Why do we celebrate the toxicity of long working hours when corporate workspaces have so little to offer?
The only ones who genuinely benefit from everyone hustling are those who own equity in those organisations. Representation Pic
I have hated offices from the moment I stepped into one in what feels like a lifetime ago. I am pretty sure I’m not the only one to feel this way. This isn’t a comment about the people I worked with, of course, because they were often lovely and genuinely great to be around. It’s about the spaces themselves: those cheerless corridors, uninviting pantries, one-size-fits-all boardrooms, and soul-sucking cubicles that so many of us spend more than half our lives in. I like to think that the one bright spot in our post-pandemic world came from the collective recognition of how little our professional lives mean in the larger scheme of things. It was an ‘aha moment’ that was a long time coming.
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Most of us still don’t have the luxury of working from home, not because we can’t do the job well, or possibly better, but because of how ingrained this ridiculous notion of an office really is. We are raised to believe that human beings must commute for hours and spend ten hours in a building to justify being paid a certain amount of money. It’s why I wasn’t surprised when some so-called titan of industry—the kind we glorify in the press simply because they happen to run a large company or two—recently came up with the ridiculous suggestion that young people should put in more hours at the office. It is the kind of advice our grandparents have foisted on us for years: work harder, as if trying to get by in most Indian cities isn’t hard enough.
That suggestion prompted a flurry of supportive posts on LinkedIn, predictably from CEOs and managers who subscribe to these redundant ideas. Entrepreneurs have always turned the notion of long working hours into some sort of cult. ‘Work hard and party harder’ they say, without ever explaining why. Their HR departments call it the ‘start-up culture’, referring to the hustle that is necessary for success, always careful to avoid mentioning that the only ones who genuinely benefit from everyone hustling are those who own equity in those organisations. Everyone else must simply put in the hours because they are expected to do so.
Why work for more than eight hours at an office when we all know we can complete the job in four? Why waste half a day in idle chatter, endless and inane Powerpoint presentations, and brainstorming sessions with the least intelligent people in any company (almost always the ones with the MBAs) when we can finish early and go back to what really matters in our lives? Why do we encourage this antiquated concept of productivity defined by how late it is when we leave the office?
I recognise how pointless these rhetorical questions are, obviously, but I like asking them anyway because I see how my approach to work has changed as I have grown older. When I look back at my career, I don’t recall specific jobs or roles. I don’t recall presentations or career milestones. The only things I remember vividly are moments that involve people: colleagues who became friends, or people outside of work who made moments, events, or years special. There is nothing about my corporate life that stands out as special, which is sad when I consider the time spent in all those offices, with all the promotions, salaries, and designations that ultimately meant so little.
This is beginning to sound like a TED talk, which I also find amusing because of how so many of us now feel compelled to share ‘corporate speak’ on any social media platform. ‘What are the learnings?’ everyone asks, on LinkedIn and Twitter, as if everything that happens occurs only to make us more efficient workers or employees. ‘How can we use this lesson to make our companies more profitable?’
I don’t believe things will change anytime soon, at least not until the old guard retire and journalists stop inviting them to seminars. It will take a few generations to acknowledge the presence of a fine line between entrepreneurs and con artists, and a paradigm shift in our understanding of how capitalism reduces us all to rats in large cages. Until that happens, I like the idea of dreaming about it, and do everything in my power to focus on the things that matter as I hurtle towards my dotage. There’s a lot I still want to do before I run out of time, and none of it involves being in an office.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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