Stop the company, I want to get off.

March 7, 2007 3:23 PM

Workplacefilter: Is it crazy in here or is it just me?

I work in the interactive division of a large advertising agency. I'm in my early 40s and have many years’ experience, am good at what I do, and know this can be a demanding field. But the past year or so, the demands have really started piling up. It’s not unusual to work 50 or 60 hours a week. To eat lunch at my desk or skip it entirely. To work weekends or holidays to meet a deadline. At least, not unusual for me.

Many of my coworkers are able to lunch outside the building at least once or twice a week, and are out the door by six at the latest. I often see them playing video games in the afternoons, and judging by the amount of “cute” and/or “interesting” e-mails that get forwarded to everyone in the office, they’ve plenty of time to find cute and interesting things on the web.

I’ve mentioned my workload to my supervisor, and even though we’ve been hiring all kinds of other people the past six months, no permanent help for me has been forthcoming because "there’s no money in the budget." While it's true that I have a somewhat specialized skillset and my kind is paid better than some, I’m hardly one in a million or earning anything close to it.

I don’t mind putting in 45-50 hours a week on occasion when it’s necessary, but nothing makes me feel more unhappy or less in control of my life than constant, uncompensated overtime. I spent half of 2006 in that mode. I finally had a bit of breakdown and told my supervisor I was considering quitting just to get my personal life back. Things seemed to improve through the end of the year, but, here I am making this post in March.

My questions: Am I being a big baby, or being taken advantage of? Can I improve this situation -- or at least my reaction to it? I don’t want to deal with this emotionally – I have a bit of a problem with that in general and am working to keep it in under control. (Please no therapy recommendations; I could buy a luxury car with what I've spent to shrink my head.) What can I say or do with management to affect some positive, permanent improvements? Is it time to move on? Am I completely burned out? And finally – what do you consider a reasonable workweek?

(And yes, I realize this is long and I posted it during the workday. But I wrote it last night!)

posted by Work to Live to work & money (25 comments total)

yes, you are being taken advantage of.

talk to your supervisor again. don't focus on the length of your work, tell them you feel you are being undercompensated for the extra burdens on your time. keep track of your hours and duties. note which tasks could be offloaded to an assistant and develop a job description.

if there's no money in the budget, you might also suggest getting an intern to help you. be firm about this.

i would also, although it's hard to do during a busy week, to look for another job. it's obvious you cannot and don't want to sustain this pace indefinitely. be prepared to leave because of it.
posted by thinkingwoman at 3:36 PM on March 7, 2007

I'm sorry to hear you are feeling burnt out. That is the suck.

Practically speaking, I would make VERY detailed notes on exactly what you do each day, literally breaking each task into how many hours or portions of hours you spend on it. After 2 weeks or so, compile this data and compare it to your actual job description. Mark especially those things, if any, that aren't listed as being part of your job.

Take this list to a formal meeting with your manager, ask him/her to either delegate some of the work appropriately and to include any extra jobs in your official job description. I would also consider asking to be compensated more, considering the amount of work you can prove you are doing.

This accomplishes at least three things: 1) Your manager sees exactly how much work you are doing and will hopefully be more motivated to help you with the specifics. 2) You might see places where you can consolidate/organize your time, i.e. set aside 1 hour per week to process invoices or the like, YMMV. 3) If you are seriously considering leaving your job, asking for a raise might help or hurt you, but it will let you know where you stand. They might not give you one. But if they do, you might find it easier to manage your workload if you literally feel more valued for it. Good luck!
posted by juliplease at 3:38 PM on March 7, 2007

confounded preview. What thinkingwoman said.
posted by juliplease at 3:39 PM on March 7, 2007

Well if you're "willing" to work 50 hours every week, people will certainly be happy to schedule that much work for you. So don't. Give whoever is making the schedules/deadlines some advance notice* but then do not work more than 40 hours except in truly extraordinary circumstances. A good way to enforce this is to make regular plans doing something you enjoy in the early evening, so you can't stay late.

