how many hours do you work a week?

hmmmm, it seems Singletrack World are a busy bunch. Depends on how busy the company is and what country I’m working in, in the UK I normally work 36 hours over 4 days. Some weeks I can work up to 65, others as little as 14.

TheBrick – are you a wind turbine?

I work as a Bike Mechanic so my hours are the same as the shop opening hours (9-6) but with an hour for lunch.

Usually leave the house around 7 for my on & off road commute, get to work just after 8, shower, make coffee and relax before we open. Sometimes there are jobs to finish from the day before or we have to book service customers in who have turned up early but otherwise we start working at bang on 9.

Very occasionally we have to work late (6:30-7pm at the latest) if it’s been a particulary hectic day but those occasions are thankfully few and far between.

between 39 and 41 hours per week.
start any time between 0445 and 1654.
finish any time between 1354 and 0100.
work 5 days out of 7, but rarely work sundays.
unpaid break of between 30 mins and 2hrs per day.
ocassional unpaid breaks.
and if a junky hands me a fake note and i dont spot it, i get to pay for it out of my own pocket.
none of this is made up, btw.
oh, and rarely do the same shift on consecutive days, normal to start 0500 one day and 1145 the next, followed by another 0500 start the day after.

iDave – Member
TheBrick – are you a wind turbine?

No it’s just threads like these always become a bit three yorkshiremenish for some people.

I couldn’t go back to 5x8Hour days – why not 4×10?

I do hate this about the “normal” working week. The 8 -9 hrs a day standard, I’d much rather work 3 – 4 long days than 5 short days or 10 days straight long hr e.t.c then get a decent amount off e.t.c. I personally work better this way but it’s not an option.

Paid – around 0. Studying, around 40hrs+. Currently reading about Guillan-Barre.

@Flying Ox

Same here, but you’ve forgotten to account for “inbetweenies” and other time polishing hand rails. 😆

70 hour fortnight but over 9 week days, get every other Friday off.

I’m contracted to do 37.5 per week 08:00 – 16:30 Mon-Thurs 08:00 – 15:15..

But I regularly work 42 – 45 hours a week, there’s a bit of a culture of “presenteism” at the moment we’ve got a couple of bigger projects on and a largely useless line manager who is failing to recruit enough people to people to do the work…

I need a new job…

The Flying Ox – Member

84 hours a week, although 1hr lunch and 2x15min tea breaks per day are included in that.

Tut tut, you are in roughly the same game as me, what about the 2 on 2 off routine, brings that average right down 🙂

33 hours one week then 41 hours the next and get every other Friday off.

Around 50-60 hours most weeks. Usually in the form of 9-10 hours a day plus a bit at weekend sometimes. I only get paid for a normal week but I am on a fairly impressive bonus for meeting my targets.

It’s silly I know, I’m hoping once I get this new guy in I can start offloading a fair bit of that onto him and relax a bit more.

Your spot on theBrick

Probably divid peoples answers by 2 then subtract 10, add 4 and round up to about 40-45 hours. Which is probably what most people work in the UK. Except here where most work 80hrs a week. 🙄

I usually start just before 9 and go flat out to 6ish. Might get 20 mins for lunch whilst working and stop to make a couple of cups of tea but that’s about it – still, a lot less than when I was in London but it’s the joys of being client facing.

Never liked working with ‘I won’t work any more than my exact hours’ types as they don’t really seem to give a cr@p about doing a great job. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky.

Most I’ve done in the past was 50-55 hrs in the office/warehouse each week, sorting out everyone else’s mess and putting some systems in to prevent shit happening in the future, then on Friday night getting in the car for an hour and a bit drive to then do 5 hours DJing, before getting in the car again to get home for about 5am on Saturday morning. Then I’d repeat the same again on the Saturday night!

Still was happy with the cash at the time though… Did that for about a year til I couldn’t take it any longer. Fridays were the worst, getting to work for 8:30am then getting home about 8pm, cooking myself some oven chips, then back in the car at 9pm and then not getting home again til 5am used to really hurt! Sunday’s I had a BIG lie in each week…

These days, I have 6 hours of lectures to attend, 24 weeks a year. I do a lot more bike riding too! 😉

jruk – Member

Never liked working with ‘I won’t work any more than my exact hours’ types as they don’t really seem to give a cr@p about doing a great job.

I’ll work more if i’m paid for it or there’s something else in it for me… But tbh my experience is the other way round, the more hours people “work”, the more they spend skiving and the less they get done.

Basically, if you break the link between pay and work- ie, you expect people to work for free- then it cuts in the other direction, and people no longer feel bad about getting paid to not work.

Just gone part time.

I now do 41hrs a week.

4.5 day week of 37.5hrs. I work maybe an hour extra some weeks. If there’s an emergency or a project needs some occasional weekend working I’ll happily enough do that.

I refuse to get into competitive hours. I’m good at my job and would leave if the expectation was to work lots of unpaid extra time.

6 day in 4 days (seriously), just finishing emails now.

(the boss is a total asshat)

It varies a lot. In very quiet periods, just the salaried 37.5 per week. But most of the time, I tick along at about 45 hours and that’s OK given that I spend 10 hours a week car commuting.

