Your Employer Is Not Your Sleep’s Best Friend

Calculating how many hours you’re at work is not simple by any means.

Let’s say you are hired to do a 40 hour a week job. Then we can say you’re at work for that number of hours, correct?

Not really.

For one thing most employers are required to give you a lunch break. By “give,” please don’t misconstrue that word.

They must allow a half-hour in many cases. A good number permit 45 minutes, and others one hour.

Let’s say it’s an hour. Sounds generous, but is it?

Not in the least, because generally you are not being paid for that time, if you’re an hourly worker. You can’t really go anywhere “off-campus” and get much done, other than grabbing some fast food.

So, from your point of view, that’s a loss of one hour. If you arrive at 8 AM and leave at 5 PM it is nine hours you are committing to, not eight.

Most of us can’t fall out of bed, rub our eyes, and be at the job site. Typically, you’ll commute to your job, and before that you’ll cleanup, get dressed, and gobble some breakfast.

That adds another hour and a half to merely get to your place of work. We were invested into the working day for nine hours; now it’s up to 10 and a half.

If we add another hour to get home, that’s 11.5 hours. But let’s call it 12 because with some rush hours, everything takes longer and you may need to stop for gas.

That 8-hour day you signed-up for is suddenly 150% of 8 hours.

It’s not a working day, and 40 hours per week. It’s a working day and a half, or 60 hours, weekly.

But we cannot call the extra 20 hours overtime, because that is a term of art, entitling you to receive overtime pay.

Economists would label the fact you are donating your time, “internalizing” that time. It is costing you something, in foregoing choices to do other things, like sleeping an extra few hours per day, or going bowling, or bingeing on movies.

And your employers are making you take that loss, which economists label, “externalizing.”

It is a condition of employment that you arrive there on time, looking reasonably clean and fresh, and nourished. Bosses thus externalize many of their costs of doing business onto you.

If they require you to “buy your own uniform,” instead of providing one to you, they are externalizing. You feel and see the money leaving your pocket or debit card account as it is transferred to them.

Ouch!

It stings because your loss of money is obvious.

When employers rob you of your sleep, they are externalizing as well. Yet most of us don’t calculate it as a loss, because it isn’t as clear as something that we’re paying for.

I am a student of employment ads, and I’m especially on my guard when it comes to companies that are going to externalize their costs, risks, and timetables to me.

Today, especially among start-ups, you’ll see ads that proclaim their business offers a “work hard, play hard” culture. Do you know what this means?

It means they’re going to wear you down, chew you up, and spit you out. They’ll insist on long hours of toil, and then there will be the after-work meetings, ping-pong blowouts, and watering hole soirees.

They’ll even pay for the pizza!

You’ll play hard, but not on your own, with the people you choose to recreate with, such as your family.

You’ll play with THEM! And you WILL enjoy it and MAKE MERRY (said with sardonic emphasis.)

Some organizations state their intention to grind you to bits in fairly straightforward terms. Here is the exact language one company uses in its ads to tell you how it measures the working day:

WHATEVER IT TAKES ATTITUDE—This is not an 8 AM to 5 PM career. Our workday ends when all customers are taken care of. We must do whatever it takes to make our customers say “Wow!”

This company requires its sellers to check in and hit the road by 7:30 AM and their final in-home presentations to prospects may not finish until 10 PM.

Let’s do the arithmetic of sleep, shall we?

If you’re lucid and checking-in, dressed and ready to roll for an appointment at 7:30, you’re up in the morning by 6 AM. If you didn’t stop selling until 10:00 the night before, we expect you didn’t nod off on the buyer’s couch until 6:00 the next morning.

You drove home, maybe grabbed a snack, (not advisable for smooth sleep), and said a word or two to your mate or family. You didn’t hit the sack until midnight, which means you were able to get all of six hours of sleep.

According to sleep research, that’s not enough. By signing-up for this job, you’re making a bargain with the insomnia devil.

Most jobs disguise the hidden hours you’ll be required to log. Here is language that downplays the time commitment, also for a seller in the home services field:

Schedule: 8 AM-5 PM, Monday through Friday. Must be available evenings and weekends as necessary, especially during the peak Summer and Winter seasons.

This is simply not a 9–5 job if you want to see a paycheck, or if you want to see your customers when they have time to interact with you, which is after their own 8–5 jobs conclude. This job requires exactly the same time commitments as the one we discussed above. You’ll need to check-in by 7:30, work until 9:00 or 10:00 at night, and weekends will actually be required, not merely “as necessary.” I can tell you right now, they’ll be required, at least 50% of the time.

Is there an alternative to this sleep-theft, to this externalizing of costs that employers are so fond of perpetrating?

There is, and I’ve exploited it.

For years, I’ve worked as a consultant on an independent contractor basis. This has allowed me to charge very differently for my time while pretty much dictating what is a “normal” working day and working week, for me.

Let me underscore how different this is from the 8–5 grind.

I was doing a contract for a division of a Fortune 500 company. Our engagement was going very well. My main contact, an enterprising and intellectually curious marketing manager, asked me what one of my other Fortune 500 clients was doing.

I said, “Why don’t we fly out to Boston and I’ll show you, if they’re willing to host a visit.”

They were, and we got a grand tour of the facilities and I showed off my techniques as they were being implemented.

After returning to Los Angeles, my travel companion was flummoxed by the fact that I had billed him at my standard consulting rate for the time we spent together on the flight out.

I explained that we were talking business, mostly, and the entire purpose of the trip was to edify him and benefit his company. He thought we were just palling around.

I didn’t internalize the costs of that trip. I externalized them, billing him for my time, attention, expertise, and contacts.

I also billed the other client for my flight and for the time I spent consulting for them in Boston.

Without double billing, each client paid for something, and I optimized the value of my time, charging accordingly.

Along these lines, when I bring a “one-day” seminar to a corporation, I’ve learned to bill for it and perform it in a way that brings me a reasonable financial return on my time, efforts, and expertise.

Exactly, how long is a one-day seminar? Unless this is defined clearly, the phrasing can lead to conflicts. Companies could insist on the seminar starting at 7:00 in the morning, and going until 6:00 at night, meeting over an 11 hour span.

I often define it as 9:30 to 11:30 and 1:00 to 3:00. That’s four hours of face-time, which some might refer to as a half-day. It is a full day from this standpoint.

I have to arrive on the scene by 8:30 or 8:45 to meet my contacts in management and set-up the room. People have questions and feedback to give after a program concludes, keeping me there until 3:30 or 4:00.

Then there’s travel time to and from the site. Even a local seminar will require two hours in traffic. Plus there’s prep time, to plan the seminar, customize it, and print handouts for participants.

When all is said and done, I may easily invest 12–20 hours in doing that “one-day” program. Although it looks like a quick four-hour gig to some!

You may have noted that I allowed for an hour and a half break between morning and afternoon segments of the program. Attendees appreciate the time because they can catch-up on some work and reach out to return an urgent phone call. It actually adds to productivity, and makes the commitment of human resources to the seminar something other than a total sacrificing of the working day.

Breaking at 3:00 serves the same purpose, enabling participants to get back to their posts.

As I mentioned in the flying example, as a consultant I can bill for my travel time, something that standard employees think is impossible to do.

It is impossible, if you fail to negotiate for it.

Which is a topic we’ll turn to next: Negotiating your sleep time.

Let me emphasize the fact that your employer is not your sleep’s best friend.

Which means you must be.