Come to America and you can have longer, more desperate hours.
I currently work in a soul destroying hateful job in the USA – working for a man who has no concept of life outside work, and who expects us to feel the same way. It’s in a research lab with 14 employees, mainly technical staff, a couple of graduate students, and a handful of postdocs – oh, and one deathly dull bitch admin assistant. We are expected to work from 8-6 without leaving the building – although we do get a lunch break, there is normally a meeting scheduled during it, so we have to bring lunch in, and eat it in a hurry either before or after the meeting. We get 10 days of holiday a year, but are expected not to use this allowance – plus we have been told that we need to start working weekends and public holidays as not enough is getting done. This means I’m in the lab/office for at least 60 hours a week. Next week we have to be in from 8 am to midnight for a ‘lab retreat’, which I’m told always ends in tears. Since I have the attention span of a goldfish, this gives me a VAST capacity to get bored at work.

I have been here 6 months, and in that time I have
- started a lab wide word game which we play during meetings – one of us nominates a word, and we all have to get as many words out of it as possible by the end of the meeting (my suggestions are normally things like ‘bastard’, ‘dirty weekend’ and ‘rectum’ – my colleagues tend to ignore me and use words like ‘insect’, ‘science’ and on one memorable occasion ‘genome’ (my sides nearly split…))
- I’m teaching my colleagues to speak English – thus far, I’ve got a least 1 or 2 people using the words ‘bollocks’, ‘fucksocks’, ‘twunt’, ‘arsebandit’, ‘bawbag’, ‘numpty’, and ‘dodgy’. Any further suggestions welcome…
- applied for every even half way relevant job I can find in the UK.
- written large quantities of pornographic fiction which I then send to my boyfriend back in London – by post, as this enables me to walk downstairs to the post room a few times a week.
- read the complete archives of b3ta qotw 4 times, just starting on my 5th.
- managed not to kill myself (greatest achievement of all – helped by the fact there are no trains here to jump in front of, and the tallest building is only 3 stories high, thus no guarantee of fatality from a fall. I’ve done my research).

I now have 141 days left until I return to the UK (whether I have a job to return to or not), and have started marking the days using a wee bit of chalk on the side of my desk – it will look like a prisoner’s cell when I leave.
( ascorbate, Fri 9 Jan 2009, 19:47, 4 replies)

word to teach you workmates
my personal favorite...Slutwings.
( jakedamusss I understand, and dont care., Sat 10 Jan 2009, 5:00, closed)

Welcome to Science!
american style... my field (compsci) is the same. I interned at one of the top 3 universities in my field in the USA and my professor had this routine:

7am - get up
8am - be at work
12pm - eat
12.30 pm - work
7pm - go home, eat, shower etc
8pm - log on remotely to work
11pm - sleep

He did this day in day out without fail. Funny thing is, he already HAD tenure!
(zero.coke, Sat 10 Jan 2009, 14:53, closed)

I love my new lab
I refuse to ever work in a lab like that. My boss is of the other "if you don't get any papers out it's your own problem" type. I drink a lot of tea.
(xanthine, Mon 12 Jan 2009, 5:52, closed)

FGS!
Check your employment laws and contracts! In most civilised nations those kind of working arrangements are downright illegal!
(EffinDoubt is breaking glass on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 8:44, closed)