* "Upon some recent reflection I realized my personal life was suffering as a result of excessive overtime. As of the end of next week, I will be strictly maintaining 40 hour work weeks. I'm telling you this now so that you can account for it in upcoming schedules, and we won't have to miss any deadlines as a result."
posted by aubilenon at 3:39 PM on March 7, 2007 [4 favorites]

My theory is... stay at a place long enough to get work under your belt and to show you don't leave a job every 3 months, but leave before it turns you into a miserable human being. Life is short. I resigned from positions at both Mattel & Disney... I don't regret taking either job (FAR from it!) and I don't regret moving on from either (FAR from it!). If you are good at what you do, other people can always use you. Just market yourself and believe in yourself & you'll find something better.

FWIW, I just divorced my only client a month ago & I had to give myself this same peptalk. After 2 1/2 years it was time to move on, though. So I took the leap without a net and within 2 weeks I found myself working with a new freelance client that pays better and is filled with SUPER nice people (they even let me bring my puppy in sometimes!). I'm the happiest I've been in over a year. So yay.
posted by miss lynnster at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2007

And if it makes you feel better, I worked 70 hour weeks for Mattel off & on for 3 years. So I feel your pain.
posted by miss lynnster at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2007

what experience I've had at ad agencies (I worked for a little over a month freelance as an assistant editor at a massive very old prestigious agency in ny) is that free time is what everyone has plenty of during certain periods of their work cycle. some days are like constant parties, and then everything's crunch time at the very end. assistant editors will spend time in the machine room shooting the shit and watching youtube videos, editors will sit around in their offices browsing the web or wandering around talking to other folk, whoever comes up with the campaigns spends A LOT of time doing nothing and calling it "concepting," and everyone takes very long expensive lunches on the company dime. If you work in a big ad agency, time and therefore money is burned like it grew on trees, and for advertising this is largely true, money flows in and out of advertising as though it were the grand central station of the entire economy. hell, it's why so much of the web can make any money at all.

before I digress much further, my point is this: interactive is the one place it doesn't seem ever to be the case. cd roms and web content are afterthoughts to scheduling because they don't understand it and don't understand its workflow. they imagine its like everything else, except that it only takes one person to do it. What they don't understand is that it's not like everything else. It can take one person, but that one person has to work very very hard. So I believe, though I may be mistaken, that you will find this situation anywhere you go (if you left) unless you went somewhere with a much better staffed interactive department.

so my advice is this: either work with whoever does scheduling to massively inflate your projected timelines for any given task, or leave to go somewhere with a more robust interactive department. If they've got a lot of folks working in interactive, it's because they've been through what you're going through already adn someone took care of it and fixed it. If it's just one joe, he's in the same boat you are. But if you can make people think that it takes a lot longer to get your job done, and a lot more resources, they're going to give you more time, and charge the client more for it.

That's the one thing I've noticed about advertising. If something takes a while, they don't say "are you kidding?! we've got a deadline!" they say "word. we'll charge the client extra."

but i would advise against making any more threats to leave. they'll never fix anything for you out of pity or because of threats, they'll just placate you long enough to replace you. either find better work and give your notice once you've found it, or put up with it and try to work the angles to get more lenient scheduling.
posted by shmegegge at 3:55 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well if you're "willing" to work 50 hours every week, people will certainly be happy to schedule that much work for you. So don't. Give whoever is making the schedules/deadlines some advance notice* but then do not work more than 40 hours except in truly extraordinary circumstances.

Indeed. I work at a company where people in similar jobs work 50-60 hours a week every week and often come in on weekends. I rarely work more than 40-45. I've had several promotions in the space of 10 years or so and have never gotten called on not following the culture.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:00 PM on March 7, 2007

Working uncompensated overtime is like being a scab. It devalues everybody's time.
posted by dipolemoment at 4:24 PM on March 7, 2007 [2 favorites]

Whether or not they will be happy to charge the customer for it, you should be getting more money. Don't let them throw the budget excuse at you. If you see other departments gaining more employees the budget clearly can handle a significant raise for yourself. Know your value and know what it would cost their budget in time and loss of production for them to replace you.

