Elaine’s blog

When I was working for the then Wolverhampton Polytechnic, I read a jolly book by Howard Jacobson called “Coming From Behind”. Mr Jacobson had been a lecturer at the Poly at one time and had based his book on a caricature of academic life. In the story, one lecturer left his coat on the back of the chair in the office and his room-mate periodically splashed water on it to give the more convincing impression that he had been in work and had indeed come in out of the rain only recently. Of course, the ruse was to veil that fact that he was hardly ever there, just didn’t want to get found out. Only yesterday on the radio, I heard a woman worker in Price Waterhouse Cooper make reference to the fact that this practice of leaving your jacket on the chair was once a more general office habit aimed at creating the illusion of “presentism”. If this practice was real, it was a symptom of a long-hours culture which must have developed in Britain sometime in the 1980s. It was the case that being seen at work for long hours , or at least as long as your boss, was a demonstration of commitment, hard work and toughness - all judged to be male attributes at the time, so women were expected to display the same behaviours if they wanted t be taken seriously for promotion.

Thankfully, taking too long over the job has more recently come to be seen as inefficient, not so clever, not so male. The new role model is of the super-mum, multi-tasking, juggling the school-run as well as the Board meetings, ministering to the measled child whilst emailing off the latest version of that key report on time, and taking a mobile call from the client in Seattle whilst whipping up a soufflé for the dinner party in an hour’s time. She doesn’t work long hours in the office - she works “flexibly” - flexi-day, flexi-week, flexi-year - and the hours she puts in are not measured, not seen.

The Working Time Regulations were introduced under a Health & Safety banner, and maybe for that reason are not really taken very seriously at all. In this country we have a confused relationship with H&S, in that we like to appear to adhere to the European rules religiously whilst laughing about them like giggly schoolchildren behind our hands. We pretend we adhere to the rules about safe working hours, yet we want to hang on to our British opt-out from the European Directive. What we are really doing as a nation is somehow convincing ourselves that it’s the individual’s right, nay privilege, to work long hours as well as be a multi-tasking super-hero - as though we still have to show those wimpish Europeans what True Grit looks like. As an aside, in no other circumstances have I ever thought of Germans as wimps, or inefficient, or not clever……….so I am not sure I can adopt that view over this issue either.

We have lost sight of what makes for a good quality of life, displaying a balanced and contented mind. We should strive in a more holistic way to produce good work, to time and to standard, in return for the wage or fee we receive. We should not wear tiredness as a badge of honour, and we should be bolder (and more grown-up) in exercising judgement about what makes for effective working and healthy living both in ourselves and others.