Thursday, February 18, 2010

Weekend Assignment #307: Eight Days a Week



This Weekend Assignment entry will be brief, for reasons that will become apparent.

Weekend Assignment #307: Common wisdom, these days, backed up by actual statistics if I had time to look them up, tells us that as a nation we've been working harder in recent years just to maintain the same level of financial solvency. Recession-related unemployment and u8nderemployment aside, do you find this is true for your family?

Extra Credit: Is overtime something you take on willingly? Why or why not?

I mention all this because this is the busy time of year for accountants, even underemployed ones like me. I've been working many more hours recently, and if I get the temp job I applied for today, I will be working a full time job and a part time one on top of that.

And I don't mind. Yes, I have to watch out that I get adequate sleep, but to be honest I kind of enjoy wrangling with numbers at 1 AM. And if I can make a decent income working two jobs after all these months of spotty employment, it should help our finances quite a bit!

Still, I believe that the underlying point is true. Maybe it's naive of me, but I suspect that there was a time when people worked from 9 to 5, went home, and aside from a little dinner discussion left their work behind until morning. Now I think we as a workforce are expected to work as many hours as possible for as little money as companies can get away with. In some cases, it's because the company itself is struggling, especially these days. In others, it seems to be more a case of the people at the top raking in the bonuses and letting the underlings struggle a bit. I've worked in both situations.

What do you think? You have until next Wednesday at 6 PM to give us your thoughts, either as a blog entry or in the comments below. If you do write a blog entry, please mention the Weekend Assignment, and leave a link to your entry in the comments thread. Here are last week's links. Click on the name to see the entry!

Last week's Weekend Assignment was:

Weekend Assignment #306: You're A Famous Author, What's The Name Of Your Book?

Karen (that's me!) said...
I'm famously allergic to cats, and almost as famously uninterested in cooking. My unlikely bestseller, therefore, is a cookbook for cats. I had a different title for it last night, but then I talked to John and had a better idea. Now the title is:
The Cats' Cookbook:
Fabulous Foods for Felines and Friends


Florinda said...
Here's my bestseller:
Southern Song: A Romance, by Elizabeth Penney (You don't think I'm writing a romance under my real name, do you? That's another part of the fiction!)

Mike said...
My book is a young adult romantic fantasy novel. I named it "We'll Meet Under the New Moon at Harry Potter's House." I figure this might draw some attention on the shelves at the bookstore. Not a bad idea, am I right.

 Next week's entry will by hosted by Carly. See you there!

Karen

2 comments:

barrettmanor said...

I had time to write something this week!

http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/archive.aspx?ID=2772

Florinda said...

Here's mine:

http://www.3rsblog.com/2010/02/workin-it-working-overtime-weekend.html