You’re the one who should be ashamed for not complaining! Sick of this ‘everybody should be miserable’ thing. Nobody should have to work more than 35 hours a week max. There’s more to life than work, we all only live once.

I say this as someone who has been working well over 50 hours a week for the last six months, which I have zero intention of keeping up long term. Apart from anything else it’s seriously bad for your mental and physical health and you become a really boring person with no life!

I should be complaining? I’m damn lucky to have a job, so I will do whatever hours they tell me.

I’m with you Mike!

Mike, not disagreeing with you, but it is sad that people feel they are lucky to have an employer to enrich. We have gone back to the days of Dickens.

If this recession has shown us anything it’s that there is no such thing as loyalty were employers are concerned. If you’re the wrong side of 50 when the next recession hits (and there’ll always be another recession) all these extra hours you are doing now will be a long forgotten memory and you’ll be out on your ear.

God I wish people would grown some spine. ‘You wouldn’t dare complain about your working hour’s – that’s pretty pathetic really that you would let an employer exploit you out of gratitude to have a job. Everyone has a right to decent work where employers stick to the rules and to basic principles like an 8 hour day and a 40 hour week that were hard fought for in the early 20th century. Attitudes like yours allow employers to drive down conditions (and wages) for everybody. Do we really want to go back to a six or seven day week and working every waking hour? Because that’s the way the mainstream discourse is headed at the moment.

Looking at the mess those at the top have made of the country, the banks and lots of businesses it would be better if they did. If you spend too many hours working you can’t be at the top of your game.

@richard, it’s not just the ‘lads at the to’, we’re all to blame for the blind greed that swept across this nation & the EU. From the Institutions & governments to the government artists & sponges, we’re all to blame for this mess. the question one must ask in life is ‘how much do I want to play the system to work for and with me to achieve my objectives in life?’

So train to be a nurse. Do the same kind of work. 37.5 hour week. No sleep-overs. Higher hourly rate. Work-life balance…

A nurse? My daughter’s a nurse, 4 years to train, no pay and where do you intend to get a job at the end of it, work as an agency nurse forever? With no permanent employer you can get no mortgage, loans etc. If you somehow did get a job in a hospital you’d be earning less than everyone else (new rules), I’m a cleaner in a hospital and earn more than nurses,and trust me my wages isn’t anything to shake a stick at, how can that be right?
I’m fed up with people saying “I’m lucky to have a job”, while I understand the sentiment, what they actually mean is they feel lucky to have a wage in the current climate, in reality the employer is damn lucky to have them.

Sorry to hear your daughter’s in that position. I’m a staff nurse. €50k a year (incl. shift allowances). Permanent, pensionable non-HSE employment…

Your man fleeting whim is dead right. It would be better to make more jobs available to the unemployed rather than increase hours of the employed. More to life than work. Feel the fear and tell them to feck off I say!

A lot of people who work outside the home for 35 hours or more don’t go home and sit on their backsides all night. Most of them spend their "free time" taking care of their families too. I appreciate your job is about as outwardly thankless a job that there is but don’t feel you’re alone.

Then you’re some eejit. There’s no pockets in a shroud, no one on their deathbed says "I wish I spent more time at work" etc etc
You’ve only one life, why would you waste your best years working?
Final cliche; work to live not live to work

@Sham McSham – what if you like your job, are self-employed, or even need to work those long hours to pay the bills?