I had a rather animated discussion with a friend recently in relation to work performed ‘after hours’.

This is something I am sure we have all done when required to complete a project for deadline or assist a customer with an after hours service issue paid or unpaid is it is in my case. No I am not talking about that sort of after hours work. My annoyance is with getting into the office on Monday morning and checking my email to find emails sent from a colleague (cc’d to the boss of course) at say 10:30pm on a Sunday night or 6:45am on a Saturday morning. None of these emails are of an urgent nature, just run of the mill normal work dribble.

I find it stupid that a person would get up early on a Saturday morning or stay up late on a Sunday night to do non-urgent work. My suggestion is that the only reason said person is doing emails at those times is to make it look like they are a real hard worker and trying to portray themselves as ‘committed’ to the company perhaps more than others. In other words I think they are dirty rotten suck holes.

My comments of ‘suck hole-ism’ annoyed my friend as he suggested that maybe these people genuinely work at these times as a matter of convenience in their day to day lives. For example, they might skip some work time during the week and do it on a Sunday in lieu. I say bulldust dog!

I have three questions

1. Do you agree with my suck hole thoughts?

2. Has society really evolved to a point where any employee can work a 40 hour week spread over a 168 hour period as and when the employee sees fit?

3. If I ‘type’ all my emails at work during a normal 8 hour 8:30 – 5:00 weekday save them as a draft and then strategically send all of these typed emails from home at 10:30pm just before I go to bed, will my star rise?