On my way to work, I heard an old song playing on the radio. Dolly Parton is belting out her classic Nine to Five, which got me thinking: What ever happened to a carved out and delineated frame of time during which workers were expected to show up and focus on their assigned tasks for the good of the employer and the company?
What I hear these days from the patients I treat is the expectation they, more or less, be available 24/7. Connectivity makes that easy to expect, or—more precisely—easy to demand of today’s worker. Life/work balance is not something employers care much about, even while giving the concept lip service.
When I decided I wanted to be a doctor, I knew what that would entail: my being available to serve my patients in a timely manner. I knew that was what I was signing up for. Back then my job came equipped with an antiquated device called “the beeper,” a cigarette pack sized pager device that attached to my belt. When it vibrated, I knew to call my answering service to find out what was up. Yes, there were real humans, back then, who were taking messages on my behalf.
Then came the alpha-numeric display device, followed by the cellular phone, which not only rendered my beeper obsolete but now placed everyone, not just doctors, on alert. Now everyone can be reached, day or night, without regard for such matters as the existence of a private, away from work life, which should not be encroached by the impingement of a boss’s need to access the minds of employees whenever he or she feels it necessary.
I don’t believe today’s worker willingly signed on expecting that such an obligation was a condition of employment. Regardless, I hear from many of the patients I treat that their lives are dictated by these very expectations, which leaves them believing there is nothing they can do about the matter. They can and do talk to me about it, but they know better than to speak up at work since doing so could jeopardize their ongoing employment. Better, perhaps, to just suck it up and not challenge current, industry wide expectations.
In the past, 24/7 availability was only expected by companies that a prospective employee would die to work for. The old joke—attributed to Microsoft and, earlier perhaps, to IBM was a message to all employees: “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday.” Has this same thinking metastasized?
Back in the day, before the advent of unions, employers could demand outrageous things from their employees. During the advent of the industrial revolution, factory workers routinely worked 10-16 hour days, 6-7 days a week. There were no weekends as we know them today. Henry Ford famously adopted the 5-day, 40-hour week in 1926 — partly pragmatic, arguing that rested workers were much more productive. In 1938, the U.S. Government enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act, which enshrined the 40-hour workweek federally in the US, requiring overtime pay beyond that.
I wonder whether we have reached the point where encroachment into the private time and lives of today’s worker must once again be legislatively addressed given current expectations. To make maters worse, the threat of AI is terrorizing workers to not say peep about present working conditions. Better to stay quiet, keep your head down, and pray your job doesn’t go away. I am not saying that the threat of such a fate is being used by employers to keep employees in line. Then again, I am not denying the possibility.
I write this musing on behalf of the patients I treat. Someone has to speak up on their behalf.