​


Of course there is. And there's a well-known, much used term for it as well!

Some professions, some kinds of work, it's necessary. You can't get around it. Investment banking, for instance. No one can succeed, for any value of "succeed", unless they stop looking at the clock. No doubt quite a few others as well.

But absolutely, one should be aware of and careful about the addiction thing. It's a thing, and one should try not to get addicted. And not do one single moment of it than absolutely necessary.


...Heh, doing it for the show, rather than for the work per se? That's a thing too, absolutely! And way down in the hierarchy there's not much you can do about it, unless you change professions to one that doesn't require it. But once you're some way up, then that pressure eases off, absolutely. (Not the pressure of work, necessarily, but certainly the pressure to be seen to be working.)


TLDR: Absolutely it's addictive, and absolutely one should be very very careful about not getting addicted. Only a fool works a single minute more than they absolutely must.
 
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I worked as an electrical engineer my whole career. I loved it. Designing cool new stuff mixing analog, digital, and coding. I did get paid well for it but mostly I did it because it was a challenge and incredibly fun. Reminds me of another programmer (high school only but good C programmer) who once said "I can't believe I get paid to do this."

True that. The make-your-passion-your-career-and-you-won't-have-to-"work"-a-single-day-of-your-life thing.

I suppose workaholicism takes on a different aspect given such a situation. Where you not only don't dislike it, not only generally like it, but actually are crazy in love with it.

Heh, electrical engineering is hardly the kind of thing that attracts passion, though! Good for you, to have found passion in that.


eta: Not being snide, or anything like that! Very cool to be in that situation, absolutely. Just, generally pointing out that while some professions, like writing, acting, so forth, typically bring forth passion, sometimes, often; but things like what you do/did, and I as well, usually do not manage anything more than, at best, just a like; and often not even that. ...Very cool that in your case it did, absolutely! :thumbsup:
 
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Can't say I've ever known an engineer that was hourly and not salaried. They got paid the same amount every two weeks regardless of the hours they put in. They were expected to work 40ish hours a week but there were no time cards. So yeah, engineers, like everyone else, don't work for free. I only worked in small companies where the engineering portion was maybe 20 people at the most. Often only 3 to 5. Each engineer had a specialty and new products were generally created by input from the design engineers kicking around ideas then settling on one or two. Technology changed so fast that most engineers would spend part of their work reading and researching to keep up. Also, I don't recall an engineer ever wearing a suit. As for "work to rule," I've never worked in a company that had or considered a union. Probably because they were too small.
 
I guess I did put in many, many unpaid hours as a Taekwondo Instructor, but I loved it. The school only rarely made enough to break even but it was such a good, positive system that I think every Black Belt Instructor was basically a volunteer. Eventually I did start my own offshoot branch in community education that paid minimally -- I generally invested that back into the system by buying equipment and whatnot.
I honestly think that if it was my "job" I could have done a lot more to make it go (the owner was not that great a businessman). But I was mostly happy with the way it went until physical issues forced me to retire from it.
 
None of the instructors were paid at my kung-fu school, unless you counted the extra training we received as instructors.

The school only had one paid position, which was the office manager in the head office.

Nor did the school make much money, I collected the subs in a couple of branches, and we barely covered the rent.
(And we were using community halls.)

The head office would have been doing better because classes were being run three times per day, and we had pretty big turn outs for those.
 
I still work sixty schedule hours a week. Makes home life more precious by far.

I am making the money to tool up for my retirement job that won't make theory I need to tool up.

Before doing that as an " unemploted job " of sorts I worked four days a week, as long as it took to finish the yard job.
Being better equipped now it will be far less time especially tree trimming and lot clearing.
 
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