Also, don't make threats you aren't willing to act on. If you threaten to leave and then stay under the exact same conditions it will become understood that you just make those threats from time to time. They won't take them seriously. Get more money or less workload or walk. Set a time frame for them to accommodate that demand but let them know a deadline is coming and it will be adhered to.
posted by aburd at 4:47 PM on March 7, 2007

Working uncompensated overtime is like being a scab. It devalues everybody's time.

it's illegal too, right?

i mean, come on, you're not there to work for free! They'd love to now have to hire someone new as long as they can get it for free out of you!
posted by Salvatorparadise at 4:55 PM on March 7, 2007

I was once in a very similar situation. When I realized how miserable I was, I also admitted to myself that I had trouble asking for or taking what I needed to keep myself healthy and sane. I figured I wasn't going to be able to become self-assertive overnight, but I hoped I might be able to get there step by step.

So the first thing I did was take an evening class (related to my job). This helped condition my supervisor to the idea that my time wasn't infinitely flexible. After that, I started scheduling other obligations in the evenings. It took some courage, but not an overwhelming amount, for me to make the leap from "Sorry, gotta get to class" to "Sorry, gotta get to x, y, z."

As time went on, I got more assertive about pushing back on level-of-effort estimates, etc. It didn't harm my career at all -- in fact, much to my surprise, the number of promotions I got were proportional to the degree to which I reasonably stood up for myself.
posted by treepour at 4:56 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Since you asked if it's crazy or if it's just you, I'll ask that back at you. Has the work increased, or are you finding it harder to keep up with a relatively constant level of work? Is there some new thing you/re being asked to do that is more time consuming or more challenging? It's hard for me to suggest what your strategy should be without a bit more info. If you are doing a different task than your peers, which you imply, and you are getting more work to do without more money, you definitely have something to either negotiate from, or to move on. I would not suggest giving an ultimatum right now, without something else lined up. As a manager myself, I do sometimes see one employee always needing overtime to do the same quantity of work as another employee can do it 40 hours, and that's a whole different issue.
posted by purenitrous at 5:00 PM on March 7, 2007

Your dilemma sounds all too familiar (in fact, I had to go look at your profile to see if you were one of my coworkers or not). We just had something similar happening where I work.

I have to agree with what's been said before. Document your hours and duties. Ask your supervisor if you can meet with him/her (and possibly also with the head of interactive, if that's yet another person) to see if you can brainstorm some ways of making the situation better. Can some of your duties be delegated to others? Can you get an intern or possibly find a little room in the budget to get another person to do what you do (even part-time)? (And if not, ask about your profitability. If your work is at or above targets, ask why there is no budget available for you, yet there is for others.) Is project time budgeted for interactive close to reality or are you always given too little time to do the work needed? Can that be changed at all?

Come to the meeting prepared to hold your ground on needing change, but be open to suggestions on how to do that. Definitely let them know that your job is burning you out, but approach it from the angle that you want to make things less insane not only for your mental health, but also for the good of the company. If you like working there and want to stay, let them know that. But let them know that you can't be expected to keep up this pace. (And considering how many hours you work now, what happens if they take on more of this kind of work?)

No one wins in the long run if the staff keeps turning over from burnout. (Sure, there are agencies out there that don't mind overworking their employees and replacing them often, but there are plenty of firms that would rather not do that.) If your agency is worth staying at, they'll want to make sure their employees are happy and want to stay there. You get far, far better work out of people who are actually enjoying what they do and not spending their day thinking about whether or not to go somewhere else.

But in the end, if the higher-ups give you no indication that anything will change, and the place really is making you nuts, then prepare yourself to go elsewhere. Finding a new job isn't necessarily the most fun thing ever, but neither is losing your sanity over one that isn't treating you well.

Good luck to you.

(on preview: Take aburd's advice and set a time frame for the change to happen. Open-ended deadlines accomplish little.)
posted by aine42 at 5:01 PM on March 7, 2007

Working uncompensated overtime is like being a scab. It devalues everybody's time.

it's illegal too, right?

Not usually. In most states you can work salaried employees 24/7 and not have to pay them anymore.

