the name is On-Ramp

for you, Mr. On-Ramp
:D

My worst day, 31 hour day,
worst 2 days, 2 x 20 hour days in a row
worst weekend starting after 5pm on a friday, 40 hour weekend (after a full work week)

avg 1 - 2 per year like this.

work happens.

I've had a couple of "40 hour days" & worked lots of weekends (earlier in my career) too but as you say "work happens" :). That's different than being in a "sweatshop" imo...

Yep. When I took my current position, it was explained that there would be "peak periods" and that the salary is adjusted accordingly. I don't know of many straight 9-5 positions in IT, or in other industries for that matter.

I normally have 60-70 hour weeks, but on occasion have pulled 90 hour weeks, usually when working on location. Those are a b*tch, and Uncle Sam usually profits pretty well from them.

If I seem confused to you guys, it's your own fault. It's statements like this, and that recurring theme that money and fear are the only two effective motivators. I could believe you guys if only I hadn't been seeing exceptions to these rules all my working life. First, it was my state's Labor department and the workers there who are not paid very handsomely, but who work their asses off to protect working men and women from unfair labor practices and wage violations.

Today, I'm still doing that work as a salaried consultant. Weeks of less than fifty hours are quite rare. My work mate tells people "At __________, we work half-days. Only twelve hours." It's not a joke. He's at his desk by five each morning.

Frankly, our job is part-commercial, part-religion. The money part is obviously not our motivation. The construction contractors we oversee make OBSCENE money. You wanna make money over the next twenty years? Open a minority-owned contracting business that does something like surveying and vacuum excavation. Or asbestos abatement. Or even just flagging.

Money lying right there on the table, and I'm not picking it up. So.....imagine how you guys look to me when you suggest that people whose professional goal is money are more motivated than I am. You guys who have strong opinions about organized Labor probably don't understand the most fundamental thing about the work of a labor representative. It is a church. Trust me when I tell you those guys are more motivated than you are. We have one representative here whose work habits are so extreme as to be almost unbelievable. Between her work (at least twelve per day) and her daughters' activities, the number of hours of sleep she gets on weekdays can usually be counted on two hands. Not kidding. You wanna get the jump on her in the morning, you'll have to be on task at least by 2:00 am.

I wish some of you guys could see the other side of the coin you are forever judging.

"Never run on the clock, and never take a ***** off the clock", words to live by....

In 1990 I was 19 or so and worked in a gold-exploration camp in northern British Columbia - my longest stint was 9 weeks of 14-16hr days, 7 days a week. I was close to the breaking point, or so I thought...

There was a Vietnamese guy there who never seemed to have taken his fly-out weeks. It turned out he had arrived in camp over Easter and worked every day till Thanksgiving - no small feat to split drill-core for 180 days straight. He said he made more in one day than his entire family of 12 could make in a month in Vietnam and he was working to bring them all to Canada.

I always think of him whenever work gets me down.

IN the early 1990's, When we hit the startup phase of the Gas Turbine projects, it would usually be "whatever" hours. I had 2 months where I averaged just over 100 hours a week. I try not to work like that these days, but my present project is getting me up at 2am for phone calls (Eastern Europe) and I'm working most weekends.