Work, sweet work

REBECCA DUBE With files from Elena Cherney
Monday, April 23, 2007

You know who you are.You skip dinner with the in-laws to work on your PowerPoint presentation - which isn't due until next month.

You nix the December vacation to Miami because that's when all the best office parties are.

You schedule conference calls for 7 p.m. so you don't have to go home and watch Dora the Explorer with your kids.

You're one of a legion of Canadians who end the weekend with a silent prayer: Thank God it's Monday.
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Everyone complains about being overworked. But experts say that what keeps many of us at the desk until 8 p.m. isn't just an overflowing in-tray. And what lures us back to the office each morning isn't just the paycheque.

"Work life is much more enjoyable than the time we spend outside of work," Richard Earle, director of the Canadian Institute of Stress in Toronto, says matter-of-factly.

"What gives people enjoyment and satisfaction is expression, experience and growing themselves, and frankly that happens a lot more at work than in your home life."

That's one reason we spend so much time there. Statistics Canada reports that the average workday was 8.9 hours in 2005 - up from 8.4 hours in 1986. During the same two decades, the average time Canadian workers spent with their families shrank by 45 minutes. When we do finally leave work, we spend more time alone, and we're loath to take vacations.

MONDAYS

A 2006 Ipsos Reid poll for Expedia.ca found that a quarter of workers don't take all their vacation days and one in 10 skips vacation altogether.

Almost one-third of Canadian workers say they look forward to the start of the work week, according to a poll conducted in March by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail.

One in five - including one in four women - say work life is less demanding than home life.

Twenty-seven per cent say they've used their job as an excuse to avoid a family function.

And why not hang around? More than one-third say most of their friends are people they've met at the office.

Sure, work has its stresses and your colleagues aren't perfect. But rarely at the office does someone scream "I hate you!" or hurl a bowl of cereal to the floor just for the fun of watching you pick it up. (And if they do, you should probably start looking for a new job.)

If your personal life isn't particularly rich or busy, working long hours in the company of likeminded people seems better than going home to an empty apartment.

In her influential book The Time Bind, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild studied work-life balance at a major U.S. corporation and discovered that, in the minds of many employees, work and home had switched places. Work was an oasis of calm, while home life caused stress.

"One reason some workers may feel more 'at home' at work is that they feel more appreciated and more competent there," Ms. Hochschild wrote.
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Even for those without kids at home, work is sometimes less complicated and more rewarding. "Relationships are hard. They can be really complex, hard and emotional.... Working actually is easier," says Vancouver life coach Laura North.

Couples counsellors see the negative effects of TGIM syndrome all the time - one spouse spends a lot of time at work, which makes the partner angry, which in turn makes the spouse want to spend even more time at work, and the vicious cycle continues.

Unlike drowning your sorrows in alcohol, or gambling, working crazy hours is a socially acceptable way to avoid personal problems.
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For some, though, work is more than a sanctuary from the pressures of home - it's a place to find friends. As the lines blur between our professional and personal worlds, work is replacing churches, civic groups and neighbourhoods as the social centre of people's lives.

Having friends at the office, of course, makes it easier to work long hours. "You can get through a lot of things at work if you enjoy the people you work with," Mr. Barker says. "If you're hanging out and chatting, it doesn't seem as much like work."

Not everyone buys the idea that workers are deliberately lingering at the office for fun or self-fulfillment. Many workplaces exert real pressure to stay late and work weekends.

Clarence Lochhead, director of the Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family, says North American culture bombards people with the message that they should work more, spend more, consume more. Personal debt is on the rise, and people feel they have to work harder than ever just to keep up.

"They may be spending more time at work and less time with the family precisely because they want to provide for the family," he says. "It's not because they don't want to spend time with the family or they don't care - it's precisely because they do care."

Yet some people who genuinely breathe a sigh of relief when they walk into the office on Monday say they still care about their families.
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