However, it is worth looking into your state's labor laws. For instance, in CA (a fairly employee-friendly state), I had a job where i was salaried but not a manager. I had a base salary, but also an hourly rate that was used to calculate OT when I worked over 40 hours.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:49 PM on March 7, 2007

nothing makes me feel more unhappy or less in control of my life than constant, uncompensated overtime. I spent half of 2006 in that mode

Way past time to kick some butt. You'll feel better afterwards. Others have concrete suggestions. Plan your attack and later you'll kick yourself for sitting back and taking it for so long. You should only work overtime when there is a definite and calculated payoff, be that goodwill on rare occasions or concrete benefits like pay or time off.
posted by Listener at 6:08 PM on March 7, 2007

I actually have a different opinion then most on this, I guess. But from my perspective, its not an issue of if you're a baby or not - but what you're comfortable with. A job is a job. Either you're willing to do what it takes to succeed at the company or not. From my view - and maybe this is because I'm a manager myself - you need to work as much as you need to work to meet deadlines. Sometimes that means doing a long stint of 60 - 70 hour weeks. Sometimes that means taking a 4 day week. If the company is clearly communicating to you it's expectations - even if you don't like them - then in order to stay in the job you must meet those expectation. Yes, even if they are 60+ hours per week. If you don't like them, or don't feel you can properly meet them, talk to your supervisor and ask for a change. If they can't accommodate you (as it sounds like they can't) find another job. Chances are you're no longer a good fit for the company.

At the company I work for, I have been working 60+ hour weeks for nearly 8 years. I do it because I find my work interesting and I take a lot of pride in it. I also know that if I need a short week or a day off I can do it. Definitely need a good work life balance, but that whole the company is ripping you off if you're working more than 40 hours a week is BS.
posted by tundro at 6:15 PM on March 7, 2007

Try to put the "I" back into "team" at your job. Look at your workload, and figure out if there's anything that you can delegate or pass on to someone else. Your skills may be specialized, but perfectionism (not always a bad thing...hurray quality!) may be causing you to keep work on your desk that could be done elsewhere. Yeah, the other guy may not be as skilled as you are, or do as good a job, but for your own sanity you need to triage your desk. Keep the critical stuff and clear the rest. Your boss should back you and ask your coworkers to step up -- otherwise, time to move on.
posted by junkbox at 6:23 PM on March 7, 2007

Preliminary question: is your attendance good? If you take a lot of sick days or personal days (paid or not) you are NOT going to have a sympathetic audience about working longer hours on the days/weeks you're in.

Assuming the answer is no, allow me to say that if I were your boss I'd infinitely prefer that you ask for money than ask for less work. Asking for more moeny shows a good balance of concern for your interests and the company's interests. It proposes one good solution (pay you more), and implicitly invites me to propose another solution (hire you more help). The latter shows a single-minded focus on your own interests, and spreads the problem rather than solves it.

A comment: the "budget," is, of course, a fiction, as long as you can viably quit. If the company works you more than it will pay you, it will lose you, and they'll have to pay that higher rate to someone else (if competent) and endure the massive costs of recruitment and shakedown (a fair share of recruits flame out immediately, and everyone takes time to ramp up to full productivity).
posted by MattD at 6:38 PM on March 7, 2007

This sounds very familiar: I used to do the same thing and wonder why everyone else went out to lunch, left at a reasonable hour, etc. The problem is that you've set the precedent: now your boss is used to you working 60 hours/week. So time to set a new precedent: when you get a new project, always say, "Let me scope out this work and get back to you." Repeat it for everything, even the thing that'll "only take an hour." When they say we need it by this and such date, reply "Which project--X, Y, or Z--do you want to postpone?" If they reply that everything is high priority, say "Who can I transition that project to?" If they ask why you're doing this scoping now, say that it keeps you better organized and you can see how you're spending your time throughout the week.

Also, email status reports every Friday: it's a great way to give your manager visability on everything you do. Even though your manager may be aware of your workload, it helps enormously to have it written down in detail. (Especially as people have a tendency to forget about things that are not the hot priority that day.)

I personally would try the approach of training your manager before having another talk. I think there'd be a risk of appearing unorganized, incompetent, etc. Oh, and start going out to lunch: no one is making you wolf down a sandwich while you keep working.
posted by sfkiddo at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Just my 2 cents worth. I just got home from work too (ten at night) -so this whole thread seems appropriate. Excessive work hours.

Work to Live, I also wondered if you were one of my co-workers.

Tundro - you may be my manager. Not enough info in the bio but - my manager works similar hours and expects the merry band of robots to do the same.