During high pressure times, it can go up to 50-60 hours by including part or whole weekends, but not for long as I get very tired and unproductive. Under very rare circumstances, I have been offered overtime payments as an incentive. It’s not an incentive really, but it’s useful to feel that your time is being compensated. I would not like a permanent overtime arrangement as that would encourage 50-60 hour weeks all the time. As much as I love my work, my non-working time is very precious. My work is a very important part of my life, but I don’t live to work.

@Northwind – I think it comes down to company culture. I used to work in London and get scowled at if I left before 6.30 and would be expected to drop everything if a big project came up. The company didn’t care about people and soon dropped us when the recession hit.

I’d much rather work with a team of people who start 20 mins early and go hell for leather until a sensible time (I hate being late for jnr’s bath time). I guess I just don’t like working with people who put the minimum effort in.

Loads of hours but I have quite a lot of freedom and flexibility. Buts that’s offset against the pressure and responsibility. But could never go back to working for the man, even if he is a nice man.

Most of the time I don’t even think about work when I’m in the office. They’ll rightsize my headcount in a heartbeat the moment that they think it’ll add a penny to next quarter’s bottom line, so I’m getting my retaliation in pre-emptively. Sometimes I spend all day daydreaming or in a Wikipedia hole, or watching The Wire. Curiously, the more I slack off, the more they over-value my skills.

42-44 hrs a week. Spread over three 8 to 7 days and two 8 – 1 days and the odd extra bit. .

Work? Dinna be daft!

Mon-Fri 9-5 + 1hr e/w drive. Happy days.
Used to be a hell of a lot more

jruk – once you go over a certain amount of time worked your productivity drops rapidly as you lose concentration and make mistakes – which is why we have maximum hours for lorry drivers and so on. the long hours culture damages people and their families and does not produce anything significant extra.

its different if you are doing a one off push to a deadline but to do it regularly is not helpful

40 hrs: 8 till 430 with 30 for lunch and 45min drive each way. Often do an extra hour here or there as required to keep ahead of the game.

@tandemjeremy
amen to that. Overtime on a regular basis is appreciated by no one. If you stop doing it you will get grief. Don’t fall into the habit. Make your boss get on his knees and beg. Don’t be a sucker.

jruk – Member

@Northwind – I think it comes down to company culture

Disagree… The external pressures do but at the end of the day it’s the individual, and there’s a lot that goes into it. So not as simple as “9-5 = slacker” or “8-7 = mug”. I genuinely get more done in a seven hour day than most people I’ve worked with can manage in 10, frinstance, done better. Grafting comes in different forms, as does slacking. My last job was one I didn’t enjoy much so all the reward came from payment, my current job I enjoy some of so I’m more likely to do just for its own reward. Reward comes in all sorts of flavours.

Are the smokerists remembering to subtract essential drug-intake time?

Paid for 35 hours a week, probably average 42-45. Over the last year we have had a continuous reduction in headcount (no backfill when people leave) yet increasing workloads. In the main I enjoy my job though so don’t mind the free hours too much.

aka_Gilo – Member
Over the last year we have had a continuous reduction in headcount (no backfill when people leave) yet increasing workloads.

Does that mean you weren’t working very hard before? 😉

Got a day off on Wed, will have worked 84 by then. Not all in a week tho’. Consecutively.

My core hours are 8.30am to 4.30pm but I generally get in around 8am and leave about 5pm.

I have no problem working long hours especially as some of my friends and my g/f work incredibly long weeks so it’s not an alien concept to me; but with my job if you found yourself working really late a lot you would probably have to ask yourself some questions as it’s just not that hard.

Varies a lot but probably 9 until 4 or 5 Mon to Fri then home and work until about 7. Normally take a day off at the weekend but in the run up to exams I’ll do pretty much 7 days a week for about 3 weeks prior.

Yup I’m a terrible blight on a society, I’m a student.

When I qualify then the proverbial hits the fan….

Sometimes 20, sometimes 90: sometimes a 2 hour day, sometimes round the clock – we’re very flexible! And ‘peaky’ is actually how I prefer to work. Means I can go out and play to balance out the mad days.

Weekends are still pretty much sacrosanct though.

It becomes a problem however when it turns out the peak is actually a plateau which you saw coming all along, had warned about, and no-one had planned to deal with 😕

37.5 hours a week. In by 9.30, leave just after 5.30, 30 mins for lunch (normally taken at my desk). Sometimes I’ll come in early (at 8 when it’s quiet and no one else is in) or work until 6.30 or so, but no more than that. I think three, maybe four, times in four years I’ve done a few hours over a weekend, and that was mainly because I didn’t want to screw over colleagues I respected. Work-life balance really. I want the time to bike, or bike tinker.

I refuse to get into competitive hours. I’m good at my job and would leave if the expectation was to work lots of unpaid extra time.

Agree with this. If I’m having to work long hours then the company need to employ more staff, or be more realistic about deadlines.

Just done 31 twelve hour night shifts in a row, i work on an oil rig.

36 hours per week, Mon to Thurs 8hrs a day, Fri 4hrs.

druidh – Member

Does that mean you weren’t working very hard before?

Oh no! You’ve been possessed by my old boss!

(on the plus side, that probably means someone’s finally done the sensible thing and murdered her)