Why is overworking a flex?

@atlkate I don’t have a suggestion, but yeah, it bugs me, too 😑. My last boss definitely saw it as a flex that he was in the office from 7am-6pm or later M-F and also on some weekend days. For a few months on thursdays he’d “leave early” at 5 because he had to “babysit” his daughter 🙄, but that arrangement didn’t last long. Used to bug the crap out of me too that he’d waste hours of office time daily just chit-chatting and gossiping with the office manager, but still get irritated with me when I did my work during the workday and left at 5.
 
@atlkate I always find this interesting. People making higher salaries flex working 60+ hours a week…but break it down to $/hour and aren’t we just decreasing the hourly value?
 
@katrina2017 This is a common problem in IT fields -- in the US, we got screwed out of overtime pay by some federal law a decade or three back.

We're salaried at $x per year. Which sounds great if it's x/(40*52), but many places I worked had a culture that you're an absolute slacker if you're not putting in 60 or 80 hours a week. 80 hours a week!?! That's a whole other full time job! And, no, x/(80*52) isn't a great rate for senior technical staff.

Funniest thing -- one company I worked at, they switched their help desk and desktop support folks over to hourly w/ overtime. My expectation was that they'd either cut everyone's hourly rate significantly or figure out a way to not need everyone working 60+ hours -- like don't count on your income doubling or better, but maybe you are going to be volunteering to have a reasonable work/life balance. No one believed me -- they all signed on happily with visions of buying boats and luxury cars. Overtime, for the desktop and help desk folks, became super rare. A few times a year, they would have some big project and get a few hours at time and a half. But it proved to me how much management was taking advantage of everyone. They didn't need us working so much, they just loved free labor.
 
@atlkate OP, I just want to say I’m annoyed on your behalf by everyone who replied saying “just set boundaries!” without reading your post on why that didn’t work. Setting boundaries at work isn’t always successful when the power dynamic is not in your favour.
 
@faithfulwheels26 Yes, thank you! Sometimes that just doesn't work and I'm sure OP knows more about her work culture than any of us do here on reddit...so if she says she can't do it, I freaking believe her. If she starts skipping all those Friday meetings, guess what the topic of conversation is going to be every Friday afternoon? Corporate culture is vicious and stupid and I hate everything about it, but you can't just opt out (sorry, SET BOUNDARIES) when the boundaries are already set by those above you. Sometimes you can only play their shitty game until you find something better.
 
@khatru Thanks!! I’ve only been here since September and it took about 3 weeks to figure out it was toxic. (For example my boss who has worked here a year has only taken 2.5 days of pto…. 1.5 of which was immediately before Christmas which doesn’t really count) I’m just waiting it out until the fall to start looking. I’m not planning to work more than 40 hrs a week… but just the prospect of having a whole afternoon free was intoxicating!
 
@atlkate In my role, I would just start taking Friday mornings or a different half-day instead if I couldn't reasonably set a boundary around Friday afternoons, and I'd frame it as trying to maintain appropriate hours/scheduling to remain in compliance with the applicable policy and law regarding scheduled hours for salaried employees.

I'm not sure if that would work in your role, I am lucky to have a decent amount of flexibility in when I get things done during most days. Plus most of our meetings are virtual and unimportant so I just mute and work through them with half an ear out in case I need to say something, so taking the morning off wouldn't bite me in the ass. If taking a different time block isn't possible for you, can you at least stop working makeup hours the rest of the week for the time you don't get off anyway? If that's not possible either, I'd be looking for a new job.
 
@atlkate I know someone at work who used to be my boss and thank God isn’t anymore, she is a workaholic who always gave us a hard time about using our PTO. She has kids, just had her second and is currently on maternity leave and ANSWERING EMAILS because she’s such a workaholic… to me it’s a sickness. She’d rather be at work than home with her kids, which fair being a stay at home mom isn’t for everyone but she makes everyone else feel bad for wanting a life outside of work. People like that, as far as I’m concerned, have issues.
 
@katrina2017 Totally agree!!!!!! I don’t get people like that at all, for example last year when the lotto was high we were at a work conference making jokes about what we’d do if we won, and i off handedly said “I’d be on a boat in bora bora within a week” and multiple people said “I couldn’t just not work, I’d have to keep working.” It makes me sad for them honestly that they can’t think of anything better to do with their time. Gosh… if I had unlimited money and means… I can think of about 55,000 things I’d rather be doing than going to my9-5 corporate job.
 
@kalarockwell45 Oh yeah that doesn’t work… they just schedule over and say “can you move your meeting and make this work, it’s the only time everyone else can join.” my boss just works on her scheduled and expects you to figure it out. She’s frequently triple booked… she’s very meeting happy.
 
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