I do not yet have enough experience to offer yet another employer a valuable skill. My plan is to put in a year at my company. If conditions do not change, I will look for a job with normal work hours. I will state during the interview that I am looking for a work life balance.

Turbo, if you have years experience and are skilled at what you do - I would have one more meeting with your supervisor (no threats, state your limits and possibly push for a raise). If conditions don't change, you can easily find another workplace.

The raise may help you acquire a higher salary with your new employer.
posted by Wolfster at 8:03 PM on March 7, 2007

dipolemoment: Working uncompensated overtime is like being a scab. It devalues everybody's time.

Well, except, where I work (medium-sized rapidly-growing software company in a university town) that's an "hourly employee" mindset -- no one salaried dares conceptualize working 40+ as "overtime." That kind of thinking is for burger-flippers and department store clerks.

I don't know if it's the same at Work to Live's company, but the terms are explicit for us: we are not clock-punchers; we are professionals who are paid a negotiated salary to accomplish all necessary tasks within a certain range of responsibilities for the company. In theory the range of responsibilities has been designed roughly to take a reasonable 40-45 hours a week to attend to. But at an ambitious/entrepreneurial company, particularly one that's growing quickly like ours, it doesn't always smooth out to 40-hour work weeks.

It's a tough situation to finesse, honestly. You want to send the message you're unfairly overworked, but you want to avoid at all costs giving the impression that your skills or work ethic are not up to the company's expectations; you want to avoid sounding whiny, resentful of the coworkers, or anything remotely close to it; and you want to avoid not seeming like a "team player" willing to give what is needed -- because those perceptions might get you subtly "punished" when salary adjustment time rolls around.

You mention "a bit of a breakdown" last year, after which things gradually returned to the status quo. I would consider whether your supervisor saw those problems as your personal issues intruding into the workplace and not the result of unreasonable job pressures, to the end that he/she thinks you didn't have your shit together then, but do now -- and how you might counter such misperceptions.

I would assume you keep detailed records of your accomplishments and project status and so on, and communicate these to the boss. Is there a way you can use such records to (quantitatively?) illustrate you need assistance or a raise? Any time there's a way you can demonstrate your hard work has had a positive impact on the company's bottom line, do so -- it's the easiest way to get a raise (or to get budgets adjusted: the money goes where they perceive the money's to be made).

Good luck.
posted by aught at 6:13 AM on March 8, 2007

This is total hearsay, but I've read that especially in advertising firms if you're a more experienced worker and demand a higher salary, management will often make things harder on you and try to force you out for younger, cheaper, less job-savvy and experienced workers. There are lots of hungry young applicants for ad jobs. It's known to be a field that you work in when you are young and is very unforgiving to older workers who want to have families / lives. I have no solution to offer, but consider that this may be your position and readjust accordingly.

It's a market system and labor does not have the upper hand if you are easily replaceable. Better to get another job and prepare to be mobile, not loyal to one company.
posted by Marnie at 6:21 AM on March 8, 2007

Thanks, hive, for the support and concrete suggestions -- exactly what I was looking for. I've already been documenting my tasks and time -- need those both for my timesheets -- so that part of the plan is already in place. I do need to develop some alternatives to take to management. And take those recruiters' calls. Funny thing is, I don't want a raise (though I'd take it). I want my life back!
posted by Work to Live at 6:24 AM on March 8, 2007

the terms are explicit for us: we are not clock-punchers; we are professionals who are paid a negotiated salary to accomplish all necessary tasks within a certain range of responsibilities for the company. In theory the range of responsibilities has been designed roughly to take a reasonable 40-45 hours a week to attend to.

I've deleted everything I was going to say, because aught's post is spot-on in describing the situation every place I've worked (construction firms and consulting) and among my clients' firms.

I also end up working when others take lunch or early fridays and I know why - I'm self-contained and somewhat senior among my peers. I'm relied on, and sounds like you are too. It's so tricky. I've gone into reviews wanting to ask for more flexibility and been sidetracked by raises & bonuses which left me feeling I couldn't say "hey, I'm going to start leaving at 5 every day"! I don't have a solution for you except to say that you have to give it a shot. It's better from your employers' point of view too to ask them for what you need (resources, flexibility) than push to breaking point and quit.
posted by jamesonandwater at 6:27 AM on March 8